How many conservative opponents of vaccines and mandates are really just addicted to negative partisanship?
Is the anti-vaccine, anti-government alarmist bent on the American right here to stay? And if so, at what magnitude?
Certainly cafeteria libertarianism is nothing new. It’s been a dozen years since members of the Tea Party movement expressed revolutionary zeal in opposing Obamacare but bitterly rejected even modest changes to shore up Medicare. It’s been 20 years that situational defenders of liberty have railed against the invasiveness of the TSA but supported policing initiatives like “stop and frisk.”
So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that many of the same people who are now the most intensely opposed to vaccines and vaccine mandates come from the same nationalist wing of the right that wants to use government compulsion for its own causes. Whether it’s banning pornography, controlling online speech, or centrally planning an economy oriented toward manufacturing, the subscript on the Gadsden flags of the anti-vaxx protests should say “but maybe tread on thee.”
But hypocrisy is always closely correlated to proximity. Ganders don’t want what the geese got, fair or not.