In an earlier comment I suggest to rightness of coercion to reinforce the collective good. We engage in necessary coercion as a part of the social contract all the time, from the paying of taxes to the application of eminent domain. There are extensions of and limitations on these, of course, determined by legislation, agency regulation, and court decisions. But the fact that these forms of necessary coercion exist and acceptance of the rationale for them as means of advancing the public good are just givens that we all recognize.
The key challenge now is not acknowledgment of its necessity. It is a question of political will and implementation by various means. In brief, the focus should not be on improving the messaging. We've hit the wall on that. At this point, we must raise the level of discomfort for the resistant. Many of the un- and partially vaccinated are not hardened ideological anti-vaxxers but fence-sitters. Just consider how many one-shot recipients there are who should have received a 2nd shot but just haven't bothered. This is where the coercion by available means comes in. PSAs? Sure. But providers of life and health insurance; employers exerting employer muscle; litigants pursuing anti-vaxxers who threaten public health; city or state governments requiring vaccination for the disbursement of selected benefits; on and on. We are now looking at the possible return of a public health crisis and the only proper response is a "for your own good" set of policies that will get fence sitters off the fence and wear down the remaining resistance of anti-vaxxers.
Carrots and sticks are needed, and they need to take the form of dollars in and out of pockets, not more talk.
Two notions of freedom are, and historically have been, in conflict since the US republic's founding: freedom as lack of constraint, and freedom as self-government. The Canadian political theorist C.B. MacPherson aptly described the former as "Possessive Individualism", and it has been a central premise of US conservative ideology all along -- sometimes liberal ideology as well. It atomizes social goods out of existence. What COVID has shown is that the unconstrained pursuit of doing what one wants is the very opposite of self-government, of being a self-determining agent, since one never acts in a vacuum. You can't be autonomous all by yourself since you live in a society with other humans, whose actions affect you and whose well-being you also affect. The charter of liberal republican democracies is designed to ensure that common goods, irreducibly social goods like health, safety, economic security, etc., are secured so that individuals, as well as the polity, can flourish. Hopefully, COVID will get Americans across the ideological spectrum to acknowledge this.
I have my doubts, however. I suspect the US polity has been fractured beyond repair, mainly because traditional media has been supplanted by social media, which is not contained by rationality and truthfulness. Hope I am wrong, but I see little to suggest otherwise.
Stoehr: "Once people get it in their heads that giving in to laws, regulations and problem-solving is the death of their liberty, it’s not hard to imagine them accepting as good the real thing. In this sense, they’re less hostage-takers than suicide bombers."
Nice.
The willfully unvaccinated are slow-motion suicide bombers.
In an earlier comment I suggest to rightness of coercion to reinforce the collective good. We engage in necessary coercion as a part of the social contract all the time, from the paying of taxes to the application of eminent domain. There are extensions of and limitations on these, of course, determined by legislation, agency regulation, and court decisions. But the fact that these forms of necessary coercion exist and acceptance of the rationale for them as means of advancing the public good are just givens that we all recognize.
The key challenge now is not acknowledgment of its necessity. It is a question of political will and implementation by various means. In brief, the focus should not be on improving the messaging. We've hit the wall on that. At this point, we must raise the level of discomfort for the resistant. Many of the un- and partially vaccinated are not hardened ideological anti-vaxxers but fence-sitters. Just consider how many one-shot recipients there are who should have received a 2nd shot but just haven't bothered. This is where the coercion by available means comes in. PSAs? Sure. But providers of life and health insurance; employers exerting employer muscle; litigants pursuing anti-vaxxers who threaten public health; city or state governments requiring vaccination for the disbursement of selected benefits; on and on. We are now looking at the possible return of a public health crisis and the only proper response is a "for your own good" set of policies that will get fence sitters off the fence and wear down the remaining resistance of anti-vaxxers.
Carrots and sticks are needed, and they need to take the form of dollars in and out of pockets, not more talk.
This is great. Kudos.
Two notions of freedom are, and historically have been, in conflict since the US republic's founding: freedom as lack of constraint, and freedom as self-government. The Canadian political theorist C.B. MacPherson aptly described the former as "Possessive Individualism", and it has been a central premise of US conservative ideology all along -- sometimes liberal ideology as well. It atomizes social goods out of existence. What COVID has shown is that the unconstrained pursuit of doing what one wants is the very opposite of self-government, of being a self-determining agent, since one never acts in a vacuum. You can't be autonomous all by yourself since you live in a society with other humans, whose actions affect you and whose well-being you also affect. The charter of liberal republican democracies is designed to ensure that common goods, irreducibly social goods like health, safety, economic security, etc., are secured so that individuals, as well as the polity, can flourish. Hopefully, COVID will get Americans across the ideological spectrum to acknowledge this.
I have my doubts, however. I suspect the US polity has been fractured beyond repair, mainly because traditional media has been supplanted by social media, which is not contained by rationality and truthfulness. Hope I am wrong, but I see little to suggest otherwise.
.
Stoehr: "Once people get it in their heads that giving in to laws, regulations and problem-solving is the death of their liberty, it’s not hard to imagine them accepting as good the real thing. In this sense, they’re less hostage-takers than suicide bombers."
Nice.
The willfully unvaccinated are slow-motion suicide bombers.
👍
.