Less than three months ago, it was illegal in the United States to get your 5- to-11-year-old the COVID vaccine. Within six weeks, New York City was requiring those same young children to get the COVID vaccine or be barred from much of public life.
In places like Bill de Blasio’s New York, or in my own Montgomery County, Maryland, everything is either prohibited or mandatory.
Many Virginia school districts force children as young as 4 to wear masks in school all day. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said he will end those mask mandates, even in the places where the local government wants to keep them. This is how leading liberal blogger Josh Marshall has responded to this promise:
lol is he going to send in the national guard to pull the masks off the kids faces? https://t.co/XWXl6sf9PI
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 17, 2022
Retweeted by hundreds and endorsed by other liberal commentators, the unstated premise here is that the only two alternatives are forcing children to wear masks or prohibiting children from wearing masks. “Masks optional” is not even considered in certain worldviews.
It’s an even dumber version of the “every good thing should be mandatory” mindset behind vaccine mandates. That’s the mindset that drove the dictionary to call a vaccinated, pro-vaccination person an “anti-vaxxer” if she opposes requiring vaccines.
It’s not rare at all in the news media. When Idaho banned mask mandates, an AP reporter tweeted that the state had banned masks.
Idaho lieutenant governor bans masks while governor awayhttps://t.co/1yBQQ89NT1
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) May 27, 2021
In 2012 and 2014, when Republicans opposed a bill requiring employers to pay their workers in birth control coverage, the media and the Democrats treated it as a Republican effort to ban such coverage — or even to ban birth control altogether. Yes, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall ran his reelection campaign mostly on deliberately conflating his opponent’s opposition to a contraception coverage mandate with opposition to contraception.
“My opponent, Congressman Gardner, led a crusade that would make birth control illegal,” was how Udall phrased it, uproariously.
It’s easy to assume that the journalists and politicians who conflate “opposes a mandate” with “wants to ban” are just a bit dim or playing typical deceptive politics.
But one needs to consider another option: The totalitarian mind doesn’t allow for anything to be optional. If it’s good, it should be mandated. If it’s bad, it should be banned. Individual choice plays no role in this worldview.
