I know we don’t have too many conservatives here, but we have a few. And, feel free to comment even if you’re not conservative, but I would appreciate it if you do, to make a good faith argument, not some conservative hypocrisy swipe.
In the news this morning, I heard that a federal judge sided with Norwegian Cruise Lines and their rule to require proof of vaccination in order to get on a cruise. Florida recently enacted a ban on business checking vaccination status, and the cruise line sued.
Many red states have also overturned local mask mandates, so a city that wants to require masks, say for indoor shopping, is not allowed to do it.
Traditionally, conservatives have championed the rights of businesses to conduct business how they want to, and Norwegian obviously believes that a COVID outbreak on a cruise would be very harmful to their business model. Similarly, conservatives often tout local control as the best way to govern.
To me, this seems like essentially virtue signalling (anti-virtue?) on the part of Republican leaders – they’ve drawn a line that downplays the severity of the virus and the effectiveness if mitigation measures, and they are showing that they mean it. It’s a cynical take, and I’m hoping to leave that out of this conversation.
Can someone make a positive conservative case for overriding private business vaccination mandates and local ordinances that impose mask mandates?
Misleading title: This isn’t a case of Republicans overriding restrictions. It’s a case of Republicans imposing conditions. They’re imposing the restriction that a private company isn’t allowed to check vaccination status. The “no restrictions” position would be that the cruise line is allowed to do whatever they want.
I would say that the cruise line has imposed a COVD-related restriction and the government is overriding it, but I can see the argument the other way, too. Anyway, however you think it should be worded, can you make a good-faith conservative case for it?
There is no case. This is a trap of their own making. Trump thought he could blame the Chinese and this would all go away quickly without damaging the economy, and when the Democrats began sounding the horn about how serious this was and began taking steps to mitigate it the Republicans were stuck. Now they have to let it play out. The reasons advanced are all rationalizations and spurious justifications at best.
I don’t think this is possible, largely because I don’t think the modern GOP that’s pushing this stuff is in any way “traditionally conservative”, at least as I understood that term back when I used to vote conservative.
It used to be that conservatives said your duties as a citizen were at least as important as your rights. Were that still the case, it would be obvious that one of our biggest duties as citizens would be to do what is needed to limit the spread of a serious disease that has killed hundreds of thousands, sicked millions, and caused massive disruption to our lives and the economy.
The Modern GOP cares only about “Mah Freedums!” to exclusion of all else. They are, at best, rabidly libertarian. At worst, they’re exactly the sort of people I used to vote against.
Yes, yes, thank you all, I get it. I’m still hoping for someone to come up with an actual conservative case for this. Ron DeSantis is being talked up as a presidential candidate – there must be some conservative somewhere that could make sense of these rules and regulations.
Perhaps we can make the question even more impartial by removing the word “conservative” as well: If a business wants to require proof of vaccination from its customers, why would any government want to forbid that business from doing so?
Hmmm… now that I phrased it that way, I suppose one answer might be that the government is pro-customer. You’ve all heard before about politicians that are pro-business, now we have the pro-customer lobby, and pushing this isn’t much different than other pro-consumer laws. Or so they might say.
Now that the vaccine is out (and has been for several months) this is a potentially valid rule.
Of course conservatives generally want freedom for business, so Norwegian should, in conservative sensibility, be allowed to require vaccination. A business owner is allowed to kick a rude customer out of their store, Facebook is allowed to kick out people who promote sedition, and so forth.
The problem is, people have been asking “conservatives” this question about all sorts of topics over the last few years, and they never respond. It’s about time we conclude they are either unable, or unwilling, to respond in any useful fashion.
The “conservative” case for preventing businesses and local communities from imposing Covid-19 restrictions, as I understand it, is founded on beliefs that such restrictions are unnecessary/ineffective and a trampling on individual rights, which in this instance supersedes the rights of businesses and local governments, which normally would be championed by the Right. Big Government, you see, is using the pandemic to gain ever more control over people’s lives.
And where politicians are not dedicated to these beliefs, they’re cynically counting on people’s resentment of restrictions to gain them votes.
As far as genuine beliefs driving such actions, I think the evidence shows that they’re colossally wrong about means necessary for ending the pandemic and the primacy of untrammeled individual rights in emergency situations.
I don’t think there is one. The Trump head of HHS had a OpEd in the Times pleading with his fellow conservatives to stop the bullshit and instead support vaccination as one thing we all agree Trump did reasonably well.
I think DeSantis is in populist mode, not conservative mode. Once they stirred up the base, he needs them to keep stirred up.
It’s pretty much the same as the question of whether Trump is a true conservative.
As a conservative, I’m totally not in favor of this BS, in fact, I favor tougher measures (Wuhan-style lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations) than even most liberals.
If I were to make an argument for some of those Republican stances, though, the only one I could think of (and even then it’s a real stretch) would be some concern over the Constitution being violated in some cases, and how it would set a bad precedent. For instance, someone could theoretically argue that the First Amendment prohibits the government from closing or restricting churches in any way, no matter how bad a pandemic is. That argument strikes me as “Constitutional but suicidal,” like someone claiming that the Second Amendment allows them to own nuclear weapons, but it’s the only one I can think of that has the slightest hair of logic.
Since individual businesses are allowed to require shirts and shoes to shop in their establishment, I don’t see the reasoning on why the same businesses can’t require masks and shots.
This, and other takes on the rights of the individual to live their lives is the best ‘good-faith’ reasons I have seen to date. The next is more cynical, but is still good-faith compared to scoring points with the Trump group (and one I’ve heard from family, sadly enough), is that COVID restrictions discourage consumerism, and consumerism is a main driving force of our economy and thus government - we need people to work, buy, and do business at ‘normal’ levels to maintain our tax base and our governmental structures. The losses, while tragic, in the macro scale, do less damage than (x%) loss to the GDP.
ETA - in case it wasn’t clear, while I could make a good faith argument for this POV, I don’t consider this an argument that I want to support. Among many, many other flaws, it leaves out the long term productivity loss from Long-haul COVID, as well as a myriad of other economic, social and political ramifications. And I’m not willing to write off ‘unfortunately losses’ for short term gain.
Assuming the Devil’s Advocate role, I suppose one could cobble together some nonsense argument about State Rights and Federal Government overreach of COVID mandates. Even though states have been exercising exactly that and Federal agencies like the CDC have been issuing guidance, not mandates.
There has been some additional nonsense about being free from having to undergo an involuntary “medical procedure” and right to choose what to do with your own body (that’s fucking rich!).
The best argument I have heard from the anti-vaccine and anti-masking crowd goes something like this: -I am young, healthy and don’t have any of the risk factors for Covid being a serious concern, at least any more serious than the flu. The vaccine has risks too, some of which aren’t known at this time. For me, the risk of Covid does not outweigh the risk of the vaccine, so I am not persuaded to take it. Masks don’t protect me, so I am not going to wear one. If there are people that are more at risk, let them take the steps they need to take to protect themselves.
For the politicians, if there are a large group in your base that thinks this way, its political suicide to push masks and vaccines.
I have seen this argument multiple times on multiple platforms. I don’t agree with any of it, but there is a certain, cold-hearted libertarian “logic” to it that I can at least grasp. Basically boils down to, this is not my problem, its “your” problem, so you take precautions to deal with it, and leave me alone.
If I haven’t made it clear, this is not my position, just the most common one I have seen that is at least coherent.
It’s rich indeed. But the impression I got was that most of them were fully aware of the abortion comparison and were deliberately invoking it as a way of “owning the libs;” it’s not that they were inadvertently making a parallel they didn’t knew they were.
Can’t think of any other reason.