The libertarian myth at the heart of legal challenges to Biden's vaccine mandates
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on President Biden's vaccine mandates on Friday, Jan. 7. Officially, the cases are about questions of federal power, administrative law and the capacity of Congress to delegate authority to agencies. But what is fundamentally driving the litigation is the libertarian myth - one that may be embraced by the new conservative Supreme Court majority - that freedom can be promoted by hamstringing the capacities of government.
Emergencies such as COVID-19 remind us why a powerful and effective state is indispensable. For most of human history, plagues were a misfortune that had to be patiently borne. Big Government has saved us from that. Massive federal spending induced a higher level of risky investment in COVID-19 vaccine research than the private sector would otherwise have been able to muster while enlisting the stupendous capabilities of Big Pharma. The work undertaken by those businesses built upon decades of state-funded basic science, especially in the expensive field of molecular biology. The speed with which the vaccines were developed is one of the most astounding accomplishments in history.
Another modern innovation is the use of government power to get people vaccinated. That has been going on for well over a century. It eliminated smallpox. It is why it has been years since any American child died of measles or polio. COVID-19 showed yet again that vaccine mandates work.
But "conservatives" - as I'll shortly explain, this is the wrong word for them - including some members of the Supreme Court, have been on a long-standing campaign to enfeeble the modern administrative state. A pandemic is the worst possible time to do that, but that hasn't stopped the lower court judges whose injunctions are being appealed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-libertarian-myth-at-the-heart-of-legal-challenges-to-bidens-vaccine-mandates/ar-AASmoZD
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