#libtertarian
The reason Libertarianism will forever be relegated to a utopian pipe dream is that it would only work in an empathetic, selfless, rational, well-informed populace, and pretty much any Libertarian I’ve ever met is not only none of those things, but also very proud of being none of those things.
Think the government, your school, or your employer shouldn’t be allowed to force you to get a vaccine because “my body my choice?” That’s fair. Your body is indeed yours. But your body occupies space in the shared mortal coil from which I type this and your relationship to each of those entities is not one-sided. You’re not the only one who gets to dictate the terms by how you function as a citizen, student, or employee: they get a say too.
Oh, but you’re an American and you demand the freedoms the founders guaranteed you? America has always had a streak of rugged individualism, but it was established on the concept of a social contract, an implicit agreement among members of a society to cooperate for social benefits.
Maybe I went to the wrong school, but I don’t recall any civics class that taught how America was founded on free-market anarchism where all individuals do whatever the fuck they please. I never heard how the founding fathers sat around at the Constitutional Convention and asked how they could draft a document that gave freedom such a wide range of latitude that it bordered on psychopathy.
Anyone wanting to participate in our modern social contract implicitly agrees to certain boundaries, the most supreme of which is not to purposely or knowingly do harm to anyone else’s body. It’s actually assault to spit on someone, stick them with a dirty syringe, or fling feces at them. These things aren’t illegal just because they’re rude or disgusting: they needlessly spread disease. Therefore, it should also be illegal to breathe on them in the midst of an airborne pandemic and then fight every measure designed to curb the spread of that outbreak.
No one should get to enjoy all the benefits of society without shouldering any of the burden. Freeloaders are a scourge, after all. And let’s be honest: the burden in question is a bar so low it’s practically in the subfloor of the basement of hell. All you had to do was wear a mask and get a shot to avoid being a disease vector, and you couldn’t even do that.
So you are welcome to keep your bodily autonomy in the comfort of your own home away from everyone else that wants to participate in the social contract of America. A reasonable person can strike a balance between respecting individualism and sacrificing for the greater good.
