As local governments and private businesses institute policies requiring individuals to wear masks, conservatives have been quick to denounce these laws and policies on social media as government overreach, claiming that mask mandates suppress freedom. For example, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, recently said in his podcast that masks are a “civil liberties issue” and that he simply “doesn’t like being told what to do.” Sounds very … progressive.
In recent years, it seems as if many conservatives and Republicans have developed a strong animus toward any regulation. In December of last year, conservative Twitter nearly exploded after four Republican congressmen sent a missive to Attorney General William Barr, beseeching him to enforce obscenity laws. The split is a telling one for conservatism as a whole — and not unlike this current mask outcry.
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When the framers wrote that one of the goals of the Constitution was to “promote the general Welfare,” they understood that to do so, laws had to be passed. Indeed, promoting the general welfare appears later in the Constitution as basis for the spending clause. A society without laws cannot properly function as a society. We don’t have to look any further than the anarchist centers on the West Coast to see the chaos that lawlessness creates.
Of course, we should not blindly submit to the legislator’s pen without giving the law a moment’s thought. History is replete with government policies that were sold on good intentions, but instead produced disastrous outcomes. In healthcare alone, government has failed time and time again to produce successful results. Mask mandates, however, are quite different. The science is clear: Masks are a valuable tool in the fight against COVID-19. They not only help protect you, but they also help protect those around you. This deadly virus doesn’t discriminate against its victim; the freshly dug graves across all 50 states make that quite clear.
Yes, masks are annoying. They muffle your voice, cause your glasses to fog, and get sweaty if you wear them for extended periods of time. But these minor annoyances are trivial compared to the disastrous outcomes of a society that refuses to wear them.
Milton Friedman famously said that “government doesn’t have responsibility; people have responsibility.” And sometimes, he noted, people use government as a tool to implement their personal responsibilities. Mask mandates, I believe, are an example of just that — of people using government to best impose and act upon their responsibility to ensure their own and their fellow citizens’ welfare. If we all join together and mask up (if we, as Jason Gay wrote, “put the ‘public’ back in public health”), we can mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and look forward to seeing America bounce back stronger than ever.
Phillip Dolitsky is a graduate of Yeshiva University, with hopes to pursue a master’s degree in international relations. You can follow him on Twitter @phillyd97.
