New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed a vaccine mandate this week. “If you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” the mayor told reporters. “It’s time.” The new order requires New Yorkers to show proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, gyms, theaters, and other indoor venues. It’s not yet clear how city officials plan to enforce the rule, but the mayor wants to send a clear message the city will punish the unvaxxed far more than it punishes criminals.
The same city that wants to bar unvaxxed people from restaurants and gyms also releases dangerous criminals without bail and refuses to prosecute prostitutes and Black Lives Matter rioters. You may face jail time if you try to enter a restaurant without showing your papers, but you won’t face jail time if you throw a rock through the restaurant’s window to protest racial injustice.
This is anarcho-tyranny, and it’s now live in New York City and across much of America. The vaccination passport comes at a time when our own government coddles criminals and opens our borders to illegal aliens. The anarcho-tyranny isn’t enacted out of stupidity or some temporary lapse in reason. It’s intentional. Democrats want to punish middle Americans and bestow favors on their own constituents. The anarcho-tyranny mandate does just that.
The push for vaccine passports is primarily driven by the thought that it will hurt Donald Trump supporters the most. Liberals seem to relish the idea of seeing deplorables kicked out of restaurants and forced to beg for food. They especially like the idea of all of them being placed alongside terrorists on the no-fly list. Former Homeland Security assistant secretary Juliette Kayyem made this case in The Atlantic last week, arguing that “flying is not a right.” (The original headline for the op-ed said unvaccinated people “belong on the no-fly list.” The revised title merely says they should “bear the burden.”)
“For the privilege of flying, Americans already give up a lot: We disclose our personal information, toss our water bottles, extinguish our cigarette butts, and lock our guns in checked luggage. For vaccinated people, having to show proof of vaccination when flying would be a minor inconvenience,” Kayyem writes. It would be a minor inconvenience, certainly, for a woman who calls Trump supporters “domestic terrorists” to enjoy her unfettered right to travel while denying her enemies the same right.
The government and media help stir up popular anger at the unvaccinated, planting the idea that those who refuse the experimental vaccine should lose their rights. The propaganda appears to be working, as a narrow majority of the public backs a vaccine mandate to travel, work, and go to school. Democrats, of course, are the most supportive of such measures.
What’s most interesting, though, is that the people who would be the most adversely affected by vaccine passports, especially in New York City, are not MAGA hat-wearing yokels. It would be racial minorities. In New York City, only 38 percent of black residents are fully vaccinated. Just a little over 28 percent of black Americans are vaccinated nationwide. Enforcement of a vax mandate would lead to disparate impact and aggravate Black Lives Matter complaints against the justice system.
A few liberals get this. Boston Mayor Kim Janey, who is black, compared vaccine passports to slavery laws and “birtherism,” arguing such mandates would disproportionately harm nonwhites. But Janey’s fellow liberals ignore her criticism, pretending instead that only blinkered white Republicans would be hardest hit.
An obvious hypocrisy with this enthusiasm for vax passports is the Left’s complete opposition to voter ID laws. Many conservatives have noted this fact with dismay. How can anyone demand papers for entry to a restaurant while at the same time decrying voter ID requirements as “Jim Crow on steroids”?
It doesn’t need to make sense. Vax passports promise to hurt Democrats’ enemies while voter ID laws harm their friends and interests. That’s all that matters. That’s life under anarcho-tyranny.
While you may not be able to board a plane or go to a gym without a vaccine passport, you can rest assured that your tax dollars pay for free flights of unvaccinated illegal aliens to various unsuspecting states. Many facilities release COVID-positive migrants with zero precautions. One city in Texas reports that at least 7,000 illegal aliens with COVID have been let go into its jurisdiction since February. Just imagine how many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have poured into our nation under Biden carry the virus. The Biden Administration now plans to offer vaccines to illegal aliens who are likely to be released into the country. A nice gesture for sure, but the migrants can refuse the jab and still have more freedom than an unvaxxed citizen in New York City. Is that what the land of the free is all about?
The vaccine passport will not be the last or even the worst sign of anarcho-tyranny. As long as Democrats can dream of new ways to punish their enemies while rewarding criminals and illegals, they will push for these threats against basic American freedom. Liberals feel too good about punishing the “bad people” to comprehend the long-lasting damage to our republic.
There’s no going back to normal—anarcho-tyranny is here to stay.