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Libertarianism

Libertarianism puts individual liberty first and treats coercion by the state as the thing to minimize. It has real merits: skepticism of concentrated power, respect for consent, and a check on paternalism. A modern popular strain extends that into body sovereignty, the position that personal choice outranks public health measures even during an epidemic.

That strain, whatever the intent behind it, is what I call cold logic: a principle followed past the point where it stops serving people. The body-sovereignty position assumes everyone can make fully informed decisions and absorb the consequences alone, which is not the world we live in. Most people do not have the knowledge, money, or medical access of a wealthy broadcaster, and promoting the ideal to an audience of millions during a pandemic shifts the risk onto them. Joe Rogan’s public statements discouraging COVID-19 vaccination, documented on his Wikipedia page, are the clearest example of the position in action; the critique here is of the position, not the person.

A political philosophy has to account for human limitations. Robust institutions exist because individuals cannot reason their way through every risk alone, and a doctrine that ignores that cannot hold a society together.