Kevin responds to my response by writing that:
Charlie, you can slice and dice this stuff a hundred different ways, I suppose. But it also is the case that, unless I am grievously misunderstanding the naturalization process, you would literally not even be here if not for your willingness to comply with a rather extensive vaccination mandate. We impose vaccine mandates on everybody from immigrants to soldiers to kindergarteners. The foot-stamping over this particular vaccine is pure performative adolescent self-harm, and there isn’t any reason to treat it as anything else, to make excuses for it, or to try to dress it up in respectability.
It is true that I would “literally not even be here if not for [my] willingness to comply with a rather extensive vaccination mandate.” But I’d venture that this fact bolsters my position, rather than Kevin’s.
At no point since 2019 have I been involved in any “foot-stamping over this particular vaccine.” On the contrary: I got both shots in April, and added a booster late last year. I have, however, opposed government mandates that I considered illiberal and/or unprecedented. In making my case, I suggested that Kevin cannot consider regulations within wholly federalized environments as precedents for regulations that are imposed upon private companies. In reply, Kevin pointed to another wholly federalized environment — the immigration process — as if it constitutes a precedent that can be applied to the American citizenry writ large. This example suffers from the same problem as did the last.
During my immigration process, I was obliged to do a lot of things that I would simply not tolerate as a naturalized citizen. It wasn’t just the vaccine mandates. Back then, I had to ask for permission to enter the country; I had to ask permission to be paid for my work; I had to inform the federal government each and every time my address changed; I had to answer questions about my schooling and my associations; I had to promise that I wasn’t a communist or a jihadist or a neo-Nazi; I had to demonstrate that I spoke English and that I understood the Constitution; I had to consent to fingerprinting and photographing, as well as to a series of background checks; and, at least in theory, I had to promise not to be poor — or, at least, to promise that if I became poor I would leave the country. Why? Because, as a foreign citizen, I had no right to be in America in the first place.
As Kevin knows, I did not object to any of this. But it is not a model for those who were born here, and it cannot be invoked as a precedent, either. I don’t think pointing this out is “slicing and dicing”; I think it’s reiterating one of the central premises beneath the American ideal: That American citizens who engaged in private activity should expect to be treated differently than not-yet-immigrants or enlisted soldiers or children who wish to attend government schools.