Thursday, July 29, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., tweeted on July 17 that the Biden administration wants to “knock down your door KGB-style to force people to get vaccinated.”
Smith apparently has little understanding of what “KGB-style” really means. It is not the same as advertising a vaccination program for smallpox, polio, measles or COVID-19, undertaken to save young people’s lives and hopes for the future.
Actually, America has taken the opposite of a KGB approach. Party leaders like President Joe Biden and former President Trump are refusing to criticize the unvaccinated. Both power brokers are on board with the post-World War II libertarian current in American life that says people should not be forced or shamed to change behavior.
Just one problem: This airy little bit of philosophy goes against the grain of our 245-year-old criminal justice system, whereby we absolutely do force people to clean up their behavior, at pain of actual punishment.
Autocrats are happy to torpedo criminal and public health accountability because they want the people to decline to hold them accountable when they themselves do wrong. When they fail to follow the Constitution or the statutory law, they hope to be supported by the huge and growing underclass of unprosecuted and unvaccinated Americans they have treated so softly.
