On Tuesday, the Montana state legislature passed a bill barring private companies from requiring that their workers receive the coronavirus vaccine as a condition of employment. “Up to now Montana employers have respected the fundamental, personal, medical and religious freedoms of Montanans,” explained Republican state senator Tom McGillvray, the bill’s sponsor. “However, that’s not the case anymore. There are employers…that are requiring and coercing employees to get vaccinations under threat of termination and intimidation.” So Republicans fought back by coercing employers to respect their workers’ right to refuse the new vaccine.
According to the atrophied “conservatism” of the past few decades, McGillvray’s bill constitutes an illegitimate interference by “big government” into the free choices of the “private sector.” But the Right’s recent aversion to wielding political power has not caused freedom to flourish. Instead, decades of shilling for Big Business have led “parts of the private sector” to behave “like a woke parallel government,” as no less an establishmentarian than Mitch McConnell acknowledged earlier this month. Healthy citizens who would prefer to wait a while before receiving the hastily developed vaccine do not care who forces them to get the shot. If a private business tries to jab them, a government regulation may prove just what the doctor ordered to preserve their freedom.
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