Libertarian: Biden Plays Death Politics
On Sept. 10, President Biden lamented how, by rejecting mask mandates for kids, GOP politicians “are playing politics with the lives of their citizens, especially children” — but, Reason’s Matt Welch scoffs, “the only thing ‘especially’ about children and COVID-19 is that children are especially unlikely to get seriously sick or die from it.” With such remarks, Biden “nodded toward the zero-COVID neuroses of his party’s donor base, before selling as scientific a school-masking policy more restrictive than almost any other industrialized country.” Beyond the substance, the rhetoric was appalling: Leaders who default to accusing their opponents of “consciously choosing” death “have abandoned persuasion for stigmatizing.”
Foreign desk: Joe’s Breaking NATO
President Biden is “doing exactly what” he accused his predecessor of: “unpicking the already frayed bonds of NATO and without a clear idea of what might replace it,” observes Spectator World’s Dominic Green. “The contempt with which” Team Biden treated allies in the Afghanistan withdrawal “gave notice to the Europeans that they’re on their own.” Now France’s President Emmanuel Macron “has responded to Australia swapping a deal for French-made diesel submarines for American-made nuclear subs by treating the US like an enemy.” With Germany “tilting towards Russia” and Britain “no longer anyone’s partner in Europe,” NATO’s “Atlantic and Western European flank are weaker than they have ever been.” But “Biden has shown the US doesn’t care at all.”
Pandemic journal: Focus on Vaxxing Seniors
Since Americans with the highest risk from COVID “remain those who are at least in their mid-40s, if not senior citizens, and those who have health risks due to high blood pressure and diabetes,” we would be “better off focusing all of our efforts on getting shots into those remaining high-risk Americans instead of pressuring companies to fire healthy 20-somethings who are vaccine-hesitant,” reasons National Review’s Jim Geraghty. More than 93 percent of seniors have had at least one shot, yet that still leaves about 3.6 million of them unvaccinated. “If the primary objective of our COVID-19 policies is to avert preventable deaths,” a vaccination campaign should target these people. By contrast, a vaccination drive for kids won’t have “much impact on the death numbers.”
Religion desk: A Comedian’s Faith
Most comedians these days ignore Christianity, but not the late Norm Macdonald — who “spoke and wrote at length not only about his belief in God but also . . . about his opposition to abortion,” reflects Matthew Walther in The New York Times. Indeed, “it is by viewing him as a somewhat idiosyncratic Christian comedian that we can best take stock” of Macdonald’s “comic legacy.” For one thing, his routines were “remarkably free of malice.” He even famously dropped his crusade against O.J. Simpson by the end of his life — “an expression of Mr. Macdonald’s faith and his attendant belief in the intrinsic metaphysical dignity of the human person.” Asked in an interview whether he is Catholic, Macdonald said no but added: “I am in search of the true faith, of course. It’s been a rather long tough journey, for me at least.” Writes Walther: “He has now arrived at the end of it.”
From the left: America’s New Divide
President Biden’s “angry” vax-mandate speech “framed the decision as a way to stop ‘them’ from doing ‘damage’ and killing ‘us,’ ” deepening “a troubling divide,” Matt Taibbi worries at his TK News newsletter. It reflects a broader tendency in liberal, “meritocratic” society: We have “been so conditioned to believe that winners deserve to win that we’ve found ways to hate losers of any kind as moral failures, even when life is at stake, and especially when lack of education is seen as a factor.” The elite think “those who threw away their books after high school deserve failure, in the same way smokers deserve lung disease.” The other side “rages at being stuck sucking eggs in what they see as a rigged game.” The two sides are “all but rooting for each other to die now.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board