For two days — once in late December, once on Jan. 13 — crowds gathered outside the New Jersey State House chanting “Kill the bill!”
They opposed proposed legislation that would have drastically reduced the number of exemptions parents could cite when deciding not to vaccinate their children. Most of the exemptions that were being stripped qualified as religious in nature.
The anti-vaxxers and their small fry were carrying placards, of course.
My God. My child. My choice.
You’re pHARMing my child.
Not MY Government.
… and other variations on the theme.
On an issue of public health — public health — the operative word was “my.”
All through the day, I, me, mine, I, me, mine, I, me, mine. No one’s frightened of saying it.
“Hagar the Horrible,” the comic strip by Dik and Chris Browne in which the eponymous character’s job is pillaging and stealing, takes a backhanded swipe at this notion. Hagar’s motto?
“I Got Mine.”
This is where the Founding Fathers totally screwed up. As children of The Enlightenment, they believed in the innate goodness and essential superiority of the individual, and in the notion that individual exceptionalism would serve the common good.
The way the Whigs in wigs figured it, the more rights each individual was accorded, the greater society would become.
That worked somewhat well when people were in close proximity. If your exercising your right to spit, for example, brought about a tuberculosis outbreak, you usually knew to refrain from expectoration. You used your rights judiciously because you could see the immediate impact of anything you did.
Civility guided behavior … often, if not always.
But Westward Ho! added “rugged” to the notion of individualism, because prairie people usually had no one to rely on but themselves. So it’s understandable that they came to believe that nobody else knew what they were going through because, of course, nobody else was going through exactly what they were.
Understandable.
What’s not understandable is how rugged individualism born of necessity on the Great Plains morphed into a nationwide I Know Better Than Anybody Else.
Into I Got Mine And It Sucks To Be You.
Climate change? Denied.
Vaccinations for “herd immunity”? Not for My Child.
The road’s shoulder? My personal right-turn lane.
A long line on the exit ramp? I’ll jam in up front.
Ten items or fewer? I only have 13; that’s close enough.
The store closes at 8? C’mon, it’s only 8:03.
In the civil society the Founders envisioned — the kind they hoped Congress and the executive and judicial would embody — people who revel in their individual rights also remember that other people have rights, too.
The Earth belongs to our children, not us.
My baby, too young to get vaccinated — though she will — could die from the measles your child gave her.
You’ll get to the intersection soon enough — and there’s no turn on red, anyway.
The people waiting to exit are just as late as you are, and where they’re going might be more important than your destination.
The shopper with only five items has a family waiting for dinner.
The cashier put in a full day. He really wants to get home and feed his dog and then get off his feet.
Rugged individuals may have had unique solo experiences. In our interconnected world, we’re all going through the same annoyances.
I, Me, Mine?
We, Us, Ours.