How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

Again, I can’t help but think about the Covid-19 “mask problem.” The people who’ve refused to join the team here—the ones who decided that they simply didn’t have to (or want to) follow this new rule—often get extremely indignant when store owners or workers ask them not to be “free riders” and go maskless while everyone else covers up. “How dare you,” they say. “This is America! I can do what I want, because of liberty! The Constitution guarantees us Freedom of Face, and also Don’t Tread on Me and George Washington and Bald Eagles!”15 Thanks in part to this attitude (and in larger part to the craven media types and politicians who fostered it), we all watched helplessly as the virus ripped through the country in wave after wave. Even worse were the states where authorities decided not to require mask-wearing—either for similar ideological reasons, or because they feared the wrath of those who held that ideology, or both, or both plus ignorance and stupidity. The widespread lack of guilt among mask resisters feels like a gut punch, to me.