Become ungovernable.
Hillsdale College, just like the Founding Fathers she so rightly reveres, should fight back against tyranny. President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional vaccination mandate represents just the latest overreach by a government at war with its own people. The college should not comply with these mandates. It should loudly proclaim outright resistance to the “emergency” order on both legal and natural rights grounds.
The college should openly defy the mandate authorized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, refuse to pay any fines, or engage in Jesuitical legal “reasoning” to find a cop-out. Getting sued by the federal government is the best possible thing that could happen to the college. It would be a fundraising bonanza.
In our time, there is an inverse correlation between credentials and spiritedness. The more educated or institutionalized a person becomes, the more likely they are to roll over before the tyranny of elitist opinion. Hillsdale has an opportunity to buck that trend, combining both intellectual excellence and ferocious defense of its rights.
When the college rejected federal funding over the civil rights surveillance regime, Hillsdale went from being a small school in middle-of-nowhere Michigan to one of the premier liberal arts institutions in the country. With the vaccine mandate, Hillsdale once again has a chance to gain even greater prominence.
There has never been a better time to resist the Biden administration. The president’s approval rating is in freefall, the nation’s supply chain is in shambles, and voters are fed up with the rampant and obvious corruption and ideological browbeating emanating from Washington, D.C. Hillsdale should not slink along quietly in the background trying to avoid attention. It should, instead, stand in the gap, fighting for the principles it articulates so well.
Conservatives tend to be extremely risk-averse by nature. It is, as Locke noted in his “Second Treatise on Government,” much easier to go along with tyranny than to resist it. But the costs of resistance are not likely to be as high as lawyers and bureaucrats are inclined to think.
Is the Biden administration really going to send men with guns to force Hillsdale students to get the jab? In October, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer visited Hillsdale to see the work on the Keefer House Hotel. She came in secret, cowering behind her mask. These are not powerful or strong-willed people. Our authorities live in profound fear of the people they rule.
And rightly so. They have, after all, declared war on their subjects in the name of extinguishing a virus with a survival rate of more than 99%. The Biden White House is incompetent: The botched evacuation from Afghanistan, the Pete Buttigieg paternity leave scandal, and massive increases in crime and inflation are proof that these people have no idea what they are doing.
Ordinary Americans are waiting for champions. The leadership of the conservative movement has instead turned mealy-mouthed in the face of the state’s absurd response to the virus. Our leaders don’t do much leading. It was parents in school board meetings, not conservative commentators or politicians who fought back against critical race theory in schools. It was the anger of heartland Americans against Obamacare that birthed the tea party movement.
Hillsdale can change things. It can provide desperately needed moral encouragement and fighting spirit. It would reward the faith of the parents and donors who see in the college hope for a brighter future. The college has deep pockets, powerful political allies, and the media skill to not only take on the federal government but beat it.
Machiavelli writes in Book I Chapter 33 of the “Discourses” that a prince who attacks without requisite strength ends up aggrandizing his enemies rather than destroying them. He thinks he is pushing his foes down when he is actually pulling them along. If he is not careful, he ends up watering the plant he intended to drown.
Should the Biden administration crack down on Hillsdale, it will only make the college stronger and more prominent. The harder it pushes, the more resistance it will find and the more allies the college will gain. Manly strength not only rejoices in conflict, but it also feeds off it. Should Hillsdale resist the vaccine mandate, it will gain every possible benefit and lose nothing but the approbation of those not fit to give it.