Back when conservatives championed ideas rather than outsourced their thinking to their leader, they touted a simple saying: "Ideas have consequences." Conservatives also understood that while people should always be free to make their own choices based on those ideas, they should be responsible for the consequences of their decisions.
By all means, follow the advice of that YouTube quack who argues that vaccines include microchips that control the population. But when your kid is hospitalized with measles, that's on you. Unfortunately, in a democratic society, the population must endure the brunt of ludicrous ideas imposed by elected officials. (Check out my columns about the awful ones in California.)
We're now at the "good and hard" part of H.L. Mencken's definition about democracy being "the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it." That's certainly the case with economic policy. If you occasionally check your retirement accounts and did so after the last two times President Donald Trump imposed 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, you will have noticed that they dropped precipitously.
