So Long, Djoker

By Kevin D. Williamson

Sunday, January 16, 2022

 

You would think that a professional athlete would understand the concept of playing by the rules.

 

Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic is having some trouble in Australia. Australian rules require that foreigners arriving in Australia be vaccinated against Covid-19. Djokovic refuses to be vaccinated but showed up for the Australian Open anyway, and then made things worse for himself by lying on his immigration paperwork. Australia has canceled his visa — twice, thanks to legal wrangling — and now proposes to deport him.

 

Which it should.

 

Australia, like the United States and every other country with a democratic government, passes some bad laws through its democratic institutions. (Non-democratic governments tend to have much worse laws, but the democratic context matters here.) Bad laws passed by democratic institutions can be repealed or amended by those same institutions. People can vote against those laws and against the politicians who support them. That isn’t the end-all-be-all of good government — we have a Bill of Rights to put certain questions beyond the reach of democratic majorities — but it works pretty well, when the people let it work.

 

Djokovic is a double offender here. His first offense is demanding special treatment because he is a celebrity. His second and more serious offense is being a bad guest: Australia’s laws are, for better and for worse, Australia’s laws and, therefore, the business of Australians. Novak Djokovic doesn’t get a say in them. Neither does Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabić. Brnabić can run things in Belgrade as she sees fit, and Scott Morrison must run things in Canberra as he sees fit.

 

One of the oldest questions in liberal politics is: When are we obliged to follow laws that we believe to be unjust? That’s a relatively easy question for Djokovic — he need not submit himself to Australia’s laws at all. He can play in the Serbia Open, where the prize money is $800,000, rather than in the Australian Open, where the prize money is $55 million. Foreigners should look to obey the laws of the places they visit — but what about locals? When are they obliged to follow bad laws?

 

For citizens of democratic countries, the answer is: almost always. Democratic change can be slow and frustrating, but lawlessness is dangerous in and of itself as well as an invitation to tyranny. Abortion is a much more serious issue than is a vaccine mandate for visiting foreigners, but even on that issue we are obliged to work for change through the ordinary legal means, and we mostly have. Neither Australia nor the United States nor the United Kingdom is Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, where the state had to be opposed at all times on moral grounds. And to the extent that civil disobedience is necessary and useful in the liberal democratic countries, those engaged in willful law-breaking should be prepared to pay the price for it. Novak Djokovic is not exactly walking on the path of Mohandas Gandhi or Henry David Thoreau. And civil disobedience is not to be admired without qualification, if only because so many men who take up arms think they are John Brown but turn out to be John Hinckley.

 

Some will complain: “Oh, but Australia’s rules are extreme!” And they are. By way of comparison, consider that the relatively mild rules in place in the United Kingdom have proved too difficult to comply with for . . . the men in charge of the government of the United Kingdom, among others. But many countries have rules that seem extreme to outsiders: Switzerland once fined a man $325,000 for exceeding the speed limit by 25 mph, and will sometimes deport foreigners for speeding or driving under the influence. Theirs is a very free country, but, where there are rules, they expect the rules to be followed. The Swiss government was bitterly criticized both for arresting Roman Polanski and then for subsequently letting him go, but the reasoning was the same in both cases: It was what the law called for, irrespective of Polanski’s celebrity or his infamy.

 

While it is good to have some small measure of discretion in the system to prevent those instances in which mindless application of the law would produce a monstrosity, applying the law evenhandedly and systematically — in a way that shows the law to be “no respecter of persons” — contributes to public trust, consensus, and cooperation.

 

We are very much in need of that right now. As David Brooks and Matthew Yglesias both have observed, unruliness is on the rise in the United States: Highway deaths are up, as are alcohol consumption, brawls and assaults on airplanes and in hospitals, disruptive behavior in schools, drug overdoses, and — of course — murder.

 

If it seems like half the country has turned into Hunter Biden, there is a reason for that. People get especially hostile toward the rules when they come to believe — often with good reason — that the rules are enforced only on those without power, while those with power are free to ignore them. All of those Democratic politicians ignoring Covid-19 protocols were not just engaged in petty privilege-flexing — they were, in a real and important way, undermining the public order. Why should I tell the truth in court? Bill Clinton didn’t. Why should I follow San Francisco’s heavy-handed Covid protocols? The mayor of San Francisco doesn’t. Why shouldn’t I lie to get my way? It works for Joe Biden. One way to help produce better rules is to ensure that the people who make the rules are made to follow them. That is no easy thing, but it is a necessary thing. If the high and mighty won’t obey the rules, the multitudes will note the example.

 

If Novak Djokovic doesn’t want to play by the rules, then he doesn’t have to play at all.