I hope your reaction is the same as mine, namely, “What people choose to wear is none of the government’s damn business.”

But let me ask you a related question. What about the 16 states, including Denmark, Bulgaria, Morocco, and Tunisia, that have gone the other way, prohibiting enveloping Islamic dress? My reaction is the same: None of the government’s damn business. But I realize my attitude is becoming eccentric in an increasingly illiberal world.

In July, Nassau County in New York signed into law a ban on face masks. The law was pushed by Mazi Pilip, a Republican former Israel Defense Forces paratrooper of Ethiopian Jewish heritage, who argued that the ban would deter pro-Gaza protesters from “hiding behind the mask and terrorizing the Jewish community.”

I can’t help noticing that many people who were horrified at being forced to wear masks during the pandemic are relaxed about an equivalent exercise of state force the other way around. Most people, in other words, are pro- or anti-mask rather than anti-coercion.

Maybe we should not be surprised. The idea that governments have no business telling people what to wear is a remarkably novel one. Most societies, down the ages, coded dress by status.

In Rome, only senators and magistrates were allowed to wear Tyrian purple, and then only as a border to their robes. In medieval England, cloth of gold, sable, ermine, and velvet were reserved for knights and lords. Italian city-states forbade low necklines on women while requiring prostitutes to wear a distinguishing stripe.

Louis XIII of France banned non-aristocrats from embroidering their clothes with gold thread. In Massachusetts, at the same time, the law allowed only citizens worth more than £200 to wear lace, embroidery, cutwork, hatbands, ruffles, or capes.

The concept of personal liberty is rare and recent. In societies where people are primarily defined by their occupation or caste, rather than as individuals, dress codes, or sumptuary laws as they were generally known, seemed natural.

Jews, as Pilip knows, have been on the receiving end of this attitude more than most. In medieval France, they had to wear badges with yellow wheels; in Sicily, blue stripes; in Germany, yellow pointed hats; in Hungary, red capes; in many Muslim countries, yellow turbans. If such laws now seem odd to us, it is because we have internalized the concept of individual autonomy.

As modern society reverted to identity politics, perhaps it was inevitable that sumptuary laws would make a comeback. And since nothing has driven our authoritarianism like the lockdown, face masks were always the likeliest battleground.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether face masks worked. The striking thing was how quickly they were pressed into America’s culture war, with leftists readier to wear them than conservatives. When Black Lives Matter and antifa violence erupted during the pandemic, the masks gained a certain radical chic, reinforcing their political connotations. It is striking how many campus anti-Israel demonstrators seem to have been wearing them since 2020.

I had hoped that conservatives would respond to the end of lockdown by saying, “Let’s never again surrender our freedoms so easily.” Instead, many seem to be saying, “You forced your values on us, so now let’s see how you like it.”

Hence, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) decree that business owners in Florida could not require masks or proof of vaccination on their own property — a decree every bit as illiberal as the measures he had rightly resisted.

Someone needs to sing the old song, so here goes. We are entitled to personal autonomy, freedom of association, and private property. It follows that governments should not, except in the most extreme of circumstances, tell us what to wear. It follows also that private institutions may demand whatever dress codes they wish.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

A restaurant can ask you to wear a necktie. A place of worship can require you to cover your hair. A shopping mall can forbid face coverings as a deterrent to shoplifters. If you don’t like the rules, go elsewhere.

Now, here is the thing. Those principles don’t depend on whether you approve or disapprove of the people involved. They are not about respecting or disrespecting other people’s religions or agreeing or disagreeing with them about COVID. They apply regardless. That’s what freedom under the law means. Or, at least, what it used to mean.