I can’t stand the free-riding hypocrisy that, under the protective, disease-free cover of everyone else’s efforts, lies the luxury of a “personal choice” to abstain.

I detest the ugly scepticism of medical science that rejects the prevention vaccination offers, but the moment something strikes, rushes to the emergency ward.

And the sheer quackery that persists in connecting vaccination to autism — as the father of an autistic son, this stirs in me a uniquely furious revulsion.

But rage is the enemy of wisdom. It feels good to vent but, whatever we decide to do about vaccination, the aim shouldn’t be to make me feel good.

That’s what we did this week with our “no jab, no pay” policy. There’s something purging about attacking welfare payments.

When we condemn someone to a life without welfare, we’re doing more than denying them money — we’re sending them into a symbolic exile of those we hate.

To be ineligible is to be outcast, excluded from the social contract.

That’s why we so gleefully withdraw it from people we feel have violated the pact — lately, terrorists and anti-vaxxers.

It’s as though it’s the final moral judgment left in our post-moral society. It is therefore where we start the ritual stripping of rights.

Are we looking for a symbolic excommunication? Or are we trying to get more people immunised?

Our political class will admit only to the latter, but if we take them at their word, we run into problems. As several experts agreed this week, withdrawing welfare from anti-vaxxers is unlikely to make much difference for the simple reason they aren’t typically on welfare in the first place. If this policy has any merit, it is likely to be where people have simply forgotten to get vaccinations. And that’s great. But there is surely a less punitive and more effective way to achieve this.

You know, one that doesn’t mean only rich people have the right to forget.

We’re failing to understand that vaccine refusal isn’t about irresponsibility. It’s a conviction. It fits within a world view, and is alloyed to a broader politics.

Consider the first attempts at compulsory vaccination in the 19th century when many anti-vaxxers were from the working class who saw it as a form of class oppression — the ruling class treating their inferiors as the personification of disease. It was a protest not just against vaccine, but against the idea of policing and dominating the working class.

Their middle-class counterparts objected more on libertarian grounds, that government has no business in our lives and policing through medical treatment.

Today, the New Age objector is suspicious of the whole enterprise of medical science, entranced by the human body’s ability to heal itself, celebrating the natural over the synthetic with health being all about your diet, your environment and the depth of your friendships. They resist the corporate onslaught and seek to empower themselves.

It is only when you recognise that this is a problem of politics — rather than a battle of wills — that you can see where the “no jab, no pay” approach might lead.

Perhaps you will never convince the hardcore anti-vaxxers who will happily sacrifice some welfare payments for their principles in the rare case it comes to that.

If you’re on the verge of believing this is some form of government control, is anything more likely to tip you over the edge than the government resorting to force?

You don’t win such political debates with a sledgehammer. You win them with persuasion.

Guile doesn’t take away people’s rights or encourage those with alternative politics to harden their positions. And it doesn’t transform a health issue into trench warfare.

If there’s anything worse than a war, it’s one waged to gratify ourselves.

Waleed Aly is a Fairfax Media columnist and winner of the 2014 Walkley award for best columnist. He also lectures in politics at Monash University.