Let no one doubt the anti liberty agenda of Obamacare. In place of traditional American liberty based on the principles of limited government, Obamacarians are erecting a bureaucratic state, complete with centralized control, cronyism, ideological impositions, benefits to favored constituencies, ever increasing dependencies, spiced with an anti religion agenda that would force religious non profits and charities to choose between their service missions and following the precepts of their faith (through the Free Birth Control/Sterilization/Abortifacient Rule for now, more later).
Fortunately, our Founders had the prescience to know that fallible humans would seek to increase the power of government, so they created the Bill of Rights to thwart that agenda. The first liberty mentioned in the First Amendment is the double protection against the establishment of a state church–now more broadly construed–and freedom of the people to “exercise” their religion–which is far broader than mere ”freedom of worship.” Hence, lawsuits are being filed against the Free Birth Control Rule–now including by seven states. From the AP story:
![which is far broader than mere ”freedom of worship.”](<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LZrq-E_f0yA/T0evAjbFkeI/AAAAAAAAFok/O30a-Wkz1Mk/s1600/python.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 300px; height: 168px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5712727076386476514" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LZrq-E_f0yA/T0evAjbFkeI/AAAAAAAAFok/O30a-Wkz1Mk/s400/python.jpg" /></a>){kind=link}
Seven states asked a federal judge Thursday to block an Obama administration mandate that requires birth control coverage for employees of religious-affiliated hospitals, schools and outreach programs…Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, said the administration’s regulation “forces of millions of Americans to choose between following religious convictions and complying with federal law. “We will not stand idly by while out constitutionally guaranteed liberties are discarded by an administration that has sworn to uphold them,” he said. The lawsuit alleges that the rule will effectively force religious employers and organizations to drop health insurance coverage, which will raise enrollment in state Medicaid programs and increase patient numbers at state-subsidized hospitals and medical centers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is named as a defendant.
It shouldn’t be seven, but fifty states.
President Obama ran for office promising to be a bridge uniting “Blue” and “Red” America. Instead, he has governed with a sledge hammer, blowing up comity and exacerbating our growing national disunion. If Obamacare prevails in the courts and in the 2012 election he will have succeeded in finally accomplishing Leftists’ long-yearned-for desire to “transform” the USA into an entitlement state that will squeeze the air out of liberty like a python killing its prey.
February 24th, 2012 | 11:32 am
Nothing less than the future of the republic is at stake. Each day I wonder how many of us truly are so hostile to, or just completely confused about, our founding principles. And each day, something usually makes me shudder that perhaps it’s more rather than less.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Erin: I don’t think many people even understand the concept of constitutional principles anymore or liberty under law. It is all about outcomes.
February 24th, 2012 | 11:34 am
Religion is not above the law. You can’t do whatever you wish in the name of religious freedom.
Even Scalia realizes this.
Tough cookies.
Alternatively, why not make everything a “religious exercise”? Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, prostitution, narcotic usage, transhumanism, child molestation/marriage of 12 year-olds, etc, etc. It’s all just an exercise in one’s religion. Right? Just make up a myth and then ascribe absolute values to it. Presto, you’ve got a religion. Why not? Scientology has done it. Why stop there?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 11:35 am
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION IS THE LAW! Constitution? WHAT Constitution? You do know that the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land” don’t you? No, your ignorance shows that you do not.
Erin Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
@David,
And today’s proof is found.
Chris Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
@David, “You can’t do whatever you wish in the name of religious freedom.” Why not? The President in this case is doing whatever he wants in the name of his moral views. If the next president decides every insurance company must stop paying for birth control, will you shrug your shoulders and say the law is law or will you complain about how draconian and theocratic it is? You’re so obsessed with sticking thorns in the sides of people who don’t share your worldview that you aren’t stopping to contemplate how you are opening the door to getting jabbed in the ribs yourself. The thing about power is you can’t have it forever…
PaulD Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 1:29 pm
@David, There is a elementary distinction between a religious principle that requires one to act in a way that is contrary to the law and law that requires one to act in violation of a religious principle.
An example of the former is Mormans who believed that there religion required them to engage in polygamy. The First Amendment protection has rarely been extended to such claims.
On the other hand, there are numerous examples where the First Amendment has been construed to protect a person from a legal requirement that he act contrary to his religious beliefs. For example, that is why there has always been a consciencious objector exception to draft laws that protects persons whose religious beliefs prohibit them from participation in the military. It is also why Jehovahs Witnesses cannot be compelled by law to say the “Pledge of Allegiance”
If you want to argue about this, I’ll be happy to review any cases you can cite.
PaulD Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
@David, For evidence of the distinction in the law I make above, compare Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in, Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). (Oregon could ban the ceremonial religious use of peyote) with Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) (State can not compel the Amish to send children to high school over religious objections.)
February 24th, 2012 | 2:49 pm
I am wondering if there will be cries of tyranny when such over reaches of federal authority are used to force environmental organizations that subscribe to overpopulation to pay for IVF and other reproductive technologies.
And what happens when environmentalist organizations finally figure out that the synthetic estrogen in the water supply from widespread use of “free” chemical contraceptives is wreaking havoc on fish and other aquatic wildlife. (http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Birth-control-may-be-harming-state-s-salmon-1116254.php) Do they get to opt out of paying for these damaging chemicals? Or will Obama’s war on religious freedom tie everyone’s hands?
Kathleen Lundquist Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
@Rebecca Taylor,
Thanks for bringing up the problem of over-estrogening the environment, Rebecca. More evidence for Americans’ enslavement to the dogmas of the Sexual Revolution: even actual environmental concerns can’t get a hearing in the face of the Sex Without Consequences Uber Alles ideal.
February 24th, 2012 | 7:46 pm
The solution of contraceptive coverage is easy and simple: single payer. A system of single-payer healthcare would solve the problem: A European bishops are not angry because they are asked to cooperate formally with things they consider sinful.
The reality is that even here there is a direct relationship between health expenditure and health in countries with high spending. U.S. is the OECD country with the highest health spending (public and private) in proportion to GDP (17.4%), but their life expectancy is 77.9 years, below the OECD average, with a 9.5% of health spending reaches a life expectancy of 79.3 years. Spain, with health spending 9% of GDP, has a life expectancy of 81.2 years, the same as France, which spends 11.2%.
February 25th, 2012 | 1:17 am
Religion is not above the law. You can’t do whatever you wish in the name of religious freedom.
Even Scalia realizes this.
Tough cookies.
Alternatively, why not make everything a “religious exercise”? Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, prostitution, narcotic usage, transhumanism, child molestation/marriage of 12 year-olds, etc, etc. It’s all just an exercise in one’s religion. Right? Just make up a myth and then ascribe absolute values to it. Presto, you’ve got a religion. Why not? Scientology has done it. Why stop there?
It really kinda is.
You have to take the leap of faith involved in embracing unprovable Enlightenment assumptions in order to believe that gay marriage or stem cell research are or could be moral.
Absent those justifying assumptions (and the implicit promises that accompany them – namely, the myth of total human control over every aspect of existence), it’s pretty clear that using force to make people pretend that two gays parading around with someone else’s kids are or could be a “family”, or that “science” can and will end disease and death – if only we agree to sacrifice unborn human beings.
Every religion in the world – except humanism – has some variant on the Golden Rule, the basis of socialization.
The Enlightenment’s great “competitive advantage” – the thing it offers that makes it more persuasive and pleasurable than older faith-based belief systems – is a dual pronged ideology: on the first prong, the promise that the Enlightened can and will have total control over everything they can dream of – and, on the other, sophisticated justifications for why, since not everyone can be Enlightened, the Golden Rule no longer applies: it is now possible to be ethical even while doing unto the un-enlightened what you would never, ever want done unto you.
February 25th, 2012 | 3:00 am
These “faith-based institutions” are businesses NOT churches….BIG businesses. Their varied employees should not be made to involuntarily kneel at the altar of religion… a flat-out violation of the First Amendment. The government is trying to protect the freedom of these employees, not to limit it! Seriously: The bottom line is that absolutely NO ONE is coming into our Churches or places of worship and telling believers what to believe…..or forcing them to use contraception. BUT If the Bishops (and other denominations) want to continue running businesses outside of their places of worship…businesses that employ millions of people of varying faiths -or no “faith” at all- THEN they must play by the same rules and rights that other workers live by and enjoy (especially if their businesses use our tax dollars, and skip paying taxes, in the process). If the Jehovah’s Witnesses church hires me, can they alter my health insurance to exclude blood transfusions? Even worse- what if they operated a hospital by their “rules”? This is not a “war on religion”. Never was. However, it IS a war BY some religions… on women and men who simply want to plan their families, to control their futures, to keep their jobs, and to have health insurance that allows them to do that.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 25th, 2012 at 10:46 am
Sorry. But the Constitution says otherwise. And here’s the irony. Anti religionists would scream if Catholic hospitals or the Missionaries of Mercy (Mother Theresa’s nuns) limited services to Catholics. Bigots,you would scream! But since they help all comers, you assert they lose their right to the free exercise of their religion. The real bigots should look in the mirror.
Besides, no one forces these people to work for religiously based employers. If they want free stuff that violates the religious teachings of the employer, they don’t have to take the job.
The religionists aren’t breaking social comity, Obama is. And he’s doing it with malice aforethought.
pauld Reply:
February 25th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
@stan chaz, ” Their varied employees should not be made to involuntarily kneel at the altar of religion… a flat-out violation of the First Amendment.”
That is a nice try at a rhetorical flourish, but it is simply not true that the catholic church forces employees to follow its teaching by declining to provide free contaceptives.
The church teaches thou shall not murder. Would they be cramming this teaching down the throats of employees if they refused to provide employees with free guna?
February 25th, 2012 | 12:17 pm
Opps, the last word was intended to be “guns”.
February 26th, 2012 | 11:33 pm
That is a nice try at a rhetorical flourish, but it is simply not true that the catholic church forces employees to follow its teaching by declining to provide free contaceptives.
It is what is called “projection”.
The humanists are the ones craving belief-monopoly.
The humanists are the ones forcing their beliefs onto others.
The humanists think it is reasonable to force Catholics to accept humanist teaching on sexuality, family, and you name it.
Humanism is intolerant and aggressive. The implicit promise in Enlightenment ideology is that those who are Enlightened will enjoy total control over every aspect of their existence – and those who are not “enlightened” don’t count, and can be used, exploited, abused, or discarded, if doing so promotes what used to be called Utopia (until that word fell into disrepute, as it became associated with – gasp – human rights abuses).
The humanist ideal of “Progress” isn’t something that all of us would enjoy.
February 27th, 2012 | 5:23 pm
“The lawsuit alleges that the rule will effectively force religious employers and organizations to drop health insurance coverage…” I think this is a big and intentional part of BHO’s conscience offending rules. Look how effective conscience violating laws were in getting the Catholic church or its extra church missions out of adoption in MA when it forced them to place children with homosexual couples. They couldn’t do it in good conscience and they had to close. I’m sure that was the intent. BHO’s aim is to wipe out the insurance industry and get everyone into single payer or some sort of government health care. There are several aims with BHO care. This is a big one.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact