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| Supreme Court 2013 photo from NPR |
Political Sphere: Following the principles leads to freedom—the
northern hemisphere.
·
Is the policy being debated something that an
individual has the God-given right to do, and therefore has the right to
delegate to government?
·
Does the policy infringe in any way on the
rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights?
·
Is the policy a proper role of government; i.e.,
some aspect of protection (including defense, protection from interstate crime,
enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and
measures and currency, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws) as
enumerated in the Constitution?
Economic Sphere: Following the
principles leads to prosperity—the northern hemisphere.
· Separate God-given rights from privileges, or
wants.
o
God grants rights to all individuals, regardless
of government. Government doesn’t grant rights.
o
We are all born naked, impoverished, and
inexperienced—conditions we overcome by growth, hard work, and gaining in
expertise.
o
We are born with the right to life, the right to
live free (not enslaved), and the right to pursue our own path to overcome the
naked impoverished state.
· The person who earns the money gets to decide
how to spend it.
· There will be those who are unable to care for
themselves to overcome their naked impoverished state; philanthropy must fill
this need, not government.
Social Sphere: Following the principles
leads to civilization—the northern hemisphere.
· Every civilized society is a religious society.
o
This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored
religion or lack of religious freedom, but the opposite.
o
Freedom of religion is essential, and the
flourishing of religion must be encouraged.
o
The required religious beliefs include the
essence of the Ten Commandments:
§
Honor God, who has granted us our lives and our
rights.
§
Honor parents (honor family).
§
Do not murder (value life).
§
Do not have sex outside of marriage (preserve
family integrity).
§
Do not steal (value property rights).
§
Do not lie.
§
Do not covet (i.e., want what belongs to someone
else, which is a precursor to theft).
§
When wrong is done, a wrongdoer must confess and
make restitution in order to restore his place in civilization.
· Family is the basic unit of civilized society.
o
Family perpetuates life and passes on the
principles of civilization, freedom, and prosperity.
o
Family integrity must be protected by society,
including laws.
o
Marriage is an essential societal good.
§
Sex outside of marriage is always wrong.
§
Exceptions must be rare and repented/repaired.
That’s a lot
to hold in your mind all at once. But you can see that the three spheres
interrelate. If a policy violates freedom, it will lead toward loss of
prosperity and decay of civilization toward savagery. When a person claims to
be an economic conservative but not a social conservative, they are revealing
their ignorance of how those social principles are essential for economic
prosperity and freedom.
So, now, let’s
relate these to the recent and upcoming SCOTUS rulings.
The Hobby
Lobby/Conestoga Woods decision came down the last of June. The Court ruled that
RFRA applied (Religious Freedom Restoration Act). This was important. RFRA says
that, if government is to breach the religious freedom of someone, it must have
a compelling reason (something related to protection of life, liberty, and
property of Americans that could be affected), and also must show that they
have taken the least invasive approach.
The Court
didn’t deal with whether the government had a compelling reason, because it was
disqualified by failing on the “least invasive” approach. The government had
already given exemptions and accommodations to millions, for both political and
religious reasons. So why not for these organizations?
That was the
sum total of the ruling. It didn’t decide the “accommodations” being considered
in dozens of other lawsuits were appropriate; it only ruled that, since there
are other options, burdening religious people was not acceptable.
Over the
weekend, July 5th, you may have heard the additional kerfuffle
coming from the Court. The majority ruled to offer a stay to Wheaton College, a
religious affiliated organization that has refused to accept the “accommodation.”
The three female members of the Court, all liberals, railed against the
majority—with vitriol, calling them liars. The phrase “weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth” [Matthew 13:42] should come to mind. While members of the Court consistently
disagree, this failure of congeniality is remarkable.
Meanwhile,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has tried to fast-track legislation to undo
the recently sustained RFRA law. He says, because “five white men” shouldn’t
have the power to deprive women of their health care. Now, that’s a little
insane in a number of ways. First, he just called Justice Clarence Thomas
white. Second, the ruling deprived exactly zero women of health care. It simply
allowed Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Woods, and related plaintiffs to be able to
refuse paying for the 4 forms of birth control they consider as taking human
life—abortifacients. The Court acknowledged that government could find other
ways to provide those things. Even without government, all of those things are
available, at relatively low cost, to consumers without any need for insurance
or payment, mostly over-the-counter without even a doctor’s prescription.
So why the emotionalism?
Because they realized they lost what the whole Obamacare business is about—the power of government to impose its rule
over the will of the people.
Hugh Hewitt
had a couple of good interviews this week with Alliance Defending Freedom
attorneys, who have been involved in many of these cases. In Wednesday’s interview with Alan Sears,
Hewitt asked about the over-the-top
response. And Sears answered:
They realized they had lost. This is
about forcing other people to deny their conscience. Our conscience, a
well-formed conscience doesn’t have an option or a choice on how it responds to
these kind of decisions. People of faith, of conscience, cannot comply. You
mentioned Bonhoeffer. There was a line which he could not cross. Time and again
we’ve seen, through cultures, and time and place, where people of faith could not
cross certain lines. In this case it’s, once again, it’s being asked to take
just a little dip of incense, drop it in the lamp to tell Caesar that he is
lord. And I think that’s what really led the dissent here. It’s that they did
not have five votes to deny people their conscience.
There was an
additional part of the discussion about the miraculous David v. Goliath win,
similar to what I wrote about Monday.
Hugh Hewitt: …the size of the ACLU, the
size of these other groups…
Alan Sears: The size of the Obama
justice department. I mean, one of the things that’s just absolutely amazing to
me, because of the, quite frankly, the prayers, the faith, the support and the
financial support. We have gone, as we talked about earlier, just on the HHS
mandate for a group of, more than this many plaintiffs, but gathered into 19
different lawsuits, we’re 19 and zip. 19 to 0 against the Eric Holder
Department of Justice, against the White House, against the Department of
Health and Human Services. These are gigantic operations. DOJ is the largest
law firm in the world.
That’s
something to notice: a score of 19 to zero. We have to be vigilant against
Goliaths the size of this DOJ and White House combination. Still, it’s
heartening to know how many times, so far, right has prevailed.
In an
earlier Hugh Hewitt interview with ADF attorney David Cortman,
Cortman details the Wheaton issue,
about the refusal to accept the “accommodation.”
[T]he form that the government has you
sign is a specific legal form that amends your contract with the insurance
company. So while they’re saying, “Oh, yeah, we’re keeping you out of this; all
you’re doing is telling us that you have a religious objection,” what they’re
doing is saying, “Give me your authority, company or family, give me your sole
authority, and sign it over to this other person so that we can actually
include these items in your plan without you.” So that’s the problem with this
accommodation. It’s not taking you out of the picture. It’s taking your
authority and granting it to someone else, which makes you complicit in the
abortion evil that you believed in the first place.
David Cortman later asks a pertinent
question:
First of all, why did the government
even pick this fight? You know you’re forcing people who have these well-known
objections who’ve carried them forever, forcing people to fund abortion-inducing
drugs. I mean, that’s incredible for a government to be able to do, and then
turn around and say no, no, everything’s fine, just look the other way.
It is incredible. Why would the
government refuse to offer an exemption to any but actual churches (which they
had to be pressed to do)? And why would they then offer “accommodations” only
to religious non-profits with objections—while the “accommodation” is still
causing the non-profits to consent to something against their conscience? And
why did they refuse any kind of a way out for religious for-profit business owners?
They’re wrong on every count, according
to the Court. But why wasn’t it self-evident to this administration? Because they do not sustain liberty; they
seek tyranny. That is what Obama meant by transforming America.
Let’s briefly go through the exercise of
measuring the policies against the Spherical Model.
· We do not have the natural right to force our
neighbor to pay for something we don’t have. That would be theft. We therefore
can’t grant that power to our government. So, we cannot grant government the
power to force anyone to pay for someone else’s contraceptives or abortifacients.
· We are born with the right to freedom of
religion. It is the first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Refusing to
allow a person to live according to his own conscience is to enslave that
person even more than physically imprisoning him would do. It’s an attempt to
enslave his heart and mind.
· At some point the government will have to “prove”
that providing free contraceptives and abortifacients is a compelling interest;
it has not yet done so. Whatever the Court eventually rules, forcing people to buy a product, let alone
forcing them to buy someone else’s product, is never going to be a proper role
of government.
· Any attempt to control how people spend their
money will lead to less prosperity, never to greater prosperity.
· Claiming that providing contraceptives and
abortifacients is equivalent to protecting life and liberty is diametrically
opposed to civilization.
o
The government is claiming that sex outside of
marriage—and sex without consequences within or without marriage—is a human
right and public good. They want a savage world.
o
The government is claiming that its interest in
providing sex without consequences is greater than anyone’s religious belief.
They want a savage world.
David Cortman offers a summary of the
situation:
This law in and of itself is an unjust
law. Anytime that you force people to violate their religious belief, this law
is bad for everybody….This is a great win for religious freedom, but people
need to understand anytime the government forces any group of people to violate
their beliefs, you could be next.
Indeed. It’s
getting harder to find a civilized, thinking citizen whose beliefs haven’t been
violated by this administration. We need vigilance and courage. I honor Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Woods, Wheaton College, Tyndale Publishing, Little Sisters of the Poor, Alliance Defending Freedom and the many other organizations and their supporters who have stood up to the federal
government Goliath this year.
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