Education Conversation

Some friends and I have been thinking a lot about education lately. It is a two-month theme for our local Tea Party meetings. I spoke, and wrote about that, a few weeks ago. (Someone recorded it, and it’s actually available for viewing here. If you go to the website of the person who recorded it, the other speaker and the Q&A are available there as well.)

We’re having another meeting this Saturday, hearing from two members of the State Board of Education.

The entire public education system is something of a mess, and not succeeding in what we want it to do. There are many approaches to solving that. But key is getting the decision making more local. 

Toward that end, a friend shared with me, and I’m going to pass along to you, some things from a tele-townhall in which Hugh Hewitt interviewed Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, and Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, the provost for K-12 education for Hillsdale, which covers their Barney Charter School Initiative.

Hugh Hewitt (left), Dr. Larry Arnn, and Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
at tele-townhall for the Barney Charter School Initiative

A conversation between Hugh Hewitt and Larry Arnn is always fun to listen in on. They typically talk once a week for an hour on radio, called the Hillsdale Dialogue. Dr. O’Toole happens to be Dr. Arnn’s daughter, and she is a good addition to the discussion, particularly on the issue of education.

This discussion was meant to provide information about their charter schools, and to give people an opportunity to donate—because they try to give away as much education as they can, which they can only do when there are enough donations.

Anyway, I’d like to share parts of their discussion, just because I think it helps us see the gap between what we know works to educate students and what our schools typically do—often at no fault of the teachers.

The Barney Charter Schools are about classical education. That’s another name for liberal education—but not what liberal means in the political sphere. It means open-minded and clear thinking. It implies studying the classics, and the good. That’s probably going to include Aristotle and Plato, who pointed out that there’s evidence of the divine everywhere. Wherever you rate one thing as being better than another, you imply there is an ultimate good. That is God; and God is the arbiter of what is good.

These schools will talk about the role of ethics and religion. They’re public schools, but they can still talk about what a religion believes, what it is, and the role of the three major monotheistic religions in Western thought.

Dr. Arnn often speaks about defining what is good. He references C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, which comes up in this discussion as well. In that book, Lewis talks about the problem you have when you strip out conscience from a person. Humans are the only creatures with a conscience. Without that, all you have left is appetite; you lose what makes you human. You need to build character, which is the condition you build in yourself, foregoing pleasure, enduring pain, so that you can become educated and just.

Dr. Katherine O'Toole
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Schools are going to teach what the adults in the school believe to be virtue, that that might as well be intentional. Dr. O’Toole says,

If you send your child to any school, you are sending your child to a group of people who are giving examples to your child of what adults and bigger kids are like. That’s what school is.… Every school is teaching kids about right and wrong, good and bad, who you should be and who you shouldn’t be. That’s just what school is, in part. If you send your kid to one of these classical schools, you will send them to a group of people who are thinking about that question explicitly, and talking about it explicitly. They’re talking about virtue. We recognize that kids are going to be learning about right and wrong by being around us, so we might as well make a point of doing it right.

Dr. O’Toole points out that education is an activity performed by the student. You cannot educate someone against his or her will. She says,

The teachers are there to guide them, set up framework, hold them accountable, introduce them to the ideas. But students are the ones doing it. If a class is run well, they are the ones asking questions. They are being asked questions. They are interested in what is going on. They are connecting what they’re learning in one subject to what they learned in another subject in the previous period. They’re talking about what they’ve been learning all day every day with each other. It’s part of who they are. It’s not some other thing that they do besides their real life. It is their lives.

There’s a key, she says, to an excellent school. It’s “involved parents, excellent teaching, and a sound and solid and robust curriculum.”

And what does it take to have an excellent teacher? Teacher have to have learned and studied the content. Dr. Arnn suggests getting rid of the teaching of teaching. It’s a waste for teachers to spend time studying methods for teaching the subject matter—which takes away time from actually studying the subject matter.

I used to notice this in college, as an English major. Many people in my major headed toward education. But I didn’t like taking the time out from what I wanted to study and spending that in classroom preparation classes. In addition, let me note that, many English majors going into teaching (in my experience) struggled with grammar—where we diagrammed sentences, among other things. It was their worst subject, typically a C, D, or Fail class for them. If you’d taken a foreign language, it came much easier, which I had. But future teachers took English because they loved reading stories. Maybe, if they were good, they could help lead a discussion for students on what they’d read. But they were typically subpar in grammar and writing. They needed more time learning those skills, rather than taking that time to learn how to write out a lesson plan.

Dr. Arnn talked about the rights and responsibilities of parents, which I think is an essential part of any discussion on education, and why the control has to be local.

The school, should absorb this. You have a right, as a parent to raise your children—the duty and the right. And the natural love that parents have for children is the strongest force on earth. Human babies take longer to raise than any other kind. And they would die, for years, if they were not tended. So that love that you have should be influential in the school.

Now, the second thing is teachers. Teachers are smart people. And they could do a lot of things with their lives, and this is not the highest paying profession. So, they’re people who are devoted. And they and the parents and the administration of the school—which shouldn’t be very many people—they are the right ones to run the school. And that is the way education worked in America.

Charter schools, he says, are a step back toward self-government, toward management by the people who know and love the kids. Also, he points out, as I would expect, that education is not among the things enumerated for the federal government to do.

There is some discussion about learning phonics, rather than whole language. And getting young children to memorize important writing, such as the Preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address (both of which we memorized in our homeschool), or maybe Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, which is only seven minutes long. Kids memorize, and then they understand the words and the concepts.

There’s discussion about learning math facts, so when you get to more complicated equations, you’re not taking time to work out 6 time 7 on your fingers; there’s no time for that. In our homeschool, we memorized through 12X12 for multiplication, but we have a book that recommended memorizing up through 25X25, which would be handy.

They discussed connecting subject matter, rather than keeping each subject disconnected.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it to you to listen to the whole thing, if you want to know more specifics about their charter schools. But, here’s something to think about. They started in 2010, and opened their first school in 2012. They now have 22 schools in 11 states. Dr. Arnn’s goal is to have 50 schools. They can be smaller, but the one Dr. O’Toole headed in Leander, Texas, had about 650 students K-12.

When you look at the total number of students who would like this kind of education instead of what they’re getting, it seems like just a drop in the bucket. We've talked about the difficulty of getting in here and here.

The hope is that getting started, and doing even this small number, will have an effect on society as a whole.

If you’re interested in taking a look at their curriculum for free, email them at charterschoola@hillsdale.edu and they’ll quickly get back to you and provide it—no charge. There was also a fair amount of information at the link to this tele-townhall, here.

If you’re interested in donating, call 800-437-2268, or click the link at the bottom of the page below the tele-townhall.

Dr. Larry Arnn
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Dr. Arnn ended with a thought I’d like to repeat here, while we’re in the midst of this conversation on education:

Nothing is more important than to become an informed citizen, because we’re losing the whole constitutional fabric of the nation, and the principles that gave rise to it. That [loss] started in education, and it’s proceeding through it now. We have to interrupt that. So, first of all, inform yourself. Anything you don’t know, always learn more. And then, talk to your neighbors…. If you’ve got opinions and influence, use it. And we will help you; we will give you things to know. It’s very possible to save the country by saving the education system.

People who know how to learn, and how to teach, and how that all connects to raising people to become great souls—we can find a way together to make that happen. We have to.

Declaration Authority

Can we just say this: The Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate tomorrow, is brilliant and beautiful—and was the first to do what it set out to do: separate from a royal sovereign to become a self-governed sovereign nation.

These past few months I’ve been doing some studying about the Declaration of Independence. Not entirely purposeful, but because things have come my way that started to connect.

Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, has a lot to do with this. He has created a new free online course, Introduction to the Constitution, about the philosophies behind our founding. He also does a weekly hour with Hugh Hewitt, called the Hillsdale Dialogues. Lately these have covered the founding documents: The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The Constitution.

The Hillsdale Dialogues are archived in a couple of places: among Hillsdale’s online courses, and in Hugh Hewitt’s archived shows (subscription required).

The Declaration covered four weeks, the fourth of which was not Larry Arnn, but Matthew Spalding, head of Hillsdale’s Kirby Center in Washington, DC. [May 6, 2017, around 24 minutes]. He points out an interesting thing about the mentions of God in the Declaration:

They begin by appealing to the “Supreme Judge of the World.” This paragraph includes two more references to God: “Supreme Judge of the World” at the beginning of the paragraph, and He’s “Divine Providence” at the end. Right? This document has references to God as the three forms of government. You recall, He’s “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; He’s the lawmaker. He’s the “Creator”—endows us with rights; He’s the executive. And now He’s the “Supreme Judge.” So He’s all three branches of the government—and He’s “Divine Providence.”

screen shot from Lecture 2

In lecture 2 of the Introduction to the Constitution course, Larry Arnn also refers to these references to God identifying the three branches of government. And then he points out that the king:

has interfered with the legislature and the judges. He’s suspended the legislature. He has removed judges. He has interfered with the trial by jury. The king is trying to be all three branches. But the person who can be trusted to be all three branches is actually named in the document. Only God….

He [Jefferson] might need an authority like that, if he’s declaring a rebellion, because the source of the law up till that moment had been the king and parliament. And they’re saying, “No more.” So king and parliament have not passed a law that says you can cut off from us whenever you want to. If they had, they could have used their authority. But they were saying, “No.” So they needed some higher authority: Laws of Nature.

The revolutionaries weren’t lawless anarchists. The Declaration of Independence isn’t a rebellion against laws; it is a rebellion against lawlessness, and a movement toward laws.

In his book The Founder’s Key, Larry Arnn  chapter 3, "Divorce The Declaration and the Constitution Estranged?" Dr. Arnn notes that others have claimed that the declaration is a rebellion against laws—and that’s opposite to the Constitution. But Dr. Arnn says they aren’t actually opposites, except in purpose:

Notice it says that this is a right of “the People,” the group entitled in nature to a certain standing. This group may indeed throw off the government if it pleases. What then is it to do? Jefferson continues that the next step is to “institute new Government.” The institution of new government is parallel in grammar, in meaning, and in priority to the right to throw off government. If it is natural for a people to rebel against a bad government, it is also natural for a people to establish a new one that is good.

As important as The Declaration is in the history of the world, the actual severing of ties was put before the Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, nearly a month earlier.

Neither Thomas Jefferson nor John Adams were the ones to bring the question of independence into the open—beyond tavern conversations. Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, was the one to do that. He made the proposal on June 7, 1776. But there weren’t the votes to accomplish passing the proposal at that point. So John Adams got to work persuading people toward that.

Lee’s proposal to dissolve allegiance with Great Britain was, for him and all those participating, high treason. The men who acted on the proposal risked execution. But that list of grievances was mounting—and there was a war already underway in which the British crown was firing upon its citizens, rather than protecting them.

Being such a serious proposal, the delegates were given three weeks to consult with and get directions from home, and, according to David J. Shestokas in Creating the Declaration of Independence, time for “a committee to draft a declaration to be issued in the event the independence resolution were adopted.

Among Adams’ efforts was recruiting Thomas Jefferson to do the writing. It was partly that he wanted a more junior legislator to do it, so he could keep doing other things. And partly he wanted someone from the southern colonies to make the proposal—so that it wasn’t seen as a Massachusetts problem, where most of the fighting was taking place. And it was partly because Jefferson really was the best man to do the writing.

Jefferson had written an essay two years earlier called “A Summary View of the Rights of British North America.” Lee used ideas from that. He was a better speaker; Jefferson was a better writer.

The Declaration was without precedent. Some of the concepts had come up before. Jefferson considered them all, one after another, as he went about writing The Declaration. There were patterns he found among the historical documents. The others did include lists of grievances. And Jefferson would use that. As Shestokas describes it,

It was clear that for the world audience to understand, Jefferson would need to list the king’s crimes and how by those crimes the king no longer had the right to rule.

Matthew Spalding, in the Hillsdale Dialogue, talks about the structure of the Declaration, in a lawyer’s terms:

You’re a lawyer so you’ll appreciate this. Think of it as the common law doctrine. There’s a preamble. There’s a statement of principle. Indictment. And now they’re driving towards a conclusion. Every stage of this, “we’ve been humble in our terms. We’ve been answered only by repeated injury.” There was an olive branch petition right before this. And the king has put out a royal proclamation of rebellion, treating them like traitors, wanting to bring them to justice. The break has been made. This is their conclusion.

So The Declaration builds a case for legitimacy among the world’s nations. As Hugh Hewitt puts it, “a recipe for how to go about establishing legitimacy in revolution.” That long list of grievances has a particular purpose.

Larry Arnn, in The Founder’s Key, says this about the “long middle section, which is generally ignored today”:

It was not ignored at the time, however, because this section contains the charges against the king and Parliament that give specific justification for the act of revolution. This part puts the responsibility directly on the British government. It builds a case against that government, specifically, in one of the monumental controversies in all history. At stake is the loyalty of a whole people to the king. And at stake is the vast land upon which they live, at that time still unknown in extent, but the prize possession of one of the greatest empires in the entire human story....

The charges against the king name the specific practical ground upon which all this is to be taken from him.

Jefferson brings this point forward when, after the list, he says,

“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

The ruler has been a tyrant. A free people must act to end the oppression. America is the particular example of the general principle.

The vote on Lee’s proposal actually took place on July 2^nd, and some predicted that would be the celebrated day of independence. But the signing actually took place on July 4^th, so that’s what now gets our attention.

And it deserves our attention, 241 years later. Any freedom that exists in the world today owes its thanks to those daring enough to sign The Declaration. That’s worth celebrating.

As a bonus, here are some musical friends of mine singing "The Star-Spangled Banner": 

Political Philosophy

Politics is about power. It’s about influence and ruling, or controlling the lives of other people. It’s often an ugly thing.

Political philosophy is something else. Something beautiful and transcendent by comparison. While there are relationships between the two, they are not the same thing.

This blog—and the whole Spherical Model concept—is political philosophy.

Political philosophy deals with abstract ideas: life, liberty, property, necessity of government, necessary limits to government.

Politics deals with making deals, promises, compromises, and threats to get power and maintain power. In and of itself, it has little virtue. However, as long as we are left with no options but human beings to fill positions of government, politics will be in play.

Politics shows up everywhere—anywhere there is a hierarchy. Maybe anywhere there is an opportunity to use influence to get rules in place that are an advantage to one person/group or another. That’s why we have the term “office politics.” Supporting a person you think might do things the way you prefer in a job is similar to supporting a person who might do things the way you prefer for elected office.

There’s a video lesson in politics, by CGP Grey, that explains this pretty well. He lists these three “Rules for Rulers”:

1.       Get the key supporters on your side (mainly the ones who do the work of policing, building, or managing the money).

2.       Control the treasure (in order to keep the key supporters on your side).

a.       Every penny spent on citizens is money not spent on loyalty, so

3.       Minimize key supports.

a.       Keys necessary to gain power are not the same as those necessary to keep it, so there will be some purging of the pre-power supporters and some maintaining of the previous regime’s supporters.

He goes through these steps first for dictators, and then for representatives, in a democracy. Either way, he says, these same steps apply. And there’s this sad commentary:

Or you could take the moral path and ignore the big keys. But you’ll fight against those who didn’t. Good luck with that. Corruption is not some kind of petty crime, but rather a tool of power in democracies and dictatorships.

For someone who values the higher ideas, and makes decisions based on principles, I’m not willing to submit to being ruled by someone who is corrupt just because that is how the power mongering game is played.

This is politics, or possibly political science. It’s the question of how to get and maintain power—as if that is the end in itself.

Political philosophy (sometimes called political theory), on the other hand, is about why anyone should have power, and why power should be limited to the absolute necessities of protecting life, liberty, and property. As with other branches of philosophy, there are differing ideas. Some of them are false. Communism, for example, is a philosophy, but it does not do what it claims: equalize, provide, or protect; it is simply a lying cover for power mongers.

Liberty Bell replica at Union Station
in Washington, DC

A philosophy is more likely to be true if it is comprehensive of all life, all of society, and recognizes what is naturally true among civilized people. If you have the natural power to do something—like own property, or protect your own life—then you can delegate that power to a government entity for the benefit of all. But since you don’t have the right to take property from one neighbor and give it to another, you don’t have the power to delegate that power to government.

At the Spherical Model, I believe we’re on track with truth, because of our good company: the American founders.

This past Friday the radio discussion between Hugh Hewitt*and Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn was about the Declaration of Independence. I may come back to the whole broadcast closer to the 4^th of July, but they referred to the Declaration as a document that is both philosophic and legal. Here’s part of the discussion:

HH: So why is the document (Declaration of Independence), which is an act of state, actually, also an act of political theory?

LA: So, it’s unique, being both those things. Last night at an event here in Georgia, where I am, I introduced the great David McCullough, who’s written beautifully about that. And I—I really love that guy. And he made the point, which John Adams (about whom he’s written a beautiful biography) made first, and that is: we’re going to have a birthday in this country.

Just think for a minute. When was England born? When was France born? You know, it’s lost back in the mists of time when there was a day there was a France and there was a day before when there wasn’t one. But what is that day? And so, we have a birthday, and we have reasons to have the nation. And they’re listed out. It is a formal enactment that makes the country. And some people don’t like that, but there it stands.

Because of the nature of the case, when you think about that for just a second, on what authority would you found a country? What kind of authority would you need? Because, at the moment of the founding, you don’t have any laws.

HH: Correct.

LA: So where do you get them? And they get them, in one of the most famous phrases in all of political history, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

HH: And we’re going to read that preamble in just a second, but I want to set up a little bit. You mentioned David McCullough. One of his many great books is simply titled 1776. I used to make my law students read it, because they don’t realize what a close run a thing 1776 was. This was not an exercise in a debating society; it wasn’t a congressional shutdown like the Democrats are going to force next week. It isn’t a legislative act. It’s actually a revolutionary act, which also makes it quite different from anything else in our history.

LA: Well, there’s a body count piling up. And so, you know, George Washington has an army in the field. And 1776 was a bitter and difficult year, and only the Declaration of Independence in that year and the Battle of Princeton and Trenton at the end of the year provided any bright spots at all.

And so, these guys, in there, who at the end of the Declaration make their personal pledge of their fortunes, lives, and sacred honor—they have reason to have fear for their lives. A writ has been issued by the commanding general of the British forces in North America for their arrest. Their names are on a list, and if they are found, the charge will be, probably, treason, and they’ll probably be exported to England to face trial for their lives. They all know that…..

LA: The king gave two answers to [the Declaration]. He gave an address from the throne later in the year in which he addressed this situation created by the Declaration of Independence, and refuted many of its main points. And that was wholly ineffective.

Later in the year General Washington’s forces had sieged the British forces in Boston, which were succored by their navy in the harbor, and they’ve got guns up on top, which were captured from Ft. Ticonderoga, and Washington’s army, while the siege was underway, was melting, because their enlistments were up.

And then the king caused his answer to the Declaration of Independence, in his address from the throne, to be distributed across the line, thinking, “This will tell them that I’m their kindly monarch, and they have to do what I say, but I’m going to take care of them,” which is the burden of his argument. And everybody read that, and then the re-enlistments just zoomed. They thought, “Oh, this is what this guy thinks.” So that’s a proof that the army agreed with the Declaration of Independence. That means it’s a philosophic document, but it’s also a war proclamation.

on the 

The philosophy in that document includes beautiful phrases like,

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed….

This is a historical breakthrough in political theory, or philosophy. The king, they say, doesn’t have an inborn right to rule over them; he is a man, and all men are created equal. And he has no right to take away their God-given rights. Their rights, they are claiming, come from God, not from a monarch who can grant them or take them at his whim.

These are not the usual words of ragtag armies. They are the words of well-educated people of principle.

Their questions are totally different from, “Is this king benevolent enough that we can tolerate his rule over us?” or “Should we revolt because we think we can get better roads or better police if we stage a coup and start anew?” The questions are not pedestrian. They aren’t “who will give us the most stuff” types of questions. They are transcendent, and exemplary for the rest of humanity.

I find political philosophy more valuable and more interesting that politics. There are others who do political discussion well enough. So, while there are occasions when we discuss here the issues in the news, of the current political campaigns, those tend to come up as examples of how the philosophical principles might be playing out in our current affairs.

In terms of the Spherical Model, it’s not very fruitful to discuss which government leader should have power to rule over us in the tyranny zone; we don’t want to be in the tyranny zone. We want to move up to freedom zone, where we can also enjoy prosperity and civilization. We can only do that by following true principles instead of flawed people.

____________________________________

* Hugh Hewitt's archives require a subscription, so the link might not work. The discussions between Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Larry Arnn are eventually archived on the Hillsdale College, but that takes about a week. So, while this one isn't up yet, it will soon be available here without a subscription.

Compassion vs. Self-Preservation

Syrian refugees are being brought into the United States. A first group of arrivals were placed in Louisiana earlier this week. The president says we should simply trust him. But since there is almost nothing in which he has earned our trust, that will not do.

Add to the decision the knowledge that five Syrians jihadists were just apprehended in Honduras, with false Greek passports,, on their way to America. Plus three were three more apprehended in St. Maarten, on their way to the US. Plus there were eight more apprehended (turned themselves in?) in Laredo, TX, on their way into the US. All just this week. We can enumerate those apprehended, but we don’t know how many weren’t caught.

5 Syrian men escorted by Honduran police Nov. 18
photo from Reuters

I listened to a discussion about the Syrian refugee question on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday evening. His guest was Professor John Eastman, Fowler School of Law, Chapman University, Dean Emeritus. Hewitt refers to him as one of The Smart Guys, but the other one wasn’t available that day. The short conversation covers several of the important questions about the refugees. So I’ll follow up on a couple of points after the transcript (starts 25 minutes in during hour 2):

HH: John, earlier today five Syrians were arrested in Honduras carrying Syrian passports. They were on their way to the United States. Earlier today, ISIS released a video of New York that had been made since the French attacks, featuring new video of al-Alam showing pictures of New York—maybe they were file photos, maybe they’re not—threatening explosions. I think maybe the country’s position is going to change a little bit on metadata collection. What do you think?

JE: Well, I think so. And also some very serious federalism questions on whether the states just have to accept whatever the federal government imposes on them in the way of immigration. I think we’ve got a real eye-opening window about to open up here.

HH: Now, let’s talk about what Speaker Ryan said today. “We have no religious test; we have a security test.” They are drafting a law that will go to the Senate, and they expect to pass it before they leave on Thanksgiving vacation, because they want this vetting that the president promised via a tweet, but no one believes is going on. Do you believe it’s going on?

JE: Well, I don’t believe it’s going on; I don’t believe they’re capable of it going on. Let’s talk about the Syrian refugees for a moment. The federal law allowing the president to vet and designate who can receive refugee status requires that we engage in an investigation, a vetting, to make sure we’re not bringing in terrorists and also people with communicable diseases and other threats to our security and to our health and safety in this country.

There is no ability for the president or any of his minions in the executive branch to conduct that kind of vetting process with respect to a regime that is in the middle of a perpetual state of war. And we do not have the capability to check even if these are convicted felons from their own country. You can’t exactly pick up the phone and ask al-Assad, “Hey, is this a good guy or a bad guy that we’re about to admit into the United States?”

And that means the statutory requirements cannot be met. And therefore by law the president can’t be designating these folks as refugees.

HH: That’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard that. And by the way, if they caught five in Honduras, how many do you think they didn’t catch?

JE: Well, Honduras… I don’t know what you figure. One out of a hundred we catch? One out of a thousand? Who knows?

Let me go back to the question on religion, though, because we do have a religious test, and Speaker Ryan’s not quite right about this. It’s not the kind of, we’re only going to allow certain religions and not other religions—that’s not what the test is. But the requirement for asylum and the requirement for refugee status is not just that you be fleeing a war torn country; everybody, of course, would like to flee that. The requirement, the statutory requirement that is binding on the president is that you have to be seeking asylum or refugee status because of persecution or a well-grounded fear of persecution based on your religion or ethnic heritage or what have you. And if you don’t meet that criteria, then you are not eligible for asylum or refugee status under the law.

HH: So asylum actually comes to the Yazidis and the Assyrian Christians pretty easily, since the alternative is staying there and losing their heads.

JE: That’s right. And it’s because of their religion that they would lose their heads if they stay there. Not true for a lot of people just fleeing because they don’t want to be in the war area. And so our law is very clear. And the Supreme Court has routinely recognized that the plenary power to describe, to define that stuff, that legal requirement, is vested in Congress, and the president cannot ignore those statutory requirements….

HH: John, in light of the ISIS video threatening New York, released today, in light of the five Syrians arrested in Honduras carrying false Greek passports, listen to what the president said yesterday in the Philippines:

(audio of Obama): These are the same folks oftentimes who suggest that they’re so tough that, uh, just talking to Putin or staring down ISIL or using some additional rhetoric somehow is gonna solve the problems out there. But apparently they’re scared of widows and orphans coming in to the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion. Now first they were more afraid about the press bein’ too tough on ‘em during debates. Now they’re worried about three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t sound very tough to me. They’ve been playing on fear in order to score political points, or to advance, uh, their campaigns. Uh, and it’s irresponsible. And it’s contrary to who we are. And it needs to stop, because the world is watching.

HH: So, John Eastman, the president is petulant, childish, and dictatorial, telling people it needs to stop. I mean… I’ll just give you the last minute and a half to respond to that.

JE: It’s astounding to me. We’ve got evidence across the world of people coming in, masquerading as refugees in order to commit acts of terror against our civilian population. The president’s first job is not to be compassionate to anybody he feels he would like to be; his first job is to protect the security of the American people, particularly on our homeland. And if folks are masquerading as refugees, then we darn well better start questioning refugees to make sure we’re not letting potential jihadist terrorists into this country. And in fact, the federal statutes require that he engage in that.

And so, this is not about wanting to be discompassionate to widows and orphans. I mean, that’s just demagoguery by the president of the United States. And we ought to quit tolerating this guy’s demagoguery. The federal statute requires them to vet potential refugees, to make sure that we are not letting in people who pose a threat to the United States—a health threat, a physical threat, a jihadist threat. And we know particularly from the Paris attacks that these folks can pose a jihadist threat. And we have no ability currently in place to vet who these people are. And the kind of wholesale importation of 10,000 from Syria, and 100,000 refugees total without any vetting process in place is unbelievably foolish. And it’s kind of a disregard of the most fundamental duties of the president of the United States.

Earlier in the program, Hewitt had a caller ask the question: If they’re supposedly vetting already, then how many are being turned away, and where are they ending up? I think the assumption behind that question is that we can pretty well disregard the president’s claim that they are carefully vetting; they’re not.

Syrian refugees arriving in Louisiana, 70% males of military age,
not widows and 3-year-olds as the president claims,
photo from here

This shouldn’t be a partisan question. Anyone who loves America and has enough awareness to see what just happened in Paris ought to be wary about allowing Muslim refugees fleeing ISIS into the US. Add to that the law that must be followed (by a law-abiding president) concerning granting refugee status.

There are ways to vet Syrian Christians. And it is evident they are being persecuted because of their religion, and their lives are in danger. So then the next hurdle is whether there is a health risk, which probably could be managed with a relatively short quarantine prior to bringing them here. There's still the question of using taxpayer dollars to relocate and support these individuals.

And there is still the question of whether transporting them halfway around the world is the only, or even the best, option. It might be for some of them. For most Syrians, bringing them here acts on an assumption that they will never be able to live in their homeland again, that ISIS has permanently won that land. That's pretty defeatist.

Other options include finding safe zones for them in nearby Middle Eastern countries, where they fit culturally and religiously. That acknowledges the possibility that the enemy radicals can be vanquished, and that the refugees have hope they can eventually move back home.

The president's accusation that anyone who disagrees with his wholesale importation of unvetted Syrians means we are hypocritically un-Christian is completely wrong.

What is more likely behavior for truly charitable people: find (or found) organizations[i] to assure people fleeing their war torn home country have shelter, food, clothing, and healthcare? Or expect their government to confiscate their tax money at a rate of about $16,000 (followed by  per refugee to uproot them and transport them to our country, with all its cultural differences?

Charitable people wouldn’t necessarily bring them here. Maybe a few, select persons who qualify for refugee status and have a strong desire to become Americans rather than return to their native home.

So why does the president—against the advice of his military and security leaders—insist on spending big money and foisting large numbers of foreigners on us, foreigners that would much rather be among majority Muslims living in the Middle East than in overwhelmingly Christian America? And why do people in his party almost exclusively ignore our safety and suddenly insist on “charity” to these people—while they have been ignoring the elimination of Christians in the area up until now? And why are they so “charitable” that they insist we give up our safety for it?

I assume it is the same answer as always: this president has a political agenda that has to do with transforming America away from freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Blindness must explain why he has followers.

Today the House voted on a bill to call for a pause in the importation of Syrian refugees. The vote was 289-137, which included around 50 Democrats who are awake enough to see the danger. There’s still the challenge of getting through the Senate and overcoming a veto.

I have an idealistic, unrealistic suggestion, to deal with the gap between what the president says is a thorough vetting process and what we assume is a mostly porous process. I suggest that the president stake his life on his vetting process. 

We want to be assured that no radical Islamists will come in among any Syrian or Iraqi refugees. The president could be held responsible if any radical Islamists make their way in. If it turns out that if even a single radical jihadist is found in our country because of being disguised as a refugee, the Obama, along with possibly some higher up minions, spends the rest of his life in prison. If it happens that a radical jihadist who got here by way of being a refugee participates in a terrorist attack in our country—regardless of size of the attack or extent of the damage—the president is subject to immediate capital punishment.

That would make more sense than having the president risk our lives, safety, and security, and saying, “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Let the risk and responsibility actually be his.

Or he could simply go along with Congress and all sensible people and stop inviting them.

---

[i] Here are two such organizations: LDS Charities, video of ongoing help here; The Nazarene Fund, a project of Mercury One (Glenn Beck’s organization). If I understand correctly, both of these organizations put 100% of your donations toward relief; they handle overhead with completely separated funding sources.

Supreme Disservice

Monday, October 6, 2014, goes down in history as a great sin of omission—a moment when something could have been done for the sake of civilization, and it wasn’t done.

This is part of the problem of getting ourselves into the position of trusting nine unelected lifetime appointees to determine what is law. That’s not how the writers of our Constitution set things up; that’s the result of corruption. But, since they have that power, failure to use it for good can be a significant failure.

 

The Supreme Court is more or less free to take up any case that works its way up to the SCOTUS level of appeal, or to not take up a case for any reason. In general, when they take up a case, it can be with the purpose of defining a point of dispute in the US Constitution.

In a piece at Breitbart, Senator Ted Cruz describes what was happening:

The Supreme Court is, de facto, applying an extremely broad interpretation to the 14th Amendment without saying a word—an action that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. [It is] beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage, but that is what the Supreme Court is implying today.

The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment…. Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts.

The 14^th Amendment is longer than I want to quote entirely here. Its purpose was to make sure freed slaves, nor any other citizen, did not have their citizenship rights abridged. The salient part reads:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

There is nothing in there saying, “no state shall define marriage in a way that meets with disapproval in some circles in 2014.” A marriage is a contract. In contracts, terms are defined. The US DOMA law, recently struck down, was simply the federal government defining the term for use in federal contracts; it was struck down, because, according to Justice Kennedy, states should retain the right to define that term for themselves.

Many states have gone out of their way to define the term marriage as a contract between one man and one woman, including placing the definition in their state constitutions (Texas did this in 2005 with an overwhelming majority of about 78%). There is nothing in the definition that prevents any citizens or group of citizens from taking part in such a contract. Any homosexual person who chooses (and some do) can marry a person of the opposite sex and enjoy all the benefits of that contract, including bearing and raising offspring.

The current rulings at issue claim that the very definition of marriage discriminates and therefore cannot be allowed. Circuit court judges have wiped out the sovereignty of a dozen states, not based on law, not based on SCOTUS precedent, but simply based on their misconstruing the 14^th Amendment.

These are political (politically correct?) decisions, not law-based decisions. We need an authority to put a stop to them.

If SCOTUS had chosen to add these cases to this year’s case list, it would have left the cases in dispute, and marriage licenses would not be issued to people who did not qualify for them. With the failure to take on the cases, it means, until further notice, the most recent rulings stand—forcing the states in question to start issuing licenses to same-sex couples—or any other couple (or other multiple) that hasn’t heretofore been granted a marriage license because of not meeting the definition of the term in the contract. If states are not allowed to define the term of this contract, all comers, married already or not, close relatives or not, same or opposite sex or more than one of any such combination, must be allowed—because the circuit courts have ruled that states are not allowed to define the term since it might be construed to be discrimination.

It’s a chaotic mess.

Meanwhile, other cases are pending in other circuit courts—which indications seem to show will be logically ruled based on law, rather than on judicial whim. Then there will be a hodgepodge of licensing requirements, depending on which judge said what to which state.

Eventually the Supreme Court will have to take up the issue. Then there will eventually (assuming sanity on the final ruling) be a nullification of licenses granted from this point until the ruling shows such licenses to be invalid.

One of the best discussions I heard was on Hugh Hewitt’sWednesday show, third hour, with John Eastman, President of National Organization for Marriage, and one of Hewitt’s go-to law specialists. You can only get to the archive with subscription, so I’m providing a chunk of the transcript below. Their discussion doesn’t provide a solution, but I still found it enlightening. (HH is radio host Hugh Hewitt, and JE is John Eastman.)

HH: John, how do you read everything that has happened in the marriage cases in the last 24 hours?

JE: Yeah, we’ll extend it to 72 hours, to Monday morning, which I think we must. It’s just utter chaos. And I am deeply disappointed in the institution of the Supreme Court, for the chaos that is now following in the wake of their non-decision of Monday morning. What they had pending before them was seven different circuit decisions, in cases coming out of five different states, three different circuit court of appeals, with both sides of the cases urging the Supreme Court to take the issue and settle once and for all whether the Constitution mandates that the states redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships. The Court denied cert in all of those, and that left the lower court decisions in place. And in many of those states—Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin—marriage licenses began issuing immediately. But the Court hasn’t settled this, so there’s still pending litigation in the 8th Circuit, and the 5th Circuit down in Texas and Louisiana, and the 11th Circuit, and most imminently in the 6th Circuit cases out of Ohio and Kentucky and Tennessee and Michigan.

We expect the 6th Circuit is going to uphold those state’s laws, and I think the Court will have to take this up at that point, because there will be a very important circuit split on a fundamentally important Constitutional issue. And the chaos that has happened in the meantime will have continued for no reason.

HH: What do you make of Justice Kennedy enjoining Idaho from issuing licenses, but subsequently today apparently clearing the way for Nevada to do so?

JE: So, what happened yesterday was the 9th Circuit issued its decision, and it had pending before it cases in Idaho and Nevada. It also had a case out of Hawaii, and we haven’t heard what they’re going to do with that one yet. But it consolidated the Idaho and Nevada cases into a single order. And then Judge Reinhart issued the mandate immediately, rather than pursuing the normal procedure, which is to allow the parties an opportunity to petition for rehearing on bond or to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. And so Idaho’s governor filed an emergency application for a stay about 3:00 in the morning, because marriage licenses were ordered to start issuing at 10 AM this morning. And Justice Kennedy granted that stay. The caption on the case was the consolidated caption, which had Idaho and Nevada, and so the stay applied to both cases. But then Justice Kennedy, a few hours ago, clarified that, no, it was only in Idaho, because it was only Idaho that asked for a stay. The Nevada governor has apparently decided to throw in the towel. Now, about 30 minutes ago one of the other parties in that Nevada case filed an emergency application for stay with Justice Kennedy, and I don’t think we have word on that one yet.

HH: Now, your interpretation, John Eastman, of why the Court did what it did? I have my own. People understand me to believe that they are waiting for the split to develop, and that they did not want to grant cert prematurely to having a split. Others have a more sinister view, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg view, that it’s better not to have a replay of Roe and just allow this to be nullified. The voters’ wishes nullified by circuit judges instead of Supreme Court Justices. What do you think?

JE:  I tend to side on the cynical view. And there are several versions of the cynical view, but that’s, I think, the most prominent of them. The problem with waiting for the circuit split theory is, if all of the lower courts had upheld the state constitutional provisions at issue, then you would wait for a circuit split. If no court is going to strike down a state constitutional provision, there’s no reason that the Supreme Court needs to weigh in. But when you’re talking about the lower courts striking down very significant provisions of the state constitutions recently adopted by overwhelming majorities of the citizens of those states, you don’t normally wait for a circuit split. That is such a threat to the state sovereignty by itself that it warrants Supreme Court review. But the Court on Monday decided not to bother, and to let the dust settle as it may.

HH: Best case scenario, in your view?

JE: Best case scenario is a 6th Circuit with a very strong opinion from Judge Sutton reminds the Court of a couple of things: that this is a state issue—Justice Kennedy told us that in the DOMA case just two years ago—and the federal courts have no business being involved in it. And that circuit split, then, is ground for the Supreme Court to take it up and affirm the 6th Circuit’s well-reasoned opinion. That’s the best case scenario….

HH: John, as I was going to break, I cannot tell you how cynical I am about the courts now. And I tell my students, it’s a game. It’s just a political game, because no one can reason the way these courts did on marriage. No one can say North Carolina didn’t know what they were doing, or that the law changed, that the 14th amendment embraced…. It’s just a joke. It’s about politics. The Supreme Court could rescue us from that. And the only way to do that, though, is, they some people to come over the hill with some opinions. And they’re just not there. So I do understand reticence of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas to do this without anyone on their side.

JE: It’s a good theory, but here’s why I disagree with you. There are very strong, well-reasoned opinions in dissent in the 10th Circuit cases by Paul Kelly, judge out of New Mexico, and in a 4th Circuit case out of Virginia by Paul Neimeyer. They’re thorough. They’re well reasoned. They take account of existing Supreme Court precedent. They deal head on with Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court in Windsor, the DOMA case, and point out why, on Justice Kennedy’s own terms in that decision, it doesn’t invalidate state laws. And they’re thorough. So if that’s what they’re waiting for, they already had it, albeit in dissent.

HH: But in dissent.

JE: That’s right. But they could have held onto these cases. They know that the 6th Circuit decision is coming soon. They’ve been following news accounts that everybody expects the 6th Circuit to uphold the Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan marriage laws, which are identical to the other ones….

In the meantime, you’ve got this utter chaos. You know, what are you going to do? Are you going to unravel…? You’ve got judges now in Utah taking these decisions, and now saying that Utah’s statues on polygamy are invalid. Because if this is just a fundamental right to marry whomever you want under whatever circumstances, which is the way these cases have been portrayed, why should I have….

HH: That’s why they have to deal with it eventually, which is why you might want to…. I remember that Churchill kept urging Eisenhower to invade Europe in ’42 and in ’43, and Ike just kept saying, “Wait. Wait. Not ready yet.” So am I persuading you to be less cynical?

JE: No. I’m still cynical. Because they took the Proposition 8 case from California without a circuit split. So they obviously thought it was important there.

I wouldn’t want a premature wrong ruling, which would essentially kill marriage, as has happened in Scandinavia. I want the right ruling, and I don’t know, politically, what must happen to get that. I prefer to read the Constitution, understand it, follow it. That’s what SCOTUS is supposed to do. I pray things work out well in the end. But in the meantime, the propaganda war that is taking away our freedoms, our state sovereignty, and the family as the basic unit of civilization is getting a lot of loud media, while the good guys are intolerantly called intolerant.

Case Studies on the Sphere

The Supreme Court decisions have kept me thinking. We could avoid the knife-edge possibility of catastrophe for our civil society by following the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization. So I thought I’d take a look at the collection of cases related to religious freedom and the Obamacare mandate. We’ll start with a quick review of the principles required for being north on the Spherical Model, mainly in relation to federal government. 

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 5^th, 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.