NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
Today's NYT features a ponderous defense of the HHS contraception/abortifacient mandate by Dorothy Samuels, a member of the Times editorial board and former ACLU lawyer. If this is the best the Left can do, it is pathetic indeed.
Samuels basic assertion is that those who oppose the mandate have no "right to impose their religious views on millions of Americans who do not share them." Hang on a minute. Those of us who say that the government should not force religious institutions to violate their core principles are somehow trying to impose our views on others? Presumably, every failure to subsidize a lifestyle choice amounts to an infringement of liberty.
Discussing the First Amendment, Samuels says that "the nation's founders were seeking a protective balance, one that gave wide berth to religious belief, but drew a line at government entanglement with religion or favoring one faith over another." Invoking the Founding Fathers is obviously a shrewd move: a moment's thought will tell you that Madison would be appalled at the thought of individuals having to pay for morning-after pills with their own dough.
Anyway: "a wide berth to religious belief." That's how the Left likes to describe the First Amendment -- the president refers to "freedom of worship." But that's not what the First Amendment says. It says "free exercise" -- to exercise one's religion means the ability to act, or not act, according to the dictates of one's faith. In the liberal rewrite, you're free to "believe" or "worship" as you please, but if the State tells you to dispense Plan B, you'd better well hop to it. If that's what "free exercise" means, there could never be a conscientious objector in wartime.
Besides, you have to get far into the piece before Samuels concedes that the validity of the HHS mandate is to be determined under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which requires that any abridgement of free exercise must advance a "compelling" government interest and must be the "least restrictive means" of promoting that interest. To that, Samuels has a one-sentence ipse dixit: It clearly advances the government’s compelling interest in promoting women’s health and autonomy, and broad participation is the least restrictive way to carry out a complicated national health reform.
It's "complicated" you see (you neanderthals). It's all about "autonomy" -- women must have it, but religious institutions must not. Now I see what the "free exercise" clause is all about.
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Re: NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
I'm on board, your Highness!
Jun '10
Re: NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
I've never been a big fan of the ACLU. However, I do remember a time in which it at least maintained some sort of intellectual consistency in its protection of rights (defending, as I recall, the rights of American Nazis to have a protest parade).
Now they're just another left-wing legal group. They love free speech (just not for right-wingers or corporations), they don't like religion at all, and, well, what were the founders thinking with that 2nd amendment thing? They like the "rights" left-wingers like (including ones made up to support abortion-on-demand). Others written out in real words in the Constitution, not so much.
Aug '10
Re: NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
Adam Freedman
I'm on board, your Highness! · 6 hours ago
We are most pleased by your enthusiasm, loyal subject!
Mar '11
Re: NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
Israel P.: Be careful with that phrase "free exercise." Next thing you know, Obamacare will include free gym memberships. After all that is a First Amendment right. And we can't have everyone running around outside, unsupervised. · 13 hours ago
Edited 13 hours ago
An excellent point. Absolutely logical and entirely consistent with liberal values.
I am seldom surprised by the left anymore but this time I was blind-sided by this politicization of contraception. I was unaware that anyone who wanted contraception could not get it, and get it cheap. My eyes tell me contraceptives are being sold into a saturated market and consumers are confused by the variety of choices available to them. Imagine how this confusion will disappear when insurers are providing contraceptives, and doing it for "free".
I had not thought of contraception as being particularly liberal but, now that I am, I note that, like most liberal solutions, it exacerbates many of the problems it was supposed to solve.
I want to hear a Republican candidate declare that his personal beliefs on this matter are irrelevant because, unlike the Dems, he recognizes that some matters are none of the president's damned business.
Dec '11
Re: NYT: The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted A Contraception Mandate
One of my pet theories is a take off of Dinesh D'Souza's argument about inherited values: that socialism eats up the stored belief in democracy, and the longer you have a socialist movement the more blatantly oppressive it becomes.
Russia and China had no inherited democracy, so immediately turned totalitarian. Germany and Italy had some, so they formed fascism. Britain and the US have more, so the process takes a while.
My belief is that, after over 100 years the progressives have removed a good bit of the appreciation for democracy the US people had. Within a few years (less than two decades) it will be gone and someone will be elected dictator, and a few years later (less than five) there will be virtually no more elections in this country.