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A Few Thoughts on Indiana and Coercion
Conservatives are allergic to government coercion. This allergy informs all of our positions on public policy. It informs out position on religious freedom. The reason liberals can’t tell the difference between the promotion of liberty and promotion of “hate” all comes down to our differing views of coercion. For conservatives, political coercion is the original sin of authoritarian governments. For liberals, it is the glue that binds their entire moral identity.
Consider two pillars of the progressive left: Social Security and Obamacare. Would either of these programs survive even a month if they weren’t compulsory? Would any liberal program survive? And if this kind of coercion represents a social good, then it would not seem at all unethical to force a business owner into an involuntary transaction. Once you cross that line, “hate” is the only logical explanation for opposing their policies.
(Incidentally, I used to allowed for the possibility that the charge of “hate” is just an attempt to shut down debate by casting conservatives as unreasonable, but I have talked to enough liberals to know that they actually believe this stuff).
This is how a group of people convinces themselves that a law that allows free choice on all sides is like Jim Crow, but a law that limits choice and compels involuntary transactions is the opposite of Jim Crow. What is consistent then and now, is that the same party is pushing the coercion.
Published in General, Law, Politics
Fred, I’m using this comment to digress a bit here.
Just so you know that people hear you: Before I joined Ricochet, the war on drugs news stories and commentary were the last on my list for reading. Over the past year, having read many of your posts and comments that refer to it, my interest was piqued, and I’ve learned a lot. None of it good.
I watched a History Channel program on Netflix on the war on drugs a couple of weeks ago that included a segment on Fast and Furious.
It made me think that the American people need a war on its own government.
I was shocked at the number of people, for example, in our prisons around this country for simple marijuana possession. This has been particularly hard on blacks. Like the “you’re obstructing justice” laws, it has become a way to punish people you want to incarcerate but can’t find any other legitimate reason to do so.
The American people in embarking on the war on drugs had simple aims–they didn’t want drugs destroying people’s lives the way opium destroyed people in China and elsewhere. How that simple goal turned into our own government’s dealing drugs is beyond me.
Democrats often say that their liberal policies would work if we just did them right and funded them adequately. I look at the war on drugs and wonder if we’re doing the same thing. Perhaps the truth is that government, out of control and beyond the view of the people it works for, is as apt to fail and be corrupt as the people it is governing.
I remain in the camp of not wanting heroin in general distribution. But the only way to stop it–to regulate it–is not working and is causing more harm than good. Maybe. To tell you the truth, I’m still not sure what to think about the best way to keep heroin off the streets. What I do know is that our war on drugs hasn’t done a very good job in meeting that one small objective.
I’m not trying to start an argument. Just saying I’m understanding your point on this subject better these days.
Marina if you think gay marriage is what these laws of Religious Freedoms are about then I suspect you haven’t familiarized yourself with the issue any more than the media.
The genesis of these laws was to resolve a conflict involving truck drivers. It applies to government action and covers a variety of fact patterns.
For you to say it’s about Gays is as bad as the media saying it’s about Gays. You are as wrong as them.
So, I can definitely appreciate this.
But alcohol causes problems too. Alcohol ruins people. I’ve seen it. It ruins families. It harms children. It does all these horrible things. We tried banning it, and that was an utter failure, and the consequences were horrible.
I think we’re at that point with heroin. Heroin is kind of a corner case, because anybody who really wants to do it, probably already does. But it destroys lives, no doubt. But prohibiting it hasn’t made it go away, its made criminals out of people who need help, and its made it harder to for people to get help. Period.
Some people are going to do heroin. That’s just their nature. The thing is that in life, there are rarely perfect solutions to things. But experience has shown that generally, if people are free, things shake out better than when a government uses coercion to solve problems. Including heroin.
(Which, btw, if anyone cares, yeah, I’m 100% for legalizing.)
By the way, the part I highlighted — which seems to be at the center of your obsession/argument — totally false. Not one kernel of truth to it. Government hasn’t done anything to undermine the responsibilities of parents to their children, and in fact enforces them every day. When you are making up “facts” that bear no relation to reality, it’s a good sign your argument has taken a wrong turn.
And I don’t mind being called a bigot because I have no concern that anyone with even a passing familiarity with me could ever consider me one. Nor do I harbor a secret fear that I might be one.
I think the point, Fred, is that there’s good coercion, and bad coercion. Good coercion is the kind Merina likes.
I seriously don’t have time for a conversation on this today, but our premises are so different, there is not point in discussing it. I will say along with Marci, that we should revisit punishments for drug crimes. I don’t know if you’ve followed it, but my daughter Rachel has made prison reform one of her fields of inquiry. This is really a place where conservatives could promote both freedom and reform for a lot of people.
RFRA has also been used by native american tribes to fight government development of land they consider sacred, by devout Muslim inmates to affirm the right to maintain a beard that would otherwise be against prison regulations.
I didn’t call you a bigot. I don’t think you are one. I was saying what is now gospel on the left–approve of ARTs or you are a bigot.
Government saying what marriage and family is does undermine the expectation that parents will be responsible toward children. How responsible do you think people who participate in third party reproduction feel for the children they bring into the world?
As usual, Tommy, I have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m saying that you have a very limited understanding of coercion and how it works in society.
I see. Apologies. I misunderstood your comment.
I don’t want to mislead anyone here. My odyssey into the war on drugs is new and imperfect. I don’t have an opinion formed yet.
But: When I was watching the story on Netflix, it struck me that it was similar to our inane highway speeding laws. It became a cash cow for unscrupulous government agencies. They could care less whether Americans were killing themselves because they were driving too fast on the highways.
It was infuriating to see how corrupt the unwatched, unmonitored government could be.
I really wish I didn’t have to talk about ARTs, Cato, but I am convinced they are a disaster for children, who, no matter what anybody says, want to know their genetic parents. And I do think ARTs greatly weaken the expectation that people will raise and care for the children they bring into the world, with a government stamp of approval.
Once again you jumped from one subject — who’s allowed to marry — to any entirely different subject — what technologies will be permitted for non-sexual reproduction — as though there was more than the vaguest, wispiest most ephemeral link between the two. If you want to talk about ARTS, I’ll talk about ARTS. If you want to talk about gay marriage, I’ll talk about gay marriage. But I’m not going to pretend they’re one in the same, or that either inevitably follows from or leads to the other. They are two essentially unrelated phenomena that just happen to occasionally overlap in a very small number of cases.
The question I have taken to posing people who are raging against the Indiana RFRA i this: For what service that you refuse to provide me on conscience grounds can I have you thrown in prison or sent to compulsory re-education? Or, phrased differently: What can I demand the government force you- on threat of arrest- to do for me in the face of your refusal to do it?
I think that’s his point. RFRA — which is the type of statute they just passed in Indiana — mimics a federal RFRA statute. The federal statute was passed in response to a case about Native Americans using hallucinogenic peyote (an illegal drug) in religious ceremonies. It says nothing about same sex marriage, and neither does the Indiana statute. All the statute says is that courts should look very closely when a plaintiff makes the claim that a generally applicable statute — like a drug prohibition or an anti-discrimination law — is asserted to impose an excessive burden on religious belief or practice. That religious belief or practice need not (could, but need not) have anything to do with homosexuality or same sex marriage. Ask your live in Con Law professor to explain Smith v. Employment Division and the RFRA response to it. He will know what we’re talking about.
Oh, that’s easy. You can force a hotel to rent you a room, provided a) they have rooms to sell to the general public, b) you aren’t engaging in illegal conduct, and c) you can fulfill whatever payment requirements they request of the general public.
I’m not even sure I disagree with you about that. What I object to is that you keep jumping back and forth from same sex marriage to ARTS, as though they were somehow inextricably intertwined.
There is one and only one general area where liberals generally favor less coercion than conservatives. Specifically, if the issue in question is whether government coercion should be used to limit activities that have been traditionally considered subversive, unhealthy or immoral, liberals typically favor less coercion than conservatives. In all others areas, liberals favor more. The question is, what does this say about the nature of liberalism?
To be fair, (as I understand it) the Indiana RFRA contains specific updates on the original language to cover closely-held businesses (per Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius) and ensure that it can be used as a legal defense when the government isn’t one of the parties to the original suit (an attempt to contradict the Elane Photography decision). However, given that the Seventh Circuit (which covers Indiana) is one of the courts which has issued an Elane-like ruling on the limited nature of RFRA defenses, I don’t know if that language will stand up.
First of all, I’m not aware of any anti-discrimination law that imposes prison sentences. Second, with or without RFRA, there is no where in America where a hotel proprietor has carte blanche to decide who to rent to without fear of civil penalties for denying accomodation. The federal civil rights act has an anti-discrimination provision that applies to hotel accommodations.
I would love to see a public poll about how people feel about the following scenarios.
In each scenario, an individual is being offered pay to do work or perform a service:
1. A man goes to a job interview, is offered the job, only to find that his manager will be someone who is of a racial background that he doesn’t like. He changes his mind and declines the job.
2. A flower shop owner refuses to sell flowers to a man who walks into his shop because the customer is of a racial background he doesn’t like.
3. A caterer refuses to cater a wedding because it’s a wedding between people of a racial background he doesn’t like.
In which of these scenarios, if any, should the racist man be subject to some kind of coercive government penalty? Does your answer to this question change if it’s not racism, but a moral or religious objection to homosexuality, that is the issue? (In other words, the customers or manager in the above scenarios are gay).
If your answer is not the same for each scenario, why isn’t it? After all, in each scenario, someone is declining an offer of paid work.
It would also be interesting to see the differences in how liberals and conservatives answered each question.
Wow. Prison reform has been a subject of such vast concern to me over the course of my lifetime that I would say it is what drove me out of the Democratic Party, more than anything else. What hypocrites they turned out to be on this. They could care less about the people in our prisons. They have done nothing to address this in my lifetime.
And that’s exactly what is bothering me about the war on drugs. I can’t believe we are imprisoning people rather than getting them into treatment. It is a huge corrupt industry.
Interesting how lines of thought converge in a free society–what ultimately brings people together.
Agreed. And in general, I support a policy of public accommodation. However, there are exceptions; in fact I think those exceptions should be fairly broad.
On the other side of this, I am against “protected classes”. I understand that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow presented a unique situation, so I can understand how we can reluctantly and decide that we need(ed) something more in that case. However, the left has no reluctance; they are enthusiastic promoters of special pleading.
This is an opportunity to bring this argument back to the country. Let’s be bold and forthright in explaining why we should be reluctant to expand the special class and discrimination regime.
.Fred ColeLook, I don’t want to be a
Jerk here, but plenty of conservatives, especially here on Ricochet, are perfectly okay with government coercion.
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Fred, I’m certain you can be a jerk elsewhere.
Why isn’t there a rule of conduct that limits comments in one thread? I make my point and get out of Dodge knowing full well that what I said will be pilloried by other pseudo intellectuals giants. Sure, I forget something and want to clarify, or am tempted to engage in endless debate, but I’d rather take the hits; move on to another Post to my liking and make an obnoxious remark there.
Seriously though, proper decorum is not hogging a Post so that others are discouraged from commenting. It’s greedy and compulsive. By the time a potential poster, without an attitude, may have something to offer we’re on page 6 and it’s yesterdays newspaper.
One exception. I can see where a Claire Berlinski can freely excercize unrestricted Comment Powers, since she’s professionally equipped to cut through the individual minutia and steer conversations in a more substantive direction. Even so, I’d argue for a reasonable cut-off. If you can’t make your point in a couple comments, you ain’t got a point.
I realize the aforegoing is not on topic, but all the back and forth about governmental coercion got me thinking about speech limitations on non-governmental websites. But is coercion really the big point? To me, regardless of who’s right, why the hell is Pence and the Indiana republicans pushing this legislation for right now? This is why Republicans lose against slick Dem politicians. You could see the reaction coming. Stick your head in the noose first, and then debate the finer constitutional points of religious freedom. Then make your case to George Stephonopolis. Brilliant!
Expression of human sexual feelings has been the subject of religious morality teachings for a few thousand years. All human beings are sexual beings. It is within the right of any church to say one type of expression is good but another is not good.
The intersection of organized religion and the antidiscrimination laws is a busy one.
Does the Catholic Church have the right to bar women from the priesthood? Not according to the Civil Rights Act.
I think they are intertwined. For someone like me, and Merina, who believes that civil marriage is about regulating male/female sex and its consequences (imperfectly, yes) then there is a connection. Technology has churned up the sediment, though, and trying to see through the resulting murk has become difficult. ARTs allow circumvention of the process, and we’re far from settling on a new outlook concerning the rights and responsibilities of parents, kids, extra fetuses, incubators, dna donors, etc. I think it’s a stretch to say that marriage was never concerned with this overall outlook and strategy. Now that we’ve embarked on deconstruction, separating elements that were once unified (mostly out of biological necessity) it’s all in play and it’s all in play at the xact same time. Personally I don’t see how the connections can be completely severed without ill effect.
That is simply not accurate.
There are plenty of areas where conservative are more than willing to embrace coercion that have nothing to do with things that are “subversive, unhealthy or immoral.”
You’ve hit upon what I want to see happen now. We need to revisit the antidiscrimination laws. It should be an easy fix to allow churches the freedom to, for example, ordain whomever they wish. The old laws need to be fixed. They are not working.