Good for them. The mandate was unwarranted, and unConstitutional on the face of it. Together with the earlier (unanimously defeated by the Supreme Court) effort to make the government the arbiter of who is and who is not a religious employee, these are strong indicators that the movers and shakers in DC want full sovereignty, with no other pesky institutions competing for loyalty.
I understand why statists (setting aside the power-hungry; bureaucrats and politicians tend to become addicted to power) want a society with a clear power center and no pesky independent institutions: there's no confusion, and the beneficent rule of law can be applied everywhere. But that presupposes that that "rule of law" is always benign, and that the state has the right to override other institutions at will, and not just in emergency.
For example, consider a religion that believes the sun won't rise unless there are human sacrifices. That's an emergency. Consider another that believes that white people are rebellious androids made by a black genius, and that won't let white people join. That's not an emergency by any stretch. Consider another that teaches that you have been invaded by alien parasites and need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on therapies. OK, that's pretty dubious (France and Germany agree, btw).
I don't think the statists are all that concerned with the smaller religions, or even the big ones (like Southern Baptists) that aren't that organized. But the Catholic church really gets up their nose.
Family loyalties aren't spelled out in statutes or canon laws, but what do you do without them? They can go too far, as when jurors refuse to convict someone of their tribe. But if you allow that the state has the right to spell out those limits, the state likewise has the right to modify them at will. And if the culture discourages them substantial fractions of our children are ill-raised. (Easily observed, btw)
The relationships between the various institutions in our society are not clearly defined. Though historically the state and religion and tribe were often united, they were not always, and certainly are not united in the United States now. I wonder how many of us remember what a terrifying horror an utterly sovereign state can be. Or the chaos of multiple tribes in conflict. We hear plenty about the dangers of religion(*)--disproportionate to the real situation here, though it is serious enough in places like Saudi controlled Arabia.
I wonder how united we can remain without some sort of philosophical consensus on what the limits to power are. The old agreement is still available if we want to try it again.
(*) I've argued before that statism is a variety of religion, but I leave that out here for brevity.
No comments:
Post a Comment