The First Amendment isn’t enough.
Because its provisions have stronger teeth than most other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it gets put into service quite a lot, to bolster other freedoms. It’s a pity there’s no general “right to freedom” — or even “freedom of contract” — amendment.
A Western Pennsylvania Christian higher education outfit, Geneva College, joined by Seneca Hardware Lumber Co. in Cranberry, has sued the federal government over the new “Obamacare” requirement to provide morning-after “contraception” to employees, saying that the provision violates their religious freedom. The Justice Department argues that the case should be thrown out, on grounds that public entities like the college and the lumber company do not possess the legal right to “impose” their religious values on others.
As noted at reason.com, this is a weird misreading of the crucial negative right/positive right distinction: Under the “negative right” to freedom, an employer not providing a benefit to employees imposes nothing. Quite literally. The imposition lies entirely with the government forcing its way into contracts between businesses and employees.
One could construe a positive right to contraception, I guess, but that positive right would also be an imposition. “Imposition” belongs to the language of positive rights.
The government’s lawyers also object to the hardware company seeking sanctuary (so to speak) in the First Amendment to oppose the contraception mandate. If just anyone can appeal to the First Amendment’s freedom of religious exercise clause, then the government could hardly enforce conformity.
Well, yes.
That’s the idea of limited government. The problem, today, is that we citizens don’t have enough legal oomph to protect ourselves (either as employers or employees) from the federal government’s vast overreach.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “The First Isn’t Enough”
Since when is pregnancy an illness? It has always been my belief that the purpose of health insurance is to pay to treat (or perhaps to help prevent) illness, not to prevent a normal function of animal (or human) life.
Pregnancy can easily be prevented in many ways. I don’t know why I should have to pay for the indiscretions of others.
The Constitution was clearly intended to be a limitation on the ability of the new federal government’s ability to take all but certain enumerated rights from the citizens and the States.
Original intent is the only intellectually honest means of interpreting it.
The underlying problem is much, much greater than the forcing of persons and institutions to finance the “morning after” pill.
The overreach of the government is the evil which was sought to be prevented by the founders, and our failure to heed and follow their intent will be the actual cause of the Republic’s ultimate failure and collapse.
It was a great run.
Jefferson wrote his one single reference about the “separation of church and state” in a letter to the Danbury Baptist church. He was writing about protecting religion from the federal government, not about protecting government from religion. Jefferson supported religious freedom and worked with James Madison in 1786 to write the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which not only shut down official sanction of the Church of England but also prevented the state from compelling any citizen in religious activities. It blocked a plan to compel citizens to pay taxes that would then be used for any church activities.
What Jefferson was saying, that he had read from the Constitution, which had been written by his colleague of similar mind, Madison, is that the federal government has no authority to compell a church to do anything. It is separate and cannot compel a church to recognize and perform a gay “marriage” if it goes against the views of the church. And that the federal government is separate and is not authorized by the Constitution to force religious institutions to pay for abortions and birth control.
The religion being imposed by the federal (national) government is secualar humanism, a nihilistic cult that leads to death of the individual and the republic.
Jefferson got it. The Supremes didn’t. In fact, this is so far and away, so nearly the opposite of what the founders had written and allowed that one has to wonder why the question of disbarment has not been raised.
http://delendam.wordpress.com
Certain citizens have more than enough ‘legal oomph’ to impose their views on others — many seem to be atheists. They seem to have no problem prohibiting the rest of us from putting up manger scenes or even trees at Christmas time. They have managed to get the First Amendment interpreted to mean freedom FROM religion. Those who are active in their church are less likely to try to force their views on others.
More people than not don’t see the government as intrusive. They see it as helpful and beneficient. They are getting what they asked for: a government big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have.