Posted on 08/03/2018 8:25:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Why is it considered "liberal" to compel others to say or fund things they don't believe? That's a question raised by three Supreme Court decisions this year. And it's a puzzling development for those of us old enough to remember when liberals championed free speech -- even advocacy of sedition or sodomy -- and conservatives wanted government to restrain or limit it.
The three cases dealt with quite different issues.
In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, a 5-4 majority of the court overturned a California statute that required anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to inform clients where they could obtain free or inexpensive abortions -- something the centers regard as homicide.
The same 5-4 majority in a second case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, reversed a 41-year-old precedent and ruled that public employees don't have to pay unions fees that cover the cost of collective bargaining. Echoing a position taken by then-President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the court reasoned that collective bargaining with a public employer is inevitably a political matter, and that forcing employees to finance it is compelling them to subsidize political speech with which they disagree.
In the third case, Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court avoided a direct decision on whether a baker, whose Christian belief opposed same-sex marriage, could refuse to design a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, contrary to a state law that bars discrimination against gays. Seven justices ruled that the commission showed an impermissible animus against religion, but the four liberal justices endorsed a separate opinion indicating they'd rule against the baker otherwise.
Rational arguments can now be made for the dissenters' positions. In Becerra, they argued that the law simply prevented misleading advertising; in Janus, they argued that union members should pay for services rendered; in Masterpiece Bakery, they argued that selling a cake is a routine service, not a form of expression. You may not agree, but you can see why others might make these arguments.
But are they "liberal"? That word comes from a Latin root that means "free."
And "free" is the keyword in the First Amendment to the Constitution, which bars Congress from passing laws "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion or "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."
The Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence got its start almost exactly 100 years ago, in cases challenging laws passed by a Democratic Congress and endorsed by a Democratic administration, prohibiting opposition to the government and, specifically, American participation in World War I.
The justices hesitated to block such prosecutions, but those considered "liberal" -- Republican appointee Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Democratic appointee Justice Louis Brandeis -- were most likely to look askance. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to defend the free speech rights of everyone, even vile extremists.
Unhappily, the ACLU today subordinates free speech to other values, like defending the sensibilities of certain students on campuses. And other liberals have been moving in the same direction. It's less important for them that people say what they think and more important that they say what the government requires.
In his Bagehot blog, the Economist's Adrian Wooldridge describes the process. Historically, he says, liberals understood that conflict was inevitable and tried to foster freedom based on their distrust of power, faith in progress and belief in civic respect. But today, Wooldridge writes, "liberalism as a philosophy has been captured by a technocratic-managerial-cosmopolitan elite." They have moved from making "a critique of the existing power structure" to becoming "one of the most powerful elites in history." In response, we see "a revolt of the provinces against the city": Brexit, Donald Trump. In counter-response, as Niall Ferguson puts it in a column for The Times of London, "'liberals' are increasingly authoritarian."
Like the "liberal" Supreme Court justices, who don't see a constitutional problem with compelling crisis pregnancy centers to send messages they find repugnant, or requiring union members to subsidize political speech they disagree with, or forcing people to participate in ceremonies prohibited by their religion.
In the process, they are providing support for Friedrich Hayek's argument in "The Road to Serfdom" that moving toward socialism means moving toward authoritarianism. And they seem to not have noticed Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter's observation, as quoted in The Atlantic, that "every law is violent" because "Behind every exercise of law stands the sheriff."
Carter calls for "a degree of humility" in passing and enforcing laws that compel speech against conscience -- something today's "liberals" seem to have forgotten.
Liberalism stops being anything like liberality when it doesn’t allow any room for dissent and debate.
The left isn’t liberal.
It already doesn’t (it’s morphed into leftism, or shown its hole card, one or the other). It can’t defend its ideas, so it tries to suppress the opposition. Or even force the opposition to carry its message for it!
I’m trying to take a long historical view on how it got there.
Many Christian ideals read like what modern secular liberals SAY that they want, until we find out HOW they want to do it, which almost always comes with serious dollops of hypocrisy.
The only answer is for everybody, both left and right, to repent.
In recognizing the unreasoned fanaticism of our foe, we are better prepared to counter it, effectively.
“The only answer is for everybody, both left and right, to repent.”
Okay...so you’ve figured out that liberals have morphed into authoritarian leftists... so in this scenario, what exactly is it that you want people on the beleaguered right to repent of? Being the targets of the left?
I repent of my sins to God. Then I do my bit to oppose evil in the world, and the overwhelming evil of the present world comes from the left. The main reason is because they’re not content to just practice their evil themselves, they want to force the whole of society to be complicit in it.
It’s funny seeing Barone writing this article- he’s as Establishment as any character in the GOP can be, and he routinely dismisses the cultural and border concerns of the deplorables.
See my post #9. We are admonished in the Bible to oppose evil, even as we repent of our own sin. The left is evil, primarily because of its attempts to force the world to be complicit in its evil, and to call evil, good.
I suppose he’s having one of those “moments of clarity”. One hopes that it won’t pass.
Um... tying sin to one political party might reflect blindness.
God sometimes pronounced robust judgments over lack of liberality. See the book of Amos.
Government (non-theocratic) as its agent is a sad second best thing. Who ought to be championing liberality is churches. And the creep towards this falling under the government umbrella began with, among other things, the siren song of FDR calling for churches to back his new Social Security plan. Churches should have started to ask themselves “Hey! Why does this sound so good?” and should have answered “Because we fell down.”
If the people won’t praise, the stones will.
I agree with your post #9. But since we’ve constantly been fighting back against the left’s push to impose its values on us, I don’t see why HTR is making a moral equivalency.
Actually, “AFTER” we repent... remember the beam and the mote... we have to know about the kind of life that we are preaching before we can preach it. Logical, no?
Because the sin on the right is worse than it wants to think.
As a long time Michael Barone watcher, I can guarantee you that his moment of clarity will not last. He’s in the Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt mold.
I just don’t go there, I know that HTR tries to be fair or something, but I’m not God, I’m a person on the ground, on this earth, who has a say in this world and society, at least for now. There is no moral equivalency between the right and what the left is currently doing, which is to force the entire world to be complicit in their evil, and to turn evil and good into each other. There is no moral equivalency between people who oppose pedophilia, and a party which contains people who would legalize it yesterday if they could. There are individuals on both sides who commit heinous evil, but as groups, they are diametrically opposed, and politics is a word related to policy, which affects the whole society.
But you’re not God? That’s all the reason you should come closer to God.
I was practically forced towards God. Suddenly I saw the grace in His name that I should have been calling on copiously all the time. For both myself and for His enemies. But His enemies won’t take it on till they see that their religion is so much hogwallow.
Both left and right are virtually godless... the right might actually be more odious to God in one sense, having a form of religion but denying its power. Being proudly atheistic might be more honest.
“Logical, no?”
No.
And neither the Barone article, nor you, have pointed out any particular right wing sin involved here. The article is about the left imposing its values by force. You have just been babbling as if there is some obvious moral equivalency in this issue.
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