In medieval times, “villeins” were a class of serfs who held the legal status of freemen in their dealings with all people except their lord (according to the American Heritage Dictionary). How close are we to becoming “villein citizens”? When faced with the capricious nature of the state, we fall back on what seems to be our freedom, yet increasingly our liberty is defined not by the will of the people but by government bureaucrats and elected officials. In our relations with our fellow citizens, and with private institutions, we continue to believe we are free, accorded rights by law and possessing a centuries-old apparatus based on custom to protect those rights, and act as such.
Yet in relations with the federal government, we are increasingly seen and treated as serfs, with no protections save what the lord at the time deigns to give us. The courts have long acted as a type of lord, arbitrarily decreeing what our freedoms should be; now they are joined by an activist president and his minions. The apparatus of the state towers over the representatives of the people, half of whom currently support the ever-encompassing grasp of government, the other half being too fractured and outmaneuvered to champion the rights of individuals (and usually reversed when a president of a different party is in power). Rather than legally passed legislation, it is executive order that more and more determines the nature of the interaction between villein citizens and the government. Let us be clear (to use a phrase currently in vogue), when the state gets to determine what counts as a religious organization, and when it determines what that organization must do, then we are not free men, but serfs to an increasingly confident master. That is the nub of the HHS-mandate ruling.
We may still feel the spaces of our freedom, our ability to act as equals with our neighbors and in our communities. We may not sense the shadow looming over us, but it is real, and it is probing and sniffing at our weakening defenses. Each step in the forfeiture of our freedoms may seem small, but one day we will awaken to a fundamentally changed world, one in which we take for granted the limitations placed on us by the state, in which the “greater good” is imposed without hindrance on the freedom of the individual.
In 2015 the Anglosphere will observe the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. It was a first small step on the long, contested way to the beliefs that ultimately informed our own Declaration and Constitution.
Perhaps we will be forced by then to go back to basics and demand a new Magna Carta. Otherwise, we should accept our status as villein citizens.
NRO continues its war to make Americans serfs of their employers. In medieval Europe, citizens were required to practice the religion of their Lords. NRO continues this by insisting employers have absolute right to impose religious practices on Americans. This multiculturalism run amok is nonsense. What happens when a Muslim employer insists on Sharia? When a far left employer insists on a 1 child policy? Is NRO going to stand behind this employer fundamentalism?
You've confused EMPLOYERS' right with AMERICANS rights. Very few Americans own businesses. And where does it stop? I've never seen NRO stand up for TRUE freedom of religion at all. You guys seem to think religious belief trumps human rights.
Welcome to Shari'a!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAre you completely disconnected from reality?
How does an employer, choosing whether or not it will pay for free contraceptives, morph into forcing one's religious views on others?
Liberals can't win unless they lie, because their arguments have no value on their own.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseApparently, having to pay for your own contraceptives goes against the faith of some people.
That's all I could come up with.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark,
Your remarks would be a lot more compelling if you could resist the apparently incessant urge to make blanket statements about "all liberals"--they really cheapen your arguments.
By the way, you're welcome for my correction of your bad Latin from yesterday. I guess this "liberal" isn't a complete idiot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI never said you were a complete idiot. Just a total moron. See the difference.
When a characteristic applies to all liberals, should I lie by saying it doesn't?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are proof positive of the idiocy of the comment policy on this site. You get a star and get to post without adult supervision, and the majority of your posts consist of juvenile invective.
Still, where would the fun be in getting you riled up if your comments were monitored and delayed like the unstarred crowd.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow what a hack-ish, propaganda-mill lie of a comment.
How are the religious views of an employer FORCED on anyone? Last time I checked we are still free in this country to go get another job somewhere else if you don't like the benefits or anything else about your current job.
I fail to see how anyone is forced to be employed anywhere in this country. Further, I also fail to see that even if I accepted your flawed premise, how is the absence of a benefit forcing anything on an employee.
This is just about as nuts as suggesting a pre-abortion ultrasound is as invasive as rape. Nobody asks how invasive the abortion is to the fetus, aka baby.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFreedom's just another word for ... Give me everything I want. For free.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis little house on the prairie notion of freedom sounds heartwarming but isn't very realistic for most people living in 2012.
The Federal government has determined what counts as a religious organization for decades, if not centuries - including when Ronald Reagan was president.
Why only now is there an outcry?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBecause the issue in question runs counter to conservative's social agenda.
How is an employer not paying for their employees birth control requiring an employee to follow the religion of the employer? There's nothing preventing said employee from toddling on over to Walmart and buying their own birth control or for that matter going over to the local Planned Parenthood and procuring an abortion. To use your Muslim analogy, what's happening here is not a Muslim employer trying to force his employee to follow Sharia; what's happening is the government is forcing Muslim employer to supply bacon to his employees. By what right does the government have that authority? By the same token, what right does the government have to force your population control enthusiast to buy health insurance for the families of their employees? If an employer doesn't want to subsidize my family's health insurance, there's nothing preventing me from contracting with an insurance company to provide my family health insurance, or from finding an employer with a more family friendly attitude. What's happened here is you're confused about who's oppressing who. In this case, it's not the Catholic employer oppressing his employee, it's the government oppressing the Catholic employer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat the Obama administration is doing is unprecedented:
1. In Hosanna-Tabor, the Administration argued that the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment does not apply to a church's selection of its own ministers - a position that Obama's own appointee, Kagan, called "amazing."
2. The Obama administration is actively narrowing freedom of religion to freedom of worship, which is the stuff done behind closed doors among one's own kind. Once outside into public space, the government's interest must prevail, relegating "religion" to merely private rituals detached from material reality. In other words, it is to assume the materialist view that religion is irrelevant to real world considerations and must be prevented by force of law from touching on such considerations, whenever the government has a "competing" interest - which is whatever the government decides that it is. For example, if the government decides something is "health," then all must yield, regardless of conviction.
In so far as I am concerned, this election must be about these issues. We're always going to disagree - even strongly - about many things. And those things matter. But what is going on right now is, as Michael Austin describes, an unlimited view of state power that is without any internal mechanism to impede it.
If you don't care about these things, then so be it. But my sense from the number of posts on these matters on NRO is that many do understand what's at stake. If the President is able to proceed in this manner without consequence, then he will have effectively "fundamentally transformed" this society into being whatever his own will demands.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"yet increasingly our liberty is defined not by the will of the people but by government bureaucrats and elected officials"
"we continue to believe we are free, accorded rights by law"
No! Our liberty has never been defined by "the will of the people", nor accorded by the law! Look, here is what one document has to say:
"that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
Our Constitution protects those rights, and helps us understand their breadth (10th Amendment) and depth ("Congress shall make no law"), but it neither establishes those rights nor does it define them.
Let's make sure we argue from the correct starting point. Otherwise, we concede a portion of the field to the enemies of our freedom.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"yet increasingly our liberty is defined not by the will of the people but by government bureaucrats and elected officials"
Blame Bush... it's all his fault! (LOL! I'm jk)
All kidding aside, GWB has a good heart...
"No! Our liberty has never been defined by "the will of the people", nor accorded by the law! Look, here is what one document has to say:
"that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
"Our Constitution protects those rights, and helps us understand their breadth (10th Amendment) and depth ("Congress shall make no law"), but it neither establishes those rights nor does it define them.
"Let's make sure we argue from the correct starting point. Otherwise, we concede a portion of the field to the enemies of our freedom.
...and he's trying to make amends, because it's not his fault...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile this hot button issue of contraception is getting all the press and anguish, the real issue is the unconstitutional actions on the part of the Federal Government that this represents. Nothing in the limited powers granted to the Government in Washington by the States would allow this. If we don't stop this over reach now, what will be next? What parts of the Constitution will still be viewed as being applicable, from this document from the distant, 200 years, past. If they can require somebody to give free condoms, birth control, and morning after pills, can they require somebody to provide free milk in schools, free room and board to those less fortunate. Will they be able to take the recent inspection of school kids meals from home and apply that to meals served to school age children at home or in restaurants? Can the President's disregard for the other branches of the government lead to executive orders that require us to share our homes with others, provide meals in our homes for others, to purchase clothing for others. What is the limit on the new social justice power that the President and his fellow travelers have wrought, and will it be granted to all future presidents to exercise also. Will the president abrogate the Constitutional limits on the number of terms a President can serve, or the validity of elections if he should lose.
Now some will ask how I could possibly take a little thing like free drugs for birth control and expand it beyond this limited point, but Wilson implied that the President had powers that were only limited when they were turned aside by the other branches or the people. So far the other branches are supine in the path of an aggressive dictatorial executive.
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