Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote that if America were to lose its freedom, it would not be through violent conquest but rather through the gradual proliferation of governmental controls that steadily whittled away at our liberty. At the time he wrote, ca. 1830, no American would have thought it was any business of the federal government to dictate to a college, whether religious or not, what its policies should be.

Today, things are much different. We’ve had an explosion of governmental agencies with various spheres of authority, all eager to show their power and importance by threatening people and organizations that have been so naughty as to disregard any of their inumerable mandates and prohibitions. Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina is a recent transgressor, for the sin of not having its insurance benefits for employees suit the vigilant bureaucrats of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

My Pope Center colleague Jay Schalin writes about the Belmont Abbey case here.