I?ll start with James Madison, my favorite Founder and the one whose views on religious liberty dominated the Constitutional Convention. Madison based his understanding of natural rights and the role of the state on Locke?s ?social compact.? But, as one scholar has noted, because the exercise of religion requires that each person follow his own conscience, it is a particular kind of natural right, an inalienable natural right. Since opinions and beliefs can be shaped only by individual consideration of evidence that that particular individual finds persuasive, no one can really impose opinions on any one else. Unlike property, or even speech, religious liberty cannot be sold, or alienated, so it does not become part of the social compact. The state must remain noncognizant of its citizens? religions?meaning that it simply has no jurisdiction over religion. A just state must be blind to religion. It can?t use religion to classify citizens, and it can neither privilege nor penalize citizens on account of religion.
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Category Archives: Religious Liberty
Valuing Limited Government
Overused and vague as the term is, the clash of values is clearly driving the debate. Ask a Bush supporter why he still supports a President who has presided over domestic job losses of a magnitude not seen since Herbert Hoover, and he (less often she) will tell you that George Bush opposes abortion. Ask why he still supports a President who led us–on false pretences–into an unnecessary war that has made us demonstrably less safe, a President who has squandered the international good will that welled up in the wake of 9-11, and he will tell you that the President opposes gay marriage. Ask how he can support an administration that has trashed the environment, trampled civil liberties, and run up a deficit so huge that our grandchildren will still be working to pay it off, and he’ll tell you it is because George W. Bush is a good Christian.
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Be Careful What You Wish For
I am bemused by the Bush Administration. The rhetoric is all about smaller government and free markets; the reality is huge farm subsidies, protectionist tariffs for steel manufacturers, increased federal regulation of local schools and vastly increased police powers for federal agencies.
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Merry (Secular) Christmas
In the early 1990s, Benjamin Barber wrote a prescient book, entitled "Jihad vs. McWorld." In it, he predicted that the defining conflict of the twenty-first century would be between globalization and tribalism; between commercial, capitalistic interdependence and insular, isolationist communities that view global capitalism and its accompanying secularism as overwhelming threats to their cultural and religious beliefs. What Barber failed to note was that this same conflict is taking place within the United States. How else do we understand Judge Roy Moore’s efforts to post the Ten Commandments, the continual attempts to make public school students pray, or the yearly calls for government-sponsored creches at Christmas?
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Religious War & Peace
Let’s stipulate, as we lawyer types like to say, that the General has the right to his opinions, to his religious beliefs, and for that matter, to his evident adolescence. But as a soldier, he has a duty to respect the military chain of command. I didn?t hear Congressman Pence or others protective of Boykin rising to defend the soldiers in Iraq who were chastised for complaining that the Pentagon had lied to them about the length of their tours of duty.
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