Not Your (Founding) Fathers’ Definition of “Religious Liberty”

Sunday Sermon time….

It’s not just the fight over RFRA.

Increasingly, defenders of “religious liberty” are insisting that what their liberty requires is the right to dictate the behaviors and prescribe the rights of others. Any effort to remind these theocrats that non-Christians and nonbelievers are entitled to equal treatment by government is met with outrage and accusations of “political correctness” and “waging war on faith.”

Think I’m exaggerating? These three examples all crossed my desk on a single day:

In Michigan, a Catholic hospital repeatedly refused to perform a medically-necessary tubal ligation, despite the doctor’s strong recommendation.

Weeks after learning she would give birth to her third child, Jessica Mann was faced with a difficult decision: because she was stricken by a life-threatening brain tumor, her doctor recommended she have her fallopian tubes tied at the time of her scheduled cesarean section delivery, later this month….

Mann’s doctor advised her that tubal ligation during the C-section it would be the safest route, consistent with long-established standard of care, and prevent the need for another surgery.

The hospital cited its Catholic affiliation–and its liberty to follow the teachings of  the Church, even if that meant it was sufficiently in conflict with the medical “standard of care” as to be considered malpractice– as justification for the denial.

In Tennessee, self-identified “Sovereign Citizens” are refusing to buy license plates or to register their automobiles. From the Marty Center at the University of Chicago, we learn that

While the sovereign citizen movement is often represented as a collection of scofflaws creating elaborate interpretations of the American legal system in order to scam it, the reality is more complex…

The majority of sovereign citizens conceive of and engage in their claims and practices as religious.

These sovereign citizens claim–and fervently believe–that the law as they espouse it always supersedes other interpretations of the law. Their “liberty” to follow the “real” law is thus more important than the government’s interpretation of the law.

But this is my favorite: In Washington, D.C., a church is actually claiming that the location of a proposed bike lane adjacent to its property would “infringe on its constitutional right to religious freedom.” (You really can’t make this shit up.) As a post at Think Progress pointed out:

Currently, D.C. provides the church with a benefit that is paid for by taxpayers: a road near the church which does not include a bike lane. D.C. proposed offering the church a different benefit which would also be paid for by the city’s taxpayers: a road near the church which does include a bike lane. The church, in effect, is claiming that it has the right to dictate which taxpayer-funded benefits the District of Columbia shall provide, solely because it happens to be a religious organization.

These assertions of “religious liberty” would have baffled the men who drafted America’s Constitution. They are certainly inconsistent with the libertarian construct that emerged from the Enlightenment and influenced America’s founders: the notion that each individual has a right to make his or her own moral choices–follow his own telos–so long as he does not thereby harm the person or property of a non-consenting other and so long as he is willing to accord an equal right to others.

To put the philosophy of the Bill of Rights into modern terminology, it’s pretty much “live and let live.” (Again, so long as you aren’t harming anyone else–and “harming” is admittedly a contestable definition.)

That philosophy definitely isn’t “I get to do what I want, and since I have a direct line to God and Truth, I also get to make you behave the way my religion thinks you should.”

We are each entitled to liberty, not privilege.

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The Real Danger to America

Facts are such inconvenient things.

Over the past year, we’ve seen an upsurge in anti-Muslim animus in the U.S. Protestors and pandering politicians routinely conflate Islam with terrorism; fear of “the other” has generated a whole narrative in which swarthy, suspicious outsiders pose an existential threat to “us”–aka “real Americans.” Anti-Obama partisans evidently think that calling the President a Muslim is somehow a slur.

Of course, the data shows that the real threat looks remarkably like the 50s kid next door.

Leave out gun violence, which endangers us all. Focus just on the actions of crazed religious extremists doing violence within the United States. The perpetrators tend to be pretty pale….and overwhelmingly Christian. Think Ku Klux Klan….

The New York Times reported back in June that since Sept. 11, 2001, almost twice as many people have died at the hands of white supremacists and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims. Using data compiled by New America, a Washington Research center, a study found that 48 people have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim—including the mass killings in Charleston, S.C.—compared to the 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists.  However, this does not factor in yesterday’s tragic shooting or less publicized incidents like the Las Vegas couple who murdered two police officers and left a Swastika on one of the bodies.

Why do I think that facts, data and objective reality won’t make any difference to the people who  gather to protest the building of a mosque, or continue to insist that President Obama is a Muslim?

Because racism and bigotry are impervious to reason.

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Competence and Confidence

I absolutely loved this article from the Harvard Business Review, with the provocative title “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?”

I hasten to reassure my husband, three sons and many male friends that he focus wasn’t  on male incompetence; it was an inquiry into why incompetent men are more likely to be promoted into top levels of management than competent women. The opening paragraphs really tell the story.

There are three popular explanations for the clear under-representation of women in management, namely: (1) they are not capable; (2) they are not interested; (3) they are both interested and capable but unable to break the glass-ceiling: an invisible career barrier, based on prejudiced stereotypes, that prevents women from accessing the ranks of power. Conservatives and chauvinists tend to endorse the first; liberals and feminists prefer the third; and those somewhere in the middle are usually drawn to the second. But what if they all missed the big picture?

In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.

A few other gems from the article’s recitation of research results:

This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders, and that these personality characteristics are not equally common in men and women….

Our normative data, which includes thousands of managers from across all industry sectors and 40 countries, shows that men are consistently more arrogant, manipulative and risk-prone than women.

The paradoxical implication is that the same psychological characteristics that enable male managers to rise to the top of the corporate or political ladder are actually responsible for their downfall. In other words, what it takes to get the job is not just different from, but also the reverse of, what it takes to do the job well. As a result, too many incompetent people are promoted to management jobs, and promoted over more competent people.

Um..calling Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump…

There is much, much more, and it’s all well worth the read….Nothing like having your darkest suspicions confirmed by researchers at Harvard!

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I Think I’ve Heard This Song Before…

Hell, I’ve sung this song!

There has been a steady exodus of former national GOP officials out of the party. Bruce Bartlett, Norman Ornstein, Lawrence Wilkerson… plus a host of far less prominent folks. And then there are the bewildered, reasonable Republicans who are still trying to work within the party for a return to its formerly responsible conservatism.

Now, it’s Ben Bernanke.

You will recall that Bernanke was chosen by the Republican White House to chair the Federal Reserve after  Alan Greenspan left. He had formerly headed up George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Bernanke has now published a book, “The Courage to Act,” detailing his experiences and defending the Fed’s performance during the Great Recession. In the book, Bernanke explained his growing disappointment with the GOP.

“I tried to listen carefully and accept thoughtful criticisms,” Bernanke wrote. “But it seemed to me that the crisis had helped to radicalize large parts of the Republican Party.”

 Though Bernanke isn’t ready to side with Democrats, he no longer associates with his former party. He “lost patience with Republicans’ susceptibility to the know-nothing-ism of the far right. I didn’t leave the Republican Party. I felt that the party left me.”
The break doesn’t come as too big of a surprise. During his tenure, Bernanke at times abandoned subtlety and pleaded with congressional Republicans – whose policies Bernanke saw as making the economy worse – to be more responsible. GOP lawmakers consistently refused.

Indeed, by 2013, when Republicans were trying to blame President Obama for the sluggish recovery, Bernanke said quite clearly that the biggest obstacle to stronger growth was the Republicans’ economic agenda.

When I “came out” as a Democrat in 2000, appalling many of my wonderful friends in the Marion County GOP, I was often asked why I’d left a party that I had belonged to for over 35 years.

My answer was identical to Bernanke’s: I didn’t leave; the party left me.

Today’s radical anti-woman, anti–immigrant, anti-science, pro-“God Guns & Guts” GOP is nothing like the party I joined and worked for so long ago.  It’s hard for people who weren’t around when Republicans were thoughtful adults and genuine conservatives to believe just how far the GOP has moved to the right, but here’s a chart with visual evidence of the extent of the radicalization…

The real question: will the inevitable defeat of its Presidential candidate (you can’t gerrymander the country) serve as a wake-up call and an incentive to move back toward reality? Or will the Grand Old Party break into its increasingly fractious factions?
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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up…

If Democrats were creating a caricature of a Republican extremist–a one-dimensional straw man to run against– it would look a lot like Mike Pence. Unfortunately, Indiana’s zealot Governor isn’t a fabrication by the opposition.

As the IBJ reported yesterday,

Gov. Mike Pence announced Monday that he will expand Indiana’s affiliation with a not-for-profit organization that counsels pregnant women against abortion and pushes abstinence as the only method of birth control.

Indiana Right to Life was reportedly gratified. A Google search confirmed the reason why–not only does “Real Alternatives” (the nonprofit in question) confine its “services” to “counseling” against abortion, it also provides “clients” with the horrifying “facts” about birth control. I found a handy little pamphlet explaining why Contraception Is Not the Answer, filled with misinformation and fear-producing “facts.” (Did you know that injectable contraceptives “drastically increase your risk of invasive breast cancer”? No, and neither do medical experts.)

A blogger in Michigan–where their anti-choice Governor has also contracted with Real Alternatives– detailed the organization’s dubious tactics, many of which were documented in an investigation conducted by a Philadelphia newspaper. The reporter visited a Real Alternative clinic, claiming to be pregnant; she was told that abortion would leave permanent psychological damage, that it often leads to depression, and could interfere with her ever having children– claims thoroughly debunked by reputable medical science.

Groups like Real Alternatives exist throughout the country, mostly funded by anti-abortion organizations like Heartbeat International and individual donations. Real Alternatives, though, is funded almost entirely by the state of Pennsylvania — financed, that is, by you, the taxpayer, and it has received tens of millions of dollars since 1997…

That money, City Paper has found, goes to pay for part of the $199,000 salary (including benefits) of the CEO of Real Alternatives, who has no medical experience. It also funds an army of hundreds of “counselors,” non-medically-qualified personnel whose job it is to dispense the organization’s (sometimes outright inaccurate) information — and who, despite lacking the credentials of nurse practitioners or psychologists, cost the state much more per hour for their services than either.

According to Cosmopolitan magazine, which conducted a year-long investigation of the organization’s operations in Pennsylvania,

Real Alternatives’ contract with the state relies on debunked studies that imply abortion leads to breast cancer and clinical depression. Centers are not allowed to advocate for birth control, much less dispense it. The contract’s directives advise pregnancy-center staff to make an “assessment of the client’s spiritual needs” by asking questions like, “How does your faith impact the choices you make?” (One quarterly report from a center to Real Alternatives refers to clients with the aliases “Mary” and “Joseph.”)

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that one in three deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth could be avoided if all women had access to contraceptive services.

Whatever one’s position on abortion, the use of tax dollars to support “clinics” that offer no medical services— clinics that exist solely to lie to women in order to convince them to forego both abortion and contraception–is immoral.

Our fundamentalist Governor is understandably frantic to mend fences with his Religious Right constituency, after reality and Hoosier businesses forced him to sign the RFRA “fix.” In the echo chamber he inhabits, this contract probably seemed like a good way to do that.

In the rest of the state–even among Republicans– not so much.

John Gregg is looking better all the time.

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