The decision of HHS Secretary Sebelius’ to narrow the conscience exception should come as no surprise. Under her interpretation, employers must provide contraception as “preventive health service” under Obamacare. That includes abortifacients, like the morning-after pill. Religious institutions, like hospitals and schools, are not exempt.

In 2007, Jonah Goldberg authored a book with the provocative title of Liberal Fascism. Goldberg’s thesis is that there is an affinity between modern American liberalism and fascism.  He defined liberalism as the “ideology of good intentions” that can end up in “the totalitarian temptation.” The Sebelius decision was a classic example of what Goldberg meant.

He defined Fascism as “the religion of the state.” Mussolini was clear about that. “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” The current conflict between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church (and other religions) has an historical precursor.

Mussolini waged jihad against Catholic social organizations, notably Catholic Action. Their social activities, including with youth, were viewed as operations “outside the State” and hence a threat to it. The activities were treated as political actions adverse to the state. In the fascist mindset, all mediating institutions threaten the state. In this instance, the Obama Administration is dangerously close to adopting that mindset.

In 1931, Pope Pius XI issued an Encyclical defending Catholic Action and the Church (Non Abbiamao Bisogno). He noted that “liberty and right are the heritage of souls.” In strong language, reminiscent of the strong language of U.S. Bishops today, Pius XI said the fascist ideology “clearly resolves itself into a true, a real pagan worship of the State – the ‘Statolatry’ which is no less in contrast with the natural rights of the family than it is in contradiction with the supernatural rights of the Church.”

In its pursuit of the good intentions of promoting women’s health, the Obama administration has succumbed to the totalitarian temptation. It has trampled the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion. Instead of permitting Americans to practice the faith of their choosing, it endeavors to make us all worship in the pagan religion of the State.

Jerry O’Driscoll

Note the conclusion in the third to last paragraph: To abide by the law, leads to a violation of our moral teachings. To ignore the law makes us subject to fines and other consequences. To act within the “nonexemption” leads us to abandon our mission to serve people in need. None of these is acceptable to people of faith.

This is what lead to the founding of our great nation. Freedom from religious persecution.

And the critical last question posed by the Nevada bishops: “Where else will this regulation lead?”

Obama and his ilk must be stopped for the sake of our freedoms.

Cohn points out that “As a practical matter, few of us are prepared to allow a somebody die when life-saving treatment is available, just because that person isn’t prepared to pay the bills.” He goes on to point out that hospitals cannot legally refuse emergency medical treatment and that doctors are obliged to render aid under their professional oath.

He treats individual responsibility, “whether it’s the responsibility to stay healthy, the responsibility to seek timely medical care, or the responsibility to make the right choices about health insurance.” And he points out that luck, misfortune plays a significant role in medical problems and their outcomes.

Cohn concludes: “My definition of a decent society is one that protects people not only from bad luck, but also, in some circumstances, from their own bad judgment.”

It’s hard to fault his good will but not his argument. His problem is the fallacy of equating “society” to “government.” Society is composed of individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, synagogues, churches, mosques, social service organizations, and charitable organizations. Society has moral obligations and norms. Society enforces social obligations with association and ostracization.

Government is the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, and societies. Government creates legal obligations and regulations. Its laws and regulations are frequently broad and of the “one size fits all” variety. Government enforces these obligations with civil and criminal penalties. What it extracts, it extracts at the point of a gun.

What is a social obligation is not necessarily a government obligation. Cohn misses the principle of subsidiarity, that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent social unit closest to the particular issue. Families, charities, social groups, hospitals can handle the case of the 30 year old with cancer who can’t afford treatment. Those groups close to the problem can make case-by-case judgments on the cancer patient’s misfortune or bad judgment. In short, they, better than the government can handle Cohn’s “in some circumstances” hedge. Likewise those groups can better handle the obese patient or alcoholic that refuses a life style change, which is the side of universal health care or health insurance that Cohn doesn’t mention.

The money that government doesn’t extract by legislating and enforcing universal health care or health insurance is money that subsidiary social groups will have to provide the necessary care in appropriate cases.

The principle of subsidiarity, the basis of America’s founding, is completely reversed in Europe. That organizing principle has two sides of the same coin: 1. That matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority or unit of society. 2. And, that the central authority should perform only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. Thus our thirteen colonies joined to form a federal union with a government of limited powers, reserving most general power to the states or the people. States, counties, social groups, churches, families and individuals had responsibilities were important were “the people” from wince the central government derived its legitimacy.

In Europe the opposite is true.  ”The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The European Union was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish “an ever-closer union.”

“The EU places supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners invulnerable to public opinion.”

“The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.”

Hannan warns because he doesn’t want to see America, which he considers the repository of traditional freedoms embodied in common law, go the way of his country and become more European. As a Briton he considers America the last bastion of British freedom which lives on in America. He points to the perils of greater regulation, higher taxes and centralized power both in an economic sense and in a human sense.

So our current president, is acting like the Brussels technocrats in growing the federal government, multiplying welfare systems, disarming, and passing the buck to supernational organizations. He is not a leader but a follower of a model destine to fail. Be warned.

In short he wants to hide behind others. So, it’s not his fault. It never will be his fault because he won’t make a hard decision. He the perfect picture of a Hamlet wringing his hands and unable to decide. What can one expect of a Chicago politician who has never had any responsibility. A community organizer who learned effective rabble rousing but little else. A state legislator who voted “present” more often than Aye or Nay. A senator seldom present for a vote. A president who takes polls before taking a position. No wonder the Democrat powerhouses wanted him, public unions, trial lawyers, Wall Street, all of them know he’s easily controlled.

So our empty suited leader will stand by and watch Gadhafi massacre his own people and while tragic it won’t be his fault. After all he did bluster a bit and went to all those international organizations! Now it can be effectively argued that what happens in Lybia is immaterial to our strategic interest. What’s happening in Bahrain and Saudi is certainly  more critical to our strategic interests. But the humanitarian cost in Lybia will be horrific. He will turn a blind eye and deaf ear. He is the “peace in our time” Neville Chamberlain of today.

Well, what’s the problem with that? After all, we can’t be the world’s policeman. We are bankrupt ourselves. The problem is both moral and practical in nature. Moral in that it is wrong to standby and watch an illegitimate dictator murder his citizens when we have the ability to stop the massacre. It’s the equivalent of watching Hitler freely executing the Holocaust. We are the only nation capable of leading, because before Obama in modern times we have had that position and because of the indecisiveness and ineffectiveness of international organizations. Our abdication is morally wrong.

The practical nature of the problem is that our abdication of leadership creates a vacuum. As nature abhors a vacuum, so does human nature. The vacuum will be filled by every two bit dictator with any ambition. In this case Gadhafi. And while Gadhafi is a minor player and really more of a European problem, Kim Jong II isn’t; nor is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So the moral wrong begets a major security risk.

As today’s WSJ editorial concludes: “Lybia today is what the world without U.S. leadership looks like.”

Will the GOP traditional pols prevail or will the young turk tea partiers win out? RINO or REAL CONSERVATIVE, who will prevail. Important question, since our children’s and grandchildren’s future depend on the answer. So that’s what’s exciting and crucial.

So it’s time to focus upon the audience, the voter. My premise is that it’s in the American nature to forgive. This, a God given attribute indeed, is one the things that makes our country great. Forgiveness is not so much applied to principles or policy as it is advocates of those principles.

So, in the only competitive arena, can the voters forgive a politician who professes one thing yet has acted or continues to acts in a way contrary to that profession? Can they, for example, overlook a Mitt Romney being against Obamacare which is bankrupting our children, yet defending his advocacy of Romneycare which is bankrupting Massachusetts for succeeding generations to come. He continues to stand by his anti-freedom, uneconomic, and statistic legislation on the grounds of state rights! Is this so shallow that it evaporates?

Or can they forgive an otherwise brilliant Newt Gingrich who professes free markets and limited government free of special interests yet is funded by and continues to advocate the worst hoax ever perpetrated on the US taxpayers, consumers and environmentalists, ETHANO? That’s right Newt to curry favor and take money from the corporate farm lobby, continues to advocate ethanol subsidies, ethanol mandates, ethanol tax breaks, and ethanol trade restrictions all of which harm the environment?

Or can they forgive a Tim Pawlenty who supported cap-in-trade? This we all know will kill the US economy. How could he have supported it? The point is that that support is past. He no longer does. He says: “It’s fair to say I’ve had a change of position…the reason is it’s a dumb idea!”

Who will be forgiven? The pol who will not admit an egregious past mistake and tries to defend it? The pol who professes one philosophy yet lives by, takes money from and advocates an opposite philosophy? Or, the pol who says “I was wrong, my position was mistaken, a dumb idea?”

To get the voters forgiveness, you must admit that you were wrong. In short, you must ask for forgiveness. Once confessed, once forgiven. In my opinion, neither Romney nor Gingrich will be forgiven. But Pawlenty?  JUST WATCH!

“Chaos,” “a headache,” “turmoil,” “craziness,” “confused,” “wild,” “uncontrolled” are just a few of the words the Washington press corps has used to describe the ensuing late-night debates. There’s a far better word for what happened: democracy. It has been eons since the nation’s elected representatives have had to study harder, debate with such earnestness, or commit themselves so publicly. Yes, it is messy. Yes, it is unpredictable. But as this Presidents Day approaches, it’s a fabulous thing to behold.”

Exercising their foremost and ancient power, descended from England, the power of the purse our elected representatives did their jobs. “There were amendments to prohibit funds for the mortgage-modification program (Darrell Issa, R., Calif.), for wasteful broadband grants (Jim Matheson, D., Utah), for further TSA full-body scanning machines (Rush Holt, D., N.J.), for the salaries of State Department envoys tasked with shutting Guantanamo Bay (Tim Huelskamp, R., Kan.). And amendments designed to cut off funding for IRS agents enforcing ObamaCare.”

Contrast this with the Pelosi-Reid-Obama RAILROAD. Bills drafted in back rooms by power brokers, put to a vote without reading or debate. Democrats offered amendments last night, something Republicans could not do under Pelosi. One such Democrat amendment was to continue funding road signs bragging about the stimulus. Republicans disagreed with one another, unheard of among Democrats in Pelosi’s House. Boehner even lost a major defense project for his own district, the second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Again, unheard of under Pelosi.

I received an email this afternoon announcing the results of a heated two hour part of that debate on an issue of concern to me, my taxpayer dollars going to fund abortions indirectly by grants to Planned Parenthood. “And today, the U.S. House of Representatives — by an
overwhelming majority vote of 240 to 185 — voted to DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD!” Not exactly what you think of when you list the proper functions of government!

One might have asked long ago, why do our hard earned dollars pay for a lot of non-governmental functions. Things like NPR, ACORN and the National Endowment for the Arts. The point is that now, at least, our representatives are asking and as Kim Strassel concludes, “Long may that last.”

He reviews the traditional notions of socialism as “a system of social organization that advocates the vesting of ownership and control of the means of production and distribution in the community as a whole.” But he argues that “ownership and control” in the modern era should be “ownership or control.” In essence “control” makes “ownership” unnecessary. He uses Fannie and Freddie so called private corporations as current and deadly example; despite the ostensible private ownership, there was no doubt that control was vested in Congress.

Williamson argues for two further criteria in the definition of socialism: “the public provision of non-public goods” and the use of “central planning” to implement that provisioning. Public goods for economists are “non-rivalrous in their consumption and non-excludable in their distribution.” Private goods are the opposite, rivalrous and excludable; my cell phone is mine and I can stop you from using it. By the way cell phones are provided to welfare recipients!

The “central planning” criterion he adds is the one Friedrich Hayek railed against. This is what distinguishes the garden variety welfare state from one that can be called socialist. In effect, “socialism is not redistribution…socialism is central planning.” The plan is everything. Its presence “and the empowerment of the planners is to socialism what the Eucharists is to Christians and what Mosaic Law is to Jews.” If the plan conflicts with its purported goal, say redistribution of wealth to the poor, the plan will prevail. In effect, the plan exists for the sake of the planners.

“Socialism’s main defect is the inability of political decision-makers to make rational decisions without the information provided by prices generated by marketplace transactions. The repression associated with socialist regimes is in most cases a reaction to the failure of The Plan. As Mises’s colleague F. A. Hayek argued in The Road to Serfdom, central planners frustrated by their inability to mold the economic world to their will inevitably are tempted to run roughshod over the rights and interests of the individuals they purport to serve. Sometimes this takes the relatively innocuous form of high-handed officials in the Canadian public-health service denying a procedure or timely access to care; sometimes it takes one of the diverse forms explored with such horrific vigor by Kim Jong Il. Hayek’s diagnosis, which is widely misunderstood and exaggerated, is not perfect, but he was correct that there is a path that connects the many stops on the road to serfdom. But we need not travel to exotic lands to experience socialism firsthand. Any American public school will do.”

He argues that the aim of public education is and has always been to standardize students so as to better fit into the plan; conformity is the order of the day. Examples of political speeches to students to this effect abound, urging them to take up the nation’s challenges like health care. No political party has a monopoly on this approach. Obama is merely the current national advocate just as Bush was in his term.

“The public schools constitute one of the most popular instantiations of socialism in American life, though Social Security and government-funded transportation systems no doubt rank nearly as high. But popular with whom? Certainly the educators and administrators who run the system are largely pleased with it, as they should be; the noncompetitive nature of government-run education provides them with salaries and benefits far exceeding what they plausibly could earn in the private sector.”….”Public schools fail for the same reason that all socialist enterprises fail: lack of information. In marketplace transactions, prices communicate critical information about who is producing what, who is consuming what, and what it is that producers and consumers want and need.”

I have not done justice to the quality of Williamson’s work in this brief outline summary and therefore urge a reading of the complete article, his book and indeed a subscription to the National Review. I do think that we need to revive the federal structure this country was founded upon. In other words make the “central planning” dramatically less central! This and an emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity, pushing the satisfaction of social needs to the lowest competent level, will more than justify the term American Exceptionalism.

Now who is benefiting from all that money? Who has benefited from all that money?

OK, now who will repay all that deficit generated debt and all those over-promised unfunded liabilities?

That’s right, future generations will pay. Your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay. They will pay for what you have used! For what you have become entitled to! For your welfare! For your retirement and medical care!

DOES THIS STRIKE YOU AS IMMORAL?

In short, this generation is stealing from the next generations. And it is reaping benefits that the next generations will not enjoy. And it is obligating those generations to pay for our benefits.

This is absolutely wrong, immorality at the highest level. And, does our president attack this or suggest reform? No he merely wants to freeze this immorality in place at the high levels he had promoted!

Hopefully only a bad dream from which we shall awake!