It’s not often that a single nugget of freely-spoken complaint reveals so much that is wrong with progressive identity politics and its fundamental misapprehension of the free market capitalism system that has made the US the world’s most successful and prosperous nation.
So kudos to communications, media, and political strategist Hilary Rosen, writing at the Huffington Post, for this little pitch perfect nugget:
How dare […] anyone say that the young cleaning woman or secretary who just happens to work at a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church should not be able to get birth control paid for by her employer.
[my emphasis]
Consider that statement of outrage carefully: what Ms Rosen is suggesting here is that, in a passive, almost slavish way, young cleaning women or secretaries — who have no will of their own and no choice in the matter — are somehow compelled to work at a Catholic church-owned hospital or university. And that the Catholic church-owned hospital or university they work at, therefore, is required to act in direct conflict with its fundamental religious principles by providing free birth contol and abortifacient coverage in its health plans.
But here’s the thing: Ms Rosen’s formulation is precisely backwards and reveals in all its confused glory the entitlement mentality that so often goes along with grievance politics and identity politics.
Because the fact is, “a young cleaning woman or secretary” DOES NOT just happen to work at a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church.” Instead, these people are hired by representatives of the ownership group — and employment in a Catholic university or hospital comes with the caveat that the Catholic church-owned university or hospital will provide health care using a plan that does not run afoul of their religious beliefs.
Which is to say, these women were given a fucking job by a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church — and this not being the Soviet Union, our Constitution does not guarantee anyone a “right” to a job.
If a candidate for a job doesn’t like the conditions of employment (beyond whatever protections are guaranteed them by the Constitution or local, state, and federal law), that candidate should look for a different job; and in fact, for years people have made employment decisions based on how much weight they give to, say, salary vs. the extent of health coverage an employee offers (dental? psych? eye glasses? HMO, PPO? amount of co-pay?).
You know: individuals weighing their options and making choices and decisions for themselves.
The idea that because the Catholic Church takes money from the federal government for its hospitals or universities, the federal government has the right to become the de facto conscience of the Church and dictate to it how it must affirmatively act against its own central religious tenets, is simply perverse. Because were one to follow that same line of argumnt, one would recognize instantly that the “free health care” provided us all through ObamaCare — which will, as designed, ultimately result in a single payer system — means that the government will eventually have a say in what we eat, how much we exercise, what are children can and cannot do that may or may not put them at risk, and so on.
Nobody “just happens to work at a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church”; somebody took a job offer from a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church and presumably looked over the health coverage provided before accepting the position.
And up until now, there has been no shortage of access to contraceptives or abortions, even for Catholics, should they wish these things.
This attempt to make the church pay has nothing whatever to do with “women’s health” and everything to do with the State wishing to see how far it can insist on insinuating itself into the civil society to weaken the barrier between State control and authority and individual liberty — in this particular case, with respect to religious freedom (though the long game is to turn individuals into subjects, and to so confuse the concept of natural rights with those rights supposedly granted by the State that, in the end, a Constitution meant to protect us from a centralized government always moving toward tyranny will become, through careful “interpretation” and re-writing, the very thing that enslaves us to the State).
And not all of us treat the consignment of our liberties to the whims of, say, Nancy Pelosi, with any great relish.
It helps to think of your typical liberal is a cross between Fritz Hollings and the Looney Toons’s abominable snowman.
They jus’ wanna hep us. And hug us and squeeze us and pet us and keep us. And they will name us George.
We could solve all these conflict of interests if the government would simply nationalize everything.
But perhaps I’m getting ahead of thing?
things
For “birth control” in the above rant from Miz Rosen, substitute “toothpaste” or “soy-milk lattes” or “designer sunglasses”. Really, what’s the difference? She thinks it’s the employers obligation to provide what the employee wants.
And here I thought the way an employer did that was called “paying wages”. Here’s some money, go buy rubbers or gimp suits or whatever the hell you want, we don’t care.
My foolish Team R congressman is fond of polling his constituents as to whether they oppose socialism. Not worded as such, of course, but he’s always asking if we support or oppose this or that power grab.
What I oppose is the man’s premise that I owe him some post-election confirmation that I’m a classical liberal and he’d already been elected by conservatives. I oppose sifting through scores of supporting responses on his Facebook page that confirm that we really do think we’re a mob-ruled democracy. That if we can assign some statist thing any modicum of an ersatz moral principle — “well, I think Teh Poor™ should have this benefit or that entitlement utterly free of charge (and in so thinking, redeem myself as morally superior”) — then that thing is a valid principle.
It’s not. But there’s more to this. It’d already been overruled as a formative component of our founding structure. Full stop. Move to Canada. Run in shame from the rest of us because you are simply a lying thief, stealing my liberty and property and telling me I’m an ass for opposing you and the historical trajectory your kind eternally represent.
The right needs to learn to shut that crap down before it forms. Not argue it on merits; not suffer the fools who’d use our opposition as a moral scapegoat, but flatly deny it oxygen. Ridicule it. Call it out. Condemn it. And never once bother to answer — as I refuse to do my congressman — as to whether I think this or that socialist scheme is a good idea or not.
I do not owe him that opinion. I do not owe the Socialist a moment of my time. The fool Hilary Rosen expects her indignation to constitute valid principle. She should be soundly run from the conversation.
There is an all too obvious congruity between the left’s attitudes towards a woman “who just happens to work at a hospital or university owned by the Catholic church” and a woman who just happens to still be inside someones uterus.
While only one of those two entered into their current state by choice, the left really is not concerned with the personhood of either in serious way. It is something to be recognized only when serving as a useful tool.
Today’s compromise is anything but.
Says Tapper, about the impending policy pull-back:
It’s time to press whether secular humanism is a religion to the SCOTUS.
The insurance company will reach out on its own to the women employees.
huh? The insurance company is going to provide “free” goodies?
yeah, right.
Just how in the fuck does someone happen to work somewhere? Are maids being drafted now?
No thanks, JHo. I mean, why would we want to put that sort of judgment into the hands of nine unelected jurors, first because it would have to arise as part of a case or controversy, neverminding that such questions aren’t intended, I think, to be under the purview of government in the first instance. We’ve surrendered more of our freedoms in private society to institutions of civil society than we ought already. There’s nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, to surrender anything further.
The announced Obama “pullback” isn’t even if he granted a full waiver to all organizations owned by Churches.
What he wants in place and agreed to is his right, his power, to grant or withhold these favors at his own whim. Nothing is in play here that detracts from, diminishes that presumption, that will to power.
But I keep repeating myself on this point.
It’s preferred to allow the progg State to proceed unhindered by structural principles? Because that’s precisely what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.
Wait– what?
If you’re arguing that we can’t risk losing the case then by that reasoning we should elect Romney.
Yep. See the link in #5.
I should be shocked but WTF
Insurance COMPANIES have pay for womyn’s BC??? REALLY?
It’s the Pelosi scheme, Darleen: Barry’s passing laws to see what he can put in them.
I’m not arguing we can’t “risk” losing the case (at least as you’ve stated it), JHo, because the “case” (note: there is no case!) can’t reasonably be decided by the Supreme Court in the first place, unless, perhaps, one is sanguine granting the Supreme Court the power to determine what is, as a matter of judgment of being in all situations or possible thought. Better they should stick to matters of law and justice in cases and controversies, than be offered the position of ontological arbiters to the nation.
He announced a new spin not a new policy.
certainly not satisfy bishops and other religious leaders since it will preserve the goal of women employees having their birth control fully covered by health insurance, is so poorly written it could only be politics. According to the Tapper yesterday it was not women employees, it was the Progs driving this policy
When are the Democrats who know who these Progs really are going to stand with the American people and break with these dangerous ideologues?
Stop hiring the females.
The “young cleaning woman” is right out of the Planned Parenthood playbook, by way of Margaret Sanger.
Read the Wikipedia article on her. Rose-tinted as it is, a number of things jump out: lighter-skinned people are better than darker-skinned people, and that the purpose of Planned Parenthood is “to stop the multiplication of the unfit” “as the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.”
A reinemachefrau is so obviously an unfit sort of person that contraception, abortion, and sterilization are exactly what the employer should be paying for.
Which, well, what about all those English majors who spend their days saying “Do you want fries with that?”
Oh. Right. MacDonalds got an exemption.
I apologize if this post seems to stay in place and yet go in many directions at once, but my mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
I was going to make a snarky statement on how they should forget about birth control and focus on the real injustice of employers being able to hire and fire people without government approval and then I realized it wasn’t true anymore. Add in OSHA nonsense, EEOC shakedowns, and wage requirements and one wonders why the unemployment rate isn’t far higher.
Robots will win the future not so much from productivity gains but rather because the government isn’t trying to help them. So, maybe we finally have an answer. The hidden master pulling Obama’s strings? Skynet.
Had I said there was a case, sdferr? As to this:
Huh?
Secular humanism — progressivism in the ideal instance — is no more or less case-worthy than was or shall be any other action of fundamental importance to foundational principles. Gun rights, for example. Speech. Freedoms and privileges, all of which it can be said are under some assault, that being why they are enumerated and made concrete.
My obvious point is that if the State conflicts a prior constitutional right then it is incumbent on that State to remove its presence and influence and not the citizen. The State exerts this conflict chronically on the basis of a progressive, secular, humanistic morality that, as in this case, directly conflicts with individual liberties and I suspect in a full analysis, the 1st Amendment itself, and it does so at the behest of a statist morality whose components and purveyers clearly, obviously, willfully, and publicly want to remove the alternative to it from practice.
I’ve laid out a case that progressivism is a religion. We’d do well to grow a pair and use the SCOTUS for precisely what it’s there for: to use that Constitution to shield us from our State when that State is practicing a religion.
We have become what Britain was that once prompted us to become American. Why should we endure it if not fear?
“Joe Citizen has an inviolable claim to other people’s money but not to his own.“
You know what the three-letter word is that you left off the end of this sentence, so I won’t belabor the obvious.
Yet
Heh, yeah, wtf. That was intentional.
Oh, yet. To the coffee pot!
Huh. The three-letter word that hopped to my mind was “die.”
I wonder how Rosen would respond to an abortion-conscience-exemption doctor just happening to work for Planned Parenthood, providing all of the other reproductive-health, gynecological services, breast cancer screenings that Planned Parenthood does so much of but refusing to perform abortions. Is she willing to make an accomodation? Or would she rather the doctor pull her head out of her ass and go look for work elsewhere? I’m sure from Rosen’s perspective, if the Ministry of Personnel assigns that work-unit to that slot, who is she to judge?
Well, you just press on JHo. Me, I think that any desire to have the Supreme Court empowered to decide that a political doctrine is a religion or that another political doctrine is not a religion will, in the end, do more damage to religions in fact than it will do to rein in political doctrines that pretend to be religious or, contrariwise, rein in political doctrines which embody religious behaviors while pretending not to be religious — if such things exist — and this sets aside the damage that may befall political doctrines as such. Or in the old saw, be careful what you wish for.
Compare and contrast his current assault on the 1st Amendment and free markets, and his war on religion with his speech in 2009 at Notre Dame.
be able to get birth control paid for by her employer.
This part is also galling. Even if she were somehow trapped into working for a Catholic employer, she can’t pay for condoms out of pocket?
I am currently unemployed and uninsured (and uninsurable). I still buy my own meds and visit the doctor and dentist.
More fool I. None of those meds are birth control.
Something that really does strike me here — and I made the joke about Marcotte in another thread — is how these proponents just so perfectly act out sexist stereotypes from time to time.
Illogical arguments. Hysterical overreactions. Suffragette, heal thyself.
The government should not be able to mandate that halal and kosher markets sell pork nor that PETA sell fur coats nor that gas stations give away slushies for free nor that bakeries sell cupcakes.
You shouldn’t have to be religious to opt out of these mandates nor should there be waivers given for moral objections because there should not even BE mandates in the first place.
I’m afraid that if the administration backs down and grants a waiver to the Catholics regarding contraception, we’ll think the problem is fixed when it very much is NOT.
“yet”?
Oh lordy…I shoulda refreshed.
“we’ll think the problem is fixed when it very much is NOT.”
Agree and have been agreeing since this story came up.
Why the hell would you want to give the Court a chance to decide that Secular Humanism is a compelling state interest on the whim of 5 judges?
And the Lions will lay down with the Lambs. Well, Lambs who really, really sympathize with the Lions, who are willing to lie down for now (there are no real enemies to the Left; plus the the H8Rs!!), Lambs who just really deeply feeling that their good intentions will make up for the fact that the lions are Jackals who are nibbling now and are planning a real feast real soon.
More to the point progressivism, secular humanism, dialectical whathavya, isn’t a religion. It’s an anti-religion. At least in the way it’s practiced by its true believers.
I Still Want My Free Lunch
Related to motionview’s comment at #41, here’s a paragraph from Wiki, (my apologies in advance for the sourcing):
Well, Cap’n Ed notes that according to Obergruppenfuhrer McPollster Rassmussen Santorum polls better against Obama than Mr. Inevitability; enjoying a 4 point spread vs a 10 point spread for Mittenz
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/10/rasmussen-tracking-poll-shows-santorum-within-four-of-obama/
Interesting, no?
It seems like this would be a good place to insert a hearty, “How you like me now?”…
Also, Han shot first.
CHA is definitely not speaking for the USCCB. It’s more for those Catholics who mistakenly think that the “social justice” aspect of Obamacare trumps any messy dogmatic view on the sanctity of life; a small, but vocal, fraction of practicing Catholics I might add.
I deal with a lot of those types here in the greater NYC area.
But bh already pointed that out…
I do actually like yours better than mine.
Even when by reframing your own strawman you press on yourself.
Look, I reject the notion that your political doctrine is, by its clear effect on the status of prior rights under the First, not running afoul of those rights by its counterprevailing moral absolutism and its now-unavoidable statist practice and must be curtailed. Legally finding it as a religion, which it gives every moral appearance of being except for the creches and the little whirly things with smoke coming out and the funny songs — okay, not except the funny songs then — would be the greatest coup for classical liberalism in the history of American classical liberalism.
I mean, it even has a Jesus, sdferr. And SCOTUS is not unfamilar with the term secular humanism. So ask em to rule. Fish, not cut bait.
But you see this is a lost war, probably like you could but should not see the next election for POTUS.
It’s like I’ve been saying: Every vote to give Romney the GOP nomination is a vote to re-elect Obama.
#31 was some fine marksmanship there Mr. View!
Hope you don’t mind me recommending the repeated application of that piece of ordnance;-).
The Team needed the headline and CHA produced it on cue, just like the Team needed the PRRI poll saying Catholics are all honey-badger on the issue, and that came out on cue. Just like they needed to change the subject from debt to income inequality, and OWS showed up. Right on cue.
No, JHo. Such an event, such a result, would by definition be the utter eclipse of classical liberalism, I’m afraid. Which, by the way, is why I draw the implications you have so blithely skipped over, rather than, as you contend here, created “strawmen”. Don’t be a fool, is all I ask.
On the question of which political doctrines are religious in some manner or other, I kind of like the quote often attributed to a Supreme Court justice: “I know it when I see it.”
A judicial decree on same is therefore superfluous.
If the natural intellectual pith matched the brevity of your various word salads, sdferr, you’d be the thinker you’d hoped for.
You know, back in the day, after the 1916 uprising, Sinn Fein in Ireland established a government in parallel to the existing British Government, and apart from running a guerrilla war, paid no other attention to the Brits.
Are we getting to the point where the great mass of Americans simply start ignoring the Imperial Federal Government and begin conducting their affairs without reference to it?
In popular terminology, this is referred to as a “black” market. For myself, I prefer the word “free.”
This is already the norm across Europe. In fact, in Ireland, when you get something done under the table, you pay for the service with a “nixer.” In other words, tax evasion is such a large part of the economy, there’s a vocabulary around it.
Will we get to that point here?
sdferr is perfectly clear headed and clear in voice, JHo.
Yep. Assuming they are legally defensible as strictly political doctrines — which is where sdferr’s proof-by-assertion strawman gags itself — when by fact they can be and have been challenged as religious. Legally hanging this one on the present regimes neck for the harm to religion it’s causing, including a nice aside at the sheer mendacity of that regime in installing these measures, would be no more a challenge — to a constitutionally functional Court — then Roe was.
Which court we don’t have and which defeat we’d therefore take on the chin now rather than then. Pragmatic is what I find that, although I am a fool.
Were that you were, leigh. When I want a tossed off opinion de jour, I find that more than not I look for your yellow badge.
Oh, you just don’t like me because I called you out for being a a grouch.
And before I offend someone else, away I go. Have a nice day.
I hate to derail a lively discussion, but this article from the Strib demands to be shared with the PW community. A lovely little outfit called The Un-Fair Campaign is instructing the people of Duluth/Superior about their White Privilege. It’s a partnership between the cities, counties, universities, and the YWCA. Oh, and the NAACP (surprise!).
I dare any of you to spend three minutes nosing around their website without screaming, head-desking, and/or laughing out loud. I swear, Jeff could write an entire dissertation on all the question-begging going on there. Personally, I find the lack of any self-awareness coming from this ‘awareness’ group to be deliciously ironic. I’m actually considering a trip up I-35 just for the
whiteprivilege of debating these self-loathing, holier-than-thou know-nothings. I’ll be sure to send back a report!James Madison, on Property
@Squid: Is that Elena Kagan?
I tend to think of people in Duluth as purple and gold. Don’t know how that’s a privilege though.
What? No takers?
I suck as a troll.
My wife’s from Trinidad, so she’s got bits of black, white, Chinese, and Syrian in her background. She’s sort of into the diversity thing, and one evening she explained white privilege to me.
Bottom line: I am privileged because my parents
– made me study
– ordered me to find a paying skill
– taught me life skills like hygiene, tying my shoes, and wearing a belt
– instilled respect for authority
– taught me patience and frugality
White privilege apparently has nothing to do with skin color. It’s just that this is how white people uniquely roll.
Personally, I found her assertions outrageous. I served in the USAF for six years and saw people of all sorts of hues and creeds demonstrate just the characteristics listed above – and their polar opposites. In fact, I knew a Vietnamese guy who went from boat person to commissioned officer, and a white TSgt who was caught using cocaine just before being sent to Senior NCO Academy.
I know this is trending towards something like “some of my best friends are black,” but, well, my wife does have a healthy dose of that.
When did we abandon content of character for color of skin?
I particularly like this little bit of bullshit: “The Un-Fair Campaign, which launched with the billboards last month and so far has spent $4,600, didn’t set out to shock or offend people, although organizers are glad they got the community’s attention, said Ellen O’Neill, executive director of the YWCA of Duluth, one of the campaign’s 15 sponsors.”
Got that? Putting up a bunch of billboards that say, essentially, “ALL U HONKIES BE RACISS!” was never meant to shock or offend! Oh, heavens no! I’m sure that if pressed on the matter, Ms O’Neill would insist that all us ign’ant cousin-humpin’ knuckle-draggers were just too simple to understand the nuance behind the campaign.
I gotta get me a lunch date with this woman…
When did we abandon content of character for color of skin?
1978
“How dare I? Because FUCK YOU, that’s how.”
@Squid: “Ellen O’Neal?!??!?!?!11?!?#@Eleventy!!1!?!?!”
A person with a name indicating membership of the whitest group of people on the entire earth (I saw this as a former Galway man) is running this?
I sense a lot of early childhood indoctrination.
Instead of It’s hard to see racism when you’re white the Un-Fair Campaign should be honest and go with
It’s hard to see racism when your intentions are pure towards the sub-races.
And for those who’ve heard about the superiority of French parenting may I direct your attention to around the 7 minute mark for some Carolina parenting.
When “black leaders” were exposed as having no character.
Of course it wasn’t. They were stating the left’s One Absolute Truth.
Re #68
What you outlined isn’t white privilege, and it isn’t “acting white,” it’s acting like successful people act. White people had to learn to do it, too.
People who want to be victims will act like victims. People who want to be successful will emulate those who are successful.
But it’s a perversion many “libertarian conservatives” like Bill Quick over at Daily Pundit buy into. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air put a stake into that line of argument day before yesterday:
[…] unfortunately, Jeff Goldstein, who himself seems confused in the same way you are, SDN, about the difference between businesses […]
Oops. Seems Bill Quick has lost his way:
None of which has anything to do with the federal government compelling Allah’s Body to pay for Henry Finklestein’s repair — it only requires that, should the business wish to be zoned, for instance, it has to agree that separate but equal is unconstitutional, and that if it wants to repair the cars only of non-infidels, it has to find a place that allows for such behavior.
Running a hospital does not suggest you’re in the business of aborting fetuses or handing out contraceptives; running an auto repair shop, conversely, suggests you are in the business of fixing cars. So if a person goes into a repair shop and is denied car-fixing service, he has a discrimination complaint; but if a person goes into a Catholic hospital, a person isn’t being denied service if what s/he’s looking for is an abortion: she’s being told that this particular business doesn’t provide this particular service to anyone.
Meaning that Bill Quick is the one who is confused. He may find religion inherently illogical and determine that it must be relegated only to churches, but that’s simply not what the founders and framers had in mind when the endeavored to respect religious freedom.
And honestly, would Bill Quick say that the fact that Wal-Mart carries contraceptives but, say, Discount Tire doesn’t, we’re pushing separate but equal, rather than noting that there is no shortage of availability of contraceptives in the market? Or let’s not even go so drastic: Whole Foods carries organic, locally-grown, free-range beets. My local Albertson’s does not. Both are food stores. Are beets entitled to separate but equal consideration? Am I being discriminated against because I can’t find organic, locally-grown, free-range beets at Albertson’s? How is it different with condoms or abortifacients or even abortions? Why must a Catholic hospital (and note that many Christian organizations are their own insurers to begin with, which further muddies the waters) be compelled to provide and pay for certain products and services that they don’t wish to carry? This is silly.
Bill Quick is coming across as rather a smart-assed bigot in that piece.
Jeff, FYI page glitch is fixed.