[ExI] sendup of Hobby Lobby

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 10:53 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] sendup of Hobby Lobby

 

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 12:17 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>>…I think it was a mistake to mention religious freedom at all in the Constitution; as long as you've got freedom of speech and freedom of assembly there is no need to single out freedom of religion for special mention because you've already got it automatically.

 

>…It was a necessary compromise at the time…

 

Ja, a necessary compromise at the time and a necessary compromise now.

 

>…  (No, really: "put this in or the whole deal collapses" grade.)…

 

Agreed.  The Bill of Rights stays in unmodified, or the whole deal collapses even now.

 

>…  And it's impossible to remove now.  (Too many people would insist that it means the repression of religion, rather than simply removing an unnecessary clause, and no amount of logic is going to convince them.)…

 

Them or me.  We think of freedom of religion as having to do with a bunch of white-headed saints praying in some stained-glass building, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someday something we hold sacred is protected by the first amendment freedom of religion.  Imagine Alcor being picketed by some yahoos claiming the cryonauts should have a decent burial.  Then millions who had never heard of cryonics would counter-protest, arguing that being frozen was the religion of these people and should be respected.  (Hey, protesting is what Americans do best.)  Like it or not, freedom of religion protects us all.

 

Furthermore… it makes me squirm to even think of removing anything in the Bill of Rights.  I feel that is what is happening now with the rise of the bureaucracies.  We have freedom of speech in that we cannot be prosecuted in criminal court for our stated opinions.  But the BoR doesn’t seem to protect some political views from an IRS audit.  Doesn’t protect them from an EPA raid.  Freedom of speech doesn’t protect any of us from the NSA reading our email.  Note that Edward Snowden revealed what they were doing, yet nothing bad has happened to the NSA, while Snowden remains a fugitive to this day.  When these bureaucracies demonstrate they are above the law, nothing bad happens to them.  But something bad happens to us.

 

spike 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140715/410c0946/attachment.html>