The 'Plastic Straw Debate' is mostly a fact-free exercise, and the facts that are thrown around don't seem very credible (a country of 325 million people uses 500 million straws a day?). Thankfully, Reason magazine's online division is bringing some fact-based perspective to the conversation..
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
21 July, 2018
05 December, 2017
Cake Baker's POV
What I didn’t say was that I wouldn’t sell them a cake.
I’m happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity. People should be free to make their own moral choices. I don’t have to agree with them.
But I am responsible for my own choices. And it was that responsibility that led me to decline when two gentlemen came into my shop and invited me to create a wedding cake for their same-sex ceremony.
Designing a wedding cake is a very different thing from, say, baking a brownie. When people commission such a cake, they’re requesting something that’s designed to express something about the event and about the couple.
What I design is not just a tower of flour and sugar, but a message tailored to a specific couple and a specific event — a message telling all who see it that this event is a wedding and that it is an occasion for celebration.
In this case, I couldn’t. What a cake celebrating this event would communicate was a message that contradicts my deepest religious convictions, and as an artist, that’s just not something I’m able to do, so I politely declined.
But this wasn’t just a business decision. More than anything else, it was a reflection of my commitment to my faith. My religious convictions on this are grounded in the biblical teaching that God designed marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Obviously, not everyone shares those convictions. I don’t expect them to. Each of us makes our own choices; each of us decides how closely we will hold to, defend and live out those choices.
The two men who came into my shop that day were living out their beliefs. All I did was attempt to live out mine. I respect their right to choose and hoped they would respect mine.
They did not. And, considering all of the hate mail, obscene calls and death threats my family has received since I was sued, a lot of other people don’t see tolerance as a two-way street, either.
But the Constitution does. The First Amendment defends my right to create custom cake art that is consistent with my faith, while declining requests that ask me to celebrate events or messages that conflict with my faith. As a cake artist, I can live out my faith in my day-to-day life, and make that faith the basis for my creative decisions.
We live in a big, diverse nation. We don’t all have to agree on religion. We don’t have to agree on questions of sexual morality. We don’t even have to agree on the meaning of marriage.
What we should be able to agree on is our mutual freedom, as Americans, to live out the ideals that are most important to us.
Just as I shouldn’t be able to use the law to force others to design something that promotes my beliefs, others shouldn’t be able to force me to design a cake that celebrates theirs.
That, for me and those at Alliance Defending Freedom who are defending me, is what this case is about. I hope the U.S. Supreme Court affirms that basic freedom.
And if those who oppose me would grant me a certain measure of respect — not as someone they agree with, but as a fellow citizen free to stand by my own moral choices, well … that would be icing on the cake.
Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo. Oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission will be heard Tuesday.
07 December, 2015
Guns - The Constitution Is Not Incidental
The Constitution Is Not Incidental
President Obama and the elite modern left think freedoms in our Constitution which are essential to the American experience are just incidental.
By Ben Domenech
December 7, 2015
When we discussed it yesterday morning on Face the Nation, the exact content of President Obama’s speech last night was not clear. It was still possible it could represent a marked change in strategy on the part of the White House, given that a steady drumbeat of criticism from fellow Democrats had put their approach to dealing with ISIS in its weakest political positioning yet. The intelligence community has been increasingly clear that, contra the evidence in prior fudged reports, ISIS is not contained.
The opportunity was there for President Obama to announce that he has reevaluated his approach in light of new information, and that the commitment necessary to crush ISIS would require a much more unified coalition and additional forces on the air and ground. It would have represented in a small way an act of unity with George W. Bush, who reevaluated his approach to Iraq in the wake of the 2006 elections, and risked significant political capital to fight for the surge policy to achieve a semblance of stability in the region.
Instead, the speech turned out to be exactly what we have come to expect from this president: a stubborn insistence that his strategy is working.
Instead, the speech turned out to be exactly what we have come to expect from this president: a stubborn insistence that his strategy is working, despite the haters, and a glorious flame-throwing eradication of the amassed men of straw. As Rob Tracinski writes this morning, the speech was a lame attempt at a new framing for the conflict with ISIS, blameshifting to Congress for failing to enact a new AUMF or gun control measures. It will do nothing to achieve anything of the sort, in part because, as with most Obama speeches in his second term, it is more about divisiveness than unity.
Consider Obama’s dismissive line about his political opponents regarding guns. “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?” Well, let us focus on one: that the denial of rights without due process of law is unconstitutional. Eugene Volokh:
“[C]an a person be denied constitutional rights, not based on a past criminal conviction or even a restraining order issued in court under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, but based just on the government’s suspicion? The Feinstein proposal would have provided that the government could bar gun sales to a person if two conditions were met: “the Attorney General” “determines that the [buyer] is known (or appropriately suspected)” to have been involved in terrorism-related conduct “or providing material support support or resources for terrorism,” and if the Attorney General “has a reasonable belief that the [buyer] may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.”
“That’s a very low bar — denial of a constitutional right based on suspicion (albeit “appropriate[]”) about a person’s connections, and belief (albeit “reasonable” belief) about a person’s possible future actions … I can’t see how that’s constitutional. And though the bill would have let the buyer go to court to challenge the attorney general’s decision, the attorney general would simply have had to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the two elements were satisfied — that the attorney general appropriately suspected the buyer and that she had a reasonable belief about what the buyer may do.”
If you believe in civil liberties at all, the idea that the Attorney General of the United States could deny an explicitly guaranteed individual right in the Constitution based solely on suspicion, without having to show cause to the courts, should absolutely give you pause. As a matter of politics, it is the sort of grandstanding position and assertion of righteousness we have seen time and again from this administration, operating as it does without any humility or any respect for Constitutional norms. But if the White House thinks this message, combined with the New York Times front page editorial, is going to move the needle on guns at all they are deluding themselves almost as much as they are about ISIS.
The problem is that the elite modern left thinks all these things which are essential to the American experience are just incidental.
(As an aside, this stance also is going to cause more difficulties for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Expect that Republicans in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania will be using the gun issue to great effect. But that comes later.)
The problem is that the elite modern left thinks all these things which are essential to the American experience are just incidental. They see no connection between Constitutional freedoms and the character of the people; between religious liberty and church attendance and family breakdown; between gun ownership and self-reliance and respect for property; between crushing free speech and destroying our capacity for free thought and creativity; between the loss of American stoicism and the all-encompassing welfare state. They see these originating factors as irritants or unimportant, and think they can all be gotten rid of without fundamentally altering the nature of who we are as a nation.
The liberal elites do this in part because such things are incidental to their own daily lives. Casting aside the Bill of Rights won’t fundamentally change who they are, at least not in any near term. So because you do not use guns, you don’t care about people who do, and you cannot understand why they would ever need or want such things. Same with church. Same with awful public schools, in neighborhoods you would never live. Your tribe of social justice warriors who left the campus will be just fine, so long as the government isn’t threatening gourmet coffee shops or wifi access or prestige cable dramas.
The first priority of the United States government and the president is to secure our liberties – it always has been, and always ought to be.
There is one other point President Obama made – that as commander in chief, he has no greater responsibility than the security of the American people. It is the sort of thing lots of presidents have said. It also happens to be false. If the safety and security of Americans took precedence over all else, then The New York Times’s argument that every AR-15 in the country should be purchased at the cost of billions and melted down into slag would be more palatable – still wrong, but a matter for debate. This is not the case. The first priority of the United States government and the president is to secure our liberties – it always has been, and always ought to be.
Elite liberals like Obama and the New York Times editorialists do not understand that when they argue the American citizenry no longer has the capacity to bear arms, they are arguing that we have lost the capacity for self-government. They are not just saying you only have the right to self-defense as the Attorney General deems you fit; they are saying the inalienable rights of American individuals are subordinate to the will of high-minded politicians. Their interest is in keeping you safe and secure. Whether you are free is, in the grand scheme of things, incidental.
09 April, 2015
Bake me a cake, or else!
Congratulations to John Stossel. During the recent 'conversation' regarding Indiana's law, so many pundits were focused on 'religious' freedom. This isn't just about religious freedom, but freedom in general. Freedom to have opinions which which others disagree. Freedom to use your property/skills/talents as you wish (or to not use them at all). Don't use government to force people to do things you want - how can you do that and at the same time claim to be fighting 'intolerance'?
I think it is silly to deny service to customers because a business owner doesn't like the customer, their behaviors, or their lifestyle. But I do believe the business owner has the right to run his/her business as she sees fit (after all, she is the owner), even if they run it poorly.
Discrimination and the New ‘Inclusive’ America
John Stossel | April 8, 2015
Bake me a cake, or go to jail!
Sadly, that is the new message from "inclusive" America. If you don't want to cater, photograph, preside over, sell pizza at, sell flowers to or otherwise participate in a gay wedding, you will be punished. If you don't want your business to pay for a kind of birth control that you consider murder, you will pay fines until your business is bankrupt.
Personally, I think both birth control and homosexuality are just fine, and gay marriage is as valid as straight marriage. But forcing everyone to act as if they think that way is just wrong. We have moved from "inclusion" to totalitarianism.
The list of people you must treat carefully keeps getting longer. Protected classes now include sex, race, age, disability, nationality, citizenship status, pregnancy, family status and more. I'm in two of those groups. You better treat me well!
Why force someone who disapproves of your actions to bake you a cake? Lots of other bakers would love the business. This debate has moved from inclusion to demanding that everyone adopt your values.
In a free country, bigots should have the right to be bigots. Americans should also have freedom of association.
American lawyers talk about special protection for religious freedom, and in the Hobby Lobby case the Supreme Court said you could escape onerous parts of Obamacare by paying lawyers a fortune and convincing judges that you are a closely-held corporation with religious objections. But why must you be religious to practice what you believe? This should be about individual freedom.
Of course, government must not discriminate. The worst of American racism and homophobia—slavery, segregation enforced by Jim Crow laws, bans on interracial marriage, anti-sodomy laws, etc.—was government-enforced discrimination. That was wrong, and it was right for the federal government to intervene.
But private actions are different. If I start a business with my own money, I ought to be allowed to serve only libertarians, people who wear blue shirts, whatever. It's my business!
My customers have choices. If I am racist or anti-gay, the free market will punish me. Enough people would boycott my business that I would probably lose money quickly.
It would actually be useful to see which businesses refuse to serve one group or another. Tolerance is revealed by how people behave when they are free. American law fosters the illusion that everyone is unbiased, while their real feelings remain hidden, making them harder to boycott, shame or debate.
Punishment from the market is enough. The heavy hand of law is not needed here.
However, given America's history, I accept that there are a few exceptions. In the South, people banned from a lunch counter had few other choices. The Civil Rights Act's intrusion into private behavior was probably necessary to counter the damage done by Jim Crow laws.
But today such coercion is no longer needed. Even in the difficult days of Reconstruction, after the Civil War, business began to bring together whites and blacks who might not always have liked each other but who wanted the best deals. It took several years for racists to get Jim Crow passed so they could put a stop to that erosion of the old racist ways. Government helped keep racism going for several more decades.
Individuals should be allowed to discriminate. I discriminate all the time. I favor people over others when I choose my friends, jobs, hobbies, clubs, religion, etc. So do you.
Elizabeth Taylor married nine times. Had she married again, should the EEOC have ordered her to marry someone from an ethnic minority?
A homophobic baker shouldn't stop a same-sex couple from getting married. Likewise, a gay couple shouldn't force a baker to make them a wedding cake. No one should ever force anyone to bake them a cake.
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