Just started listening to a new podcast by The Bechtloff and I love it. Very entertaining. He's a new Christian and he has talked about his struggles with the churches he has attended; he is a tech geek and talks about video games; he is a libertarian and talks about politics. Well worth a listen if you have a hole in your schedule and want an entertaining listen.
Today, however, he completely missed the point. He was talking about the Hobby Lobby case and the SCOTUS decision and took the opportunity to rip into conservatives for missing the point. He claims that social conservatives are opposed to birth control and doesn't understand why they don't focus on the whole fiasco that is Obamacare instead of one little aspect. So what did he get totally wrong?
One, Obamacare will never be repealed while President Obama is in office. It would take a filibuster proof majority in both houses and that isn't going to happen. Even bills that would modify Obamacare to make it less onerous have no chance of passage. The House has passed several bills, including one that would have authorized the President to do what he had already done in postponing the employer mandate. The Senate never took it up and the President threatened to a veto if it got to his desk. Veto a bill that approves what he has already done.
Two, conservatives who supported the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby cases are NOT opposed to birth control. Many of them may be opposed to abortion (a more relevant argument in the case of Hobby Lobby since this case only dealt with abortifacients), but mainly conservative support for these cases has to do with individual liberty. Yes, liberty. The First Amendment to the Constitution. The one that says that we have freedom of religion. The Affordable Care Act violated that freedom by mandating that American citizens pay for medical procedures that violated their religious beliefs. The SCOTUS overturned that law (I know, not on 1st A grounds but overturned it nonetheless). I don't know where B gets this idea that social conservatives oppose birth control. The only people I know who oppose BC are Catholics and they are just as likely to be liberals as conservatives (Just ask the pope how he feels about Marxism).
In this case I think that B is conflating the ideas of individual liberty (can't be forced by the government) to opposition to what the government is forcing you to do. So let me be clear. Conservative folks want to be left alone. Conservative folks don't want the federal government mandating every aspect of their lives. We will support anyone who fights that type of government overreach, whether we agree with the issue or not. I disagree with pot smokers. I think it is bad for you. I also voted for the legalization and I will vote for the decriminalization of other drugs if the issue comes up. Government has no business making decision for us. The purposes of government are and should be strictly limited and controlling personal choice in virtually any arena does not, in my mind, fall under those limited purposes.
That being said, listen to The Bechtloff's podcast. It is worth it.
1 comment:
Perhaps I should clarify some things regarding my position. First, I actually agree with the Hobby Lobby ruling. No business owner should be forced to provide things like this that violate their personal beliefs. But, it is also largely irrelevant and is a small part of Obamacare. I contend that large sections of Social Conservatives spent way too much energy early in this fight, before it even became a law, fighting over this little part of it rather than the whole thing. Mainstream conservatives and social conservatives always seem to manage to focus on the less important issues, so that even when they win battles, they still ultimately lose the war because they fought for the wrong hills.
And as for social cons being against birth control, I have spent a lot of time listening to Evangelical Culture, or Churchianity as I like to call it, and often see them attacking birth control, albeit rarely overtly. A good somewhat recent article is this one from Breakpoint.
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/22333
And of course, thanks for listening man.
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