Category: Politics

Benevolent Statism vs. Religious Freedom

Those who are generally unsympathetic toward organized religion may be tempted to dismiss or belittle the recent furor over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers, including religiously-affiliated institutions, must provide coverage for sterilization, contraception and abortifacients. From a hostile secular liberal perspective, any opposition to this measure must be grounded in an irrational desire for public recognition of a religious belief. Adherence to this measure, by contrast, is simply rational compliance with a public health initiative. Such breezy analysis ignores the fact that the proposed mandate is a significant departure from established law regarding freedom of religious conscience, and it exhibits an intellectual confusion of liberal ethical norms with objective scientific reality. That is to say, the notion that contraception is necessary to health requires an expansion of the notion of “health” to include normative social judgments, rather than pure physiological examination.

The legal or constitutional issues are profound, and based on past case law and the current composition of the Supreme Court, it would be extremely surprising if the Obama Administration’s proposed measure will withstand litigation. The movement so strikes at the heart of freedom of conscience that several bishops are openly calling for refusal to comply with this unjust law. To appreciate the significance of this fact, consider that the bishops do not call for civil disobedience regarding existing law allowing divorce, abortion and contraception, or indeed for any other matter, though there are plenty of laws that express ideas hostile or contrary to Catholic teaching. However, none of these laws compel a conscientious Catholic to participate in a gravely immoral act. Further, the opposition is not limited to “conservative” bishops, but extends even to liberal-leaning Catholic figures such as Roger Cardinal Mahony and John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter.

Now, many liberals will dismiss this by saying that the Catholic Church is “wrong” or “backwards” for regarding contraception, abortion and sterilization as gravely immoral, and cite statistics showing most lay Catholics disagree with official Church teaching on contraception in particular. These criticisms show that certain liberals have no understanding of the principles of liberalism. There is no virtue in tolerating only those beliefs you find rational and agreeable. Even fascists tolerate other fascists, and communists tolerate other communists. If liberals only tolerate other liberals to have a voice in the public sphere, they are no more tolerant than anyone else. To adopt the “free exercise of religion” and freedom of religious conscience as a matter of principle means that we respect such freedom regardless of the content of a certain religion. Too often, secular liberals seem to regard religious freedom as something they grant only begrudgingly to keep the peace, not something they truly respect and honor. How could they respect and honor such a freedom, if they think all religion is a stupidity at best, or an oppressive evil at worst?

To make an analogy, one need not agree with the Amish that Christian modesty and simplicity requires refraining from using electricity. One could further point out that most Anabaptists (i.e., Mennonites) have no objection to using electricity and other modern conveniences. This does not abolish the right of the Amish to follow their religious conscience, and no one would think of compelling them to use electricity.

Many liberals tend to mistake their ethical judgments (homosexuality is essentially no different than marriage; contraception is “reproductive health”) for scientific facts. They are forced into such intellectual contortions because they are nominally unwilling to accept the legitimacy of imposing objective moral norms on the public (“you can’t legislate morality”). Thus the liberal, to be consistent, must pretend his ethical judgments are scientific facts. This can only be accomplished by the illogical process of inferring normative judgments from declarative statements.

This move by the Obama administration is based on the assumption that an ideological creed – “contraception is necessary to ‘reproductive health'” – is to be treated as an objective, universally accepted fact. It refuses to recognize the equal validity of alternate constructions, e.g., “contraception is an elective convenience for reasons of avoiding the economic and social consequences of pregnancy”. The notion of “reproductive health” is hardly coherent; if anything, pregnancy, not its prevention, is a sign of reproductive health. Even the manufacturers of contraceptives do not really believe that pregnancy prevention is a question of physical health. When Pfizer issued its recent recall of a non-functioning contraceptive, it explicitly assured customers that there was “no health risk”! Perhaps the women with unwanted pregnancies would have disagreed, but they are entitled to no compensation. If pregnancy were a health affliction, Pfizer would be facing tremendous liability right now.

At any rate, the Obama administration’s rule fails the “compelling state interest” standard for intervention in religious affairs, which previous cases and acts of Congress have established as applying to religiously affiliated institutions and persons, not just houses of worship. Given the widespread availability and inexpensiveness of contraceptives, there are plenty of alternative means of guaranteeing contraceptive access without requiring religious employers to pay for them, making this an especially gratuitous intrusion into the exercise of religious conscience.

As an added note, the mandatory imposition of insurance coverage without any copay is economically unsound, as proven by the past experience of military prescription drug coverage, which until recently had zero copay, resulting in exorbitant waste. The economic irrationality of this rule is only consistent with its ideological origin, which confuses convenience with entitlement. This 1970s-style statist liberalism is already imploding in Europe; it is ironic that our “progressive” president is trying to introduce this system as if it were something novel.

Bin Laden’s Protectors in Pakistan

After a predictable wave of jingoistic euphoria, the death of Osama bin Laden has raised some troubling questions about Pakistan and discredited a lot of the previous conventional wisdom about his whereabouts. To summarize what we know:

  • Bin Laden was not constantly on the move, but had stayed in his final location for several years.
  • He was not in tribal areas near the Afghan border, but deep within Pakistan, not far from the capital.
  • He was in fact still operationally involved with al-Qaeda. He was by no means so preoccupied with evading detection that he could not continue to act as leader.

Regarding the U.S. operation against Bin Laden, it should be clear this was a “kill” mission from the beginning, as the original plan was to destroy the compound with a missile attack. It is hardly credible that trained SEALs would take a head shot to incapacitate an unarmed man if “capture” was a primary objective, rather than a contingency. The U.S. probably wants to minimize blowback by downplaying the cold-blooded nature of the assassination. Most noteworthy is how Obama’s bold disregard for Pakistani sovereignty (as promised in 2007) is praised even by liberals, as his predecessor Bush succeeded in raising American tolerance of overt imperial posturing. The world is our playground, so it seems.

What of the Pakistanis? It is clear by now that, contrary to Sec. Clinton’s initial attempt to emphasize the cooperation of Pakistan, this had been an exclusively American operation for almost a year. The Pakistanis had no knowledge of CIA surveillance in Abbottabad, and they were given no advance notice of the SEAL operation. In fact, the only reason they found out at all was because one of the helicopters crashed. Even then, the SEALs were on the way back to Afghanistan by the time planes were able to scramble. No magical radar-evading or radar-jamming technology was needed, as the helicopters were shaped to leave almost no radar image if they fly low enough, and they could not be sighted visually at night.

Bin Laden certainly had a support network in Pakistan, and it is credible that this included current or former members of the Pakistani military and intelligence service, which are known to contain radical Islamic sympathizers. Still, the high command is of more moderate, secular leanings, which means there was certainly a major intelligence failure on some level if the leadership was unaware of Bin Laden’s presence. The sometimes clumsy surveillance methods of Pakistani intelligence are well attested. Still, the required level of incompetence is not so great as one might think, considering that fortified compounds are commonplace in that part of Pakistan, and that the Americans entertained doubts about the compound for nine months before deciding there was enough evidence to act. The only reason they even found the compound was because they knew the identity and location of Bin Laden’s courier, who took great precaution not to leave an electronic trail to the hideout. Any official Pakistani support received must have been at a low level, judging from the negligible number of armed guards.

As for the civilian government, there is little reason to doubt that Zardari had no knowledge of any coverup, but he is a relatively weak leader in a country dominated by its military establishment. More than three years after the assassination of his wife lifted him to the leadership of his party on a surge of sympathy, the current president has sought to distance himself from his corrupt past, which earned him the nickname of “Mr. Ten Percent,” only to find a more dangerous situation in Pakistan, where top-level terrorists can operate with near impunity, under the noses of the military and security establishment. He is in the difficult situation of simultaneously claiming ignorance and competence.

The U.S., for its part, may be losing its propaganda touch, judging from its weak attempts to spin the released Bin Laden videos. “He dyed his beard and watched himself on television? How vain!” (Either that or he was trying to remove time indicators from his videos and learn what information the press had on him.) “He wore a blanket because he was cold? How frail!” If this is really the best they can do, then there is not much left of the American propaganda machine that Goebbels so admired. Still, even in their prime, Americans have had little of that Roman virtue of recognizing valor in an adversary (apart from the Civil War, where the enemies were Americans). If all our enemies must be cowardly and weak, it is remarkable that we expect to be praised for our victories.

Reflections on Egypt

As a rule, the masses will not revolt against even the worst government unless they are starving, and Egypt is no exception. Having endured the unpopular Mubarak regime for 30 years, Egyptians did not suddenly discover the internet or develop a stronger taste for democracy. What has happened in recent months is that food prices have escalated without an increase in government food subsidies, bringing an already impoverished society to its breaking point.

A nice graphical depiction of Egypt’s food and energy crisis can be found at The Oil Drum, showing how Egypt’s increased oil consumption is leading it to become an oil importing nation for the first time. Without the windfall of oil export revenues, the government can no longer subsidize its failed domestic economy to alleviate the cost of food and other necessities. Egyptians literally have nothing to lose by resisting a government that has denied them the means of subsistence.

Egypt’s problems are an extreme form of similar problems held throughout the Middle East, as global oil exports are down, and many Arab governments find themselves too cash-strapped to keep their populations fed by subsidies. Only in such extremes do we find genuinely spontaneous mass movements from the bottom up, which are not orchestrated by any political or military cadre. The success of the Egyptian revolution in a mere 18 days has removed the biggest obstacle to mass revolt, namely the fear that there is no chance of success.

Ironically, most of the Arab dictatorships came to power by leading populist movements that toppled Western-backed monarchs in the 1950s and 60s. Several of these regimes, facing the same economic problems as their predecessors, eventually became dependent on the US or the USSR for military aid in order to secure their rule. The nations with greater oil wealth could afford to deliver economic improvement to the lower classes, which was generally implemented through socialistic or statist programs. The inefficiencies of socialism led to attempts at privatization reforms, such as those enacted by Mubarak, but the implementation of these reforms reeked of cronyism and corruption, offering little tangible benefit to the lower classes.

The mass revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere have no discernible political program other than to get rid of the existing failed regime. It is by no means guaranteed that the long-term result of these revolutions will be parliamentary democracy. After all, that had been the intent of the 1952 revolution that resulted in Nasser taking charge of Egypt. The present Egyptian military has disavowed any intent to rule, but even civilian leadership in the Middle East often proves reluctant to relinquish power, once obtained. Whatever the form of the new government, it will face the same structural economic and social problems that brought down the previous regime, and free elections will not bring any miraculous solutions. Both the market economy and the social welfare state can bring their fair share of ills, as the wealthy nations of the West have recently learned or re-learned.

Much has been said of the role that so-called “social media” played in the Egyptian revolution. Such tools were undoubtedly helpful in coordinating mass revolts without the help of structured leadership, but they would have come to nought if there was not a broad determination among the people to persevere in their protests. The Egyptian government was astoundingly successful, from a technical perspective, in shutting down the Internet for five days, yet the protests persisted with even greater fervor and finally the government relented. Shortly after the revolution, Syria actually liberalized internet access, realizing that its suppression would only give the people one more occasion for discontent, as if you had cut off power or water or any other utility. The Internet does not create revolutions, but gives voice to discontent that is no less real if the nation is unplugged.