This is a religious civil war: Hobby Lobby only the beginning for new religious theocrats

[DonViejo]

The Tea Party controls the House. Religious extremists run the Supreme Court. We're approaching a very scary time

PAUL ROSENBERG

The United States is still a democratic republic, formally, but what that actually means in practice is increasingly in doubt — and the Hobby Lobby ruling, deeply disingenuous and sharply at odds with centuries of Anglo-American law, exemplifies how that formal reality is increasingly mocked in practice. It is a practice best described as neo-feudalism, taking power away from ordinary citizens, in all their pluralistic, idiosyncratic diversity, and handing it over to corporations and religious dictators in both the public and the private realm. The Supreme Court’s actions are not taking place in a vacuum — though they are filling one: As Tea Party Republicans in the House increasingly bring democratic self-government to a halt, contracting the power of we the people to act as a cohesive self-governing whole, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority shifts ever more everyday power into the hands of private dictatorships.

Hobby Lobby handed for-profit corporations religious rights for the first time in history — a radical break with all previous precedent, and yet a part of a recent pattern, as Norm Ornstein rightly pointed out:

For the majority on the Roberts Court, through a series of rulings that favor corporations over labor or other interests, it is clear that corporations are king, superior to individual Americans—with all the special treatment in taxes and protection from legal liability that are unavailable to us individuals, and now all the extra benefits that come with individual citizenship. Call it the new Crony Capitalism.

The expansion of corporate power in Hobby Lobby has gotten too little attention, and I’ll return to discuss this further below. But the advancement of theocracy — religious dictatorship — is even less clearly seen through the fog of right-wing propaganda about “religious liberty.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/08/this_is_a_religious_civil_war_hobby_lobby_only_the_beginning_for_new_religious_theocrats/

[PearliePoo2]

1. Great article

and pretty darn scary...

[JustAnotherGen]

2. Great article DonViejo!

Only issue I have with it is that the idea is a 'new theocracy' or a new 'crony capitalism'.

This has been in the works since Rousas John Rushdoony said his first words in english.

[pipoman]

3. Our bill of rights has been interpreted

Since it's adoption. We all know that our rights aren't without limitations. Limitations are set by case law resulting from court challenges. SCOTUS is the last word on challenges. SCOTUS can and has reversed itself, that is exceedingly rare. Most questions of church and state have been asked and answered and won't be revisited by SCOTUS in our lifetimes. The Hobby Lobby case was accepted by SCOTUS because it was a completely new question of constitutionality. There aren't many new questions which haven't already been answered. There will be no overturn of previous rulings any time soon, imho.

[Enthusiast]

4. The problem with these Religious extremists and the Supreme Court is

they do not recognize that they have already gone much too far.

They just don't seem to understand the Founder's® vision for the nation.

Their views are from a convoluted perspective.

In their zeal, they would destroy the nation.

[Cosmocat]

5. They have opened up a real can of worms for sure

I agree, the right wing bubble is so reaffirming of their bullshit with no capacity to actually measure and reason things out, they don't know just how far out they are.

And, this sets a precedent ... The ability to argue not doing ANYTHING if you have some "religious" belief is wide open now.

I don't know if they will destroy the nation ... But, they absolutely are fricken clueless, it is all one big relentless movement toward "conservatism" with no vision past their fantasies.

Disturbing.

[starroute]

6. The most interesting part was about how liberatarians aren't really pro-freedom

From the article:

This helps explain why, for example, today’s Tea Party Republicans reject unemployment insurance as “socialist” — if someone out of work has any freedom at all to hold out for a job that will cover their mortgage, say, that’s socialism as Mises would describe it. And he has a point: socialism really is just another word for collectively removing the hidden and semi-hidden forms of coercion that otherwise shape and control our everyday lives. That’s why public education is socialist, too — and why Democratic politicians as well as Republicans are so eager to destroy it nowadays. But none of these other examples is quite as visceral or far-reaching as that of giving women reproductive autonomy equal to that of men.

This, then, is the bottom line: Conservatives (including libertarians) stand for the preservation and reinforcement (if necessary) of purportedly “natural” inequalities, which automatically structure all of society into overlapping forms of dominance and submission, in which the vast majority of people are inherently unfree “by nature.” Any collective action taken to free people from such dependent, powerless living conditions is anathema to them. Democracy itself is anathema to them. And Hobby Lobby is just the latest signal that they are firmly in charge.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Excellent article. Thanks.

[Viva_Daddy]

8. Remember fearing computers or robots would "take over"?

Turns out Corporations (especially "religious corporations&quot are the real danger.