Monthly Archives: January 2022

On Religious Freedom Day, we commemorate the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The legislation was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and eventually shepherded by James Madison through the legislature in 1786. Historians agree that it provided the basis for which the framers of the Constitution and later, the First Amendments approach to matters of religion and government and the rights of citizens. But religious freedom gets in the way of governmental, religious and economic tyrants and the wannabes. Certain interests didnt like all this at the time and they dont like it now.

Among these are certain wealthy libertarian conservatives who are busy undermining religious freedom. Their goal is the domination of society by mythical market forces. To get there, they are underwriting reactionary religious allies to undermine their common enemy: healthy democratic institutions that are dedicated to delivering for the common good, and able to thwart the best efforts of movements seeking religious supremacy of their beliefs over others. These same forces also funded elements of the January 6 Insurrectionist movement.

In a healthy democracy such as ours, faith often informs societal morality to a critical point. Pluralistic society should operate like a well-made clock. People of good conscience share certain basic values, notions of social behavior regarding such things as tolerance, as well as repugnance to theft and violence. These values operate like the finely tuned gears of a timepiece. As each cog operates within its own parameters, it fits with the next, all working together to tell the correct time of the day.

This is similar to the objective understanding of a moral good.

But there is also a type of moral good that is more subjective, and is not shared. Take for example, embryonic stem cell research. The official position of the Catholic Church is complete opposition and is considered a sin. Judaism and many Protestant denominations, however, approve of this life-saving research. Indeed, in Judaism it is considered a sin not to do such late potentially life-saving research. This is where one faiths particular belief may be contrary to consensus.

To use government to deny another individual access to a subjective good such as stem cell research or reproductive rights is not religious freedom but the elevation of the religious doctrines of some, over those of many if not most others. This also elevates certain religious doctrines over broadly accepted ideas of the common good.

As an American Catholic, I was disturbed to discover that reactionary elements of my faith are being underwritten by libertarian source of dark money:

DonorsTrust.

As Brian Fraga of The National Catholic Reporter explained:

Fraga reminded us of how Donor Trusts operates:

A lede to an article posted by The Daily Beast last November revealed a disturbing discovery: Efforts to overturn the election. Jan. 6 organizers. White supremacist groups. And more than a dozen private and public universities. Continuing directly, They all have one thing in common: They received anonymous funding funneled through a single conservative dark money behemoth.

That behemoth is Donors Trust.

Returning to the National Catholic Reporter piece, Fraga further points out:

Included in those receiving funds were the Diocese of Spokane, Washington; the Thomas More Society; the Acton Institute; and the San Francisco Archdiocese's Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship.

In total, nonprofits affiliated with the Catholic Church or that have worked closely with church officials on anti-abortion advocacy and other policy and legal matters received at least $10 million from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that in 2020 doled out more than $182 million in grants to organizations like the VDARE Foundation and New Century Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League consider to be white supremacist groups.

The Diocese of Spokane, Washington is overseen by Bishop Thomas Daly who is known for his outspoken culture war rhetoric.

The Thomas More Society is essentially a law firm dedicated to culture war issues such as combating reproductive rights and anti-vax causes.

The Acton Institute is a libertarian think tank, led by Catholic priest Robert Sirico.

The San Francisco Archdiocese's Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship is led by Executive Director Maggie Gallagher, a well-known conservative commentator known for her opposition to reproductive rights, LGBT rights and single parenting. The organizations board of directors includes Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who is well-known for his diatribes against President Biden and for his anti-vaxism.

What all of the above have in common is their desire to use public governing power to impose theocratic Catholic notions regarding LGBTQ issues, reproductive rights and potential life-saving medical research. To do so, they will go against Church teaching on economics by providing religious cover to libertarian conservatives.

Stephen Schneck, the former director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America noted, "It's clear that pure libertarianism cannot fit under a Catholic umbrella. He went on to warn, "Everybody should realize that by taking this money, they're opening the door to the far right's efforts to further politicize our church."

It all comes down to this: wealthy libertarian conservatives are willing to use religious conservatives who wish to impose a form of theocracy upon all Americans. These theocrats want to impose their subjective theological understanding upon the many of us who disagree with their various interpretations. In order to do so, they will close their eyes and take money from the very people who wish to subvert their faith in order to bring them about a libertarian fantasy world where many traditional government services become privatized, and never reach the poor, for which even the conservative Pope John II has expressed a preferential option.

And to do so, these libertarians are willing to destroy religious freedom.

Continue reading here:

The Libertarian Conservative Threat to Religious Freedom - Daily Kos

But then comes the complicating factor, the part of my experience that turned me more right-wing. Because in the second phase of my illness, once I knew roughly what was wrong with me and the problem was how to treat it, I very quickly entered a world where the official medical consensus had little to offer me. It was only outside that consensus, among Lyme disease doctors whose approach to treatment lacked any C.D.C. or F.D.A. imprimatur, that I found real help and real hope.

And this experience made me more libertarian in various ways, more skeptical not just of our own medical bureaucracy, but of any centralized approach to health care policy and medical treatment.

This was true even though the help I found was often expensive and it generally wasnt covered by insurance; like many patients with chronic Lyme, I had to pay in cash. But if I couldnt trust the C.D.C. to recognize the effectiveness of these treatments, why would I trust a more socialized system to cover them? After all, in socialized systems cost control often depends on some centralized authority like Britains National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or the controversial, stillborn Independent Payment Advisory Board envisioned by Obamacare setting rules or guidelines for the system as a whole. And if youre seeking a treatment that official expertise does not endorse, I wouldnt expect such an authority to be particularly flexible and open-minded about paying for it.

Quite the reverse, in fact, given the trade-off that often shows up in health policy, where more free-market systems yield more inequalities but also more experiments, while more socialist systems tend to achieve their egalitarian advantages at some cost to innovation. Thus many European countries have cheaper prescription drugs than we do, but at a meaningful cost to drug development. Americans spend obscene, unnecessary-seeming amounts of money on our system; America also produces an outsize share of medical innovations.

And if being mysteriously sick made me more appreciative of the value of an equalizing floor of health-insurance coverage, it also made me aware of the incredible value of those breakthroughs and discoveries, the importance of having incentives that lead researchers down unexpected paths, even the value of the unusual personality types that become doctors in the first place. (Are American doctors overpaid relative to their developed-world peers? Maybe. Am I glad that American medicine is remunerative enough to attract weird Type A egomaniacs who like to buck consensus? Definitely.)

Whatever everyday health insurance coverage is worth to the sick person, a cure for a heretofore-incurable disease is worth more. The cancer patient has more to gain from a single drug that sends their disease into remission than a single-payer plan that covers a hundred drugs that dont. Or to take an example from the realm of chronic illness, just last week researchers reported strong evidence that multiple sclerosis, a disease once commonly dismissed as a species of hysteria, is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. If that discovery someday yields an actual cure for MS, it will be worth more to people suffering from the disease than any insurance coverage a government might currently offer them.

So if the weakness of the libertarian perspective on health insurance is its tendency minimize the strange distinctiveness of illness, to treat patients too much like consumers and medical coverage too much like any other benefit, the weakness of the liberal focus on equalizing cost and coverage is the implicit sense that medical care is a fixed pie in need of careful divvying, rather than a zone where vast benefits await outside the realm of whats already available.

Link:

Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views - The New York Times

As of Jan. 15, there were 2,218,374 people registered to vote in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma State Election Board. (Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash)

OKLAHOMA CITY Registered Republicans increased their majority among Oklahoma voters in the last two years, while Democrats lost ground and percentages of registered independent and Libertarian voters both increased, according to figures released Tuesday by the Oklahoma State Election Board.

The board released its annual voter registration report, which showed that as of Jan. 15 there were 2,218,374 people registered to vote in the Sooner State. That compared favorably to Jan. 15, 2020, when there were 2,090,107 Oklahomans registered to cast ballots.

Slightly more than half of registered voters in the state 50.6% identify as Republicans. In January 2020, some 48.3% were registered Republicans.

By contrast, 31.4% of state voters as of Jan. 15 identified as Democrats. That compared to 35.3% who identified as Democrats in 2020.

Some 17.2% of state voters identify as independents, while 1% identify as Libertarian.

Doing the math, there currently are 1,122,582 registered Republicans in Oklahoma, 696,723 registered Democrats, 381,088 independents and 17,981 Libertarians.

Oklahomas official voter registration statistics are counted every year on Jan. 15.

According to Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax, it is easy to register to vote in Oklahoma. Eligible applicants can fill out applications using the OK Voter Portal registration wizard or download a Voter Registration Application from the State Election Board website. Applications are also available at all 77 county election board offices in the state as well as at most tag agencies, post offices and libraries.

The next voter registration deadline is March 21.

Current voters who need to make changes to their registration can update an address within the same county and/or party affiliation online using the OK Voter Portal or by submitting a new Voter Registration Application to their county election board.

For more information on voter registration or to view historical voter registration statistics, online go to oklahoma.gov/elections.

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Report reveals more Oklahomans registered to vote - Journal Record

Its an issue that has long engaged my attention: Where do we draw the line between autonomy and subjugation, between when we should be left alone and when we must be made to conform for the common good?

I have strong libertarian instincts, so I have always argued for the minimum government necessary to protect us against threats to our lives and property, and that otherwise we should be free to pursue our own interests and flee our own demons. The laws should be few but well defined, clearly explained and enforced equally against all offenders.

That viewpoint gives us an obvious place to draw the line: If my actions would harm only me, let it be. If they could harm others, a case can be made for government intervention.

But we can see a problem with that simple demarcation just by looking at Indiana traffic laws.

Prohibitions against driving under the influence are entirely justifiable because the drunken driver endangers everybody else on the road. Mandatory use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets should be on the other side of the line, since we only risk our own lives with noncompliance.

Indiana, alas, cannot handle the distinction. Seat belts are mandatory; motorcycle helmets are not. And the reason is not complicated: politics. Motorcycle riders have an active lobby. Car drivers do not.

That dilemma the implementation of necessary and understandable law complicated by political considerations has been brought into sharper focus by the Covid pandemic and the response to it. We should now be thinking much more deeply about the relationship between governors and the governed.

That relationship may not have been broken, but it has certainly been sorely tested, because the government has squandered the faith of the governed without which we lack the trust civil society needs to exist.

Time and time and again, we have been misled about well, everything. Masks. Vaccinations. Social distancing. The chances of serious effects, hospitalizations, death.

It could be said that our politicians lied to us in a cynical attempt to curry favor with one group and demonize another group, or merely to savor the sense of power the emergency gave them.

Or we could be less cynical and say we have succumbed to a mistaken idea of science. Starting with global warming alarmism, we were encouraged to view the science as settled truth instead of a trial-and-error search for the truth. Now, with the pandemic, we expect the scientific answers to always hold instead of being subject to change as more data emerge. The pairing of politics, which is about short-term answers to immediate concerns, and science was always a bad marriage; we should be beginning to understand just how dysfunctional it is.

In either case, we keep repeating the same mistakes. Given the low threat level to everyone except the elderly and those with underlying conditions, the economy should not have been shut down, and incalculable damage was done to a whole generation of children by closing their schools. Yet, with every wave of new-variant infections, there are those who call for those same responses, and too many who willing accept them.

Early in the pandemic, I wrote that another crisis, similar to this but worse, would surely come, and we should learn from this episode to better handle the next one. Today I really wonder if we are capable of that.

As I write this, Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 tennis player in the world, has been kicked out of Australia and denied the opportunity to compete in that countrys Open tournament because he refused to get the Covid vaccine, despite the fact that he had suffered through the virus and thus had better immunity than the vaccine could give him.

They could have forbidden entry to the country in the first place, but they let him come and then jerked him around for 11 days before sending him on his way. Not for any valid medical reason but because, in the words of one analysis, he was seen as someone who could stir up anti-vaccine sentiments.

I feel for you, pal, I really do. A line was crossed here, but not by you.

Leo Morris, columnist for The Indiana Policy Review, is winner of the Hoosier Press Associations award for Best Editorial Writer. Contact him at leoedits@yahoo.com.

Read more from the original source:

Covid and the Djokovic line | Opinion | shelbynews.com - Shelbynews

Sam Bright unravels the ties between Conservative leadership hopeful Liz Truss and Westminsters network of opaque libertarian think tanks

Boris Johnsons premiership of the Conservative Party is dying. It is currently unclear how slowly or quickly the rot is taking hold, but there is little doubt that his political career is on a steep, downward trajectory.

His Downing Street team held multiple parties in breach of lockdown rules both this year and last, some of which were attended by the Prime Minister. The public backlash has been fierce, with focus groups telling former Downing Street pollster James Johnson that the Prime Minister is a coward.

There was something about him that made him a bit more personable to me, one voter in the focus group said, who backed the Conservatives for the first time in 2019. Its gone now, because weve lost that trust in him. Now hes just a buffoon He cant be trusted.

Scenting an opportunity, rivals to Johnsons throne are now encircling the Prime Minister preparing their campaigns for the moment when his leadership begins its final descent. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is a front-runner in this pack, by virtue of her popularity among Conservative Party members.

But Truss also has another crucial constituency of support that may bolster her efforts to seize control of the Conservative Party: for years, she has developed close ties to the Tufton Street network a group of libertarian think tanks and lobbying groups, many of which are opaquely funded, that for years have exerted considerable influence on the policy decisions and the operation of the Tories.

Several of the groups are currently or were formerly based in brick-clad offices along Tufton Street in Londons Westminster, creating an association between a political ideology and the address as well as suspicions that these libertarian organisations closely coordinate their work.

Tufton Street is much like Fleet Street the former habitat of the newspaper industry. While the titles that were once based there have now scattered across London, Fleet Street is still used as a shorthand phrase for the industry much like Tufton Street and the world of libertarian politics.

Indeed, Shahmir Sanni, a Brexit whistleblower who formerly worked within the Tufton Street network, says that these groups regularly held meetings at 55 Tufton Street to agree on a single set of right-wing talking points and to [secure] more exposure to thepublic.

These organisations are bound by their support for Brexit the Vote Leave campaign was originally registered at 55 Tufton Street and their vigour for low taxes, laissez faire economics, a smaller state, and seemingly close relationship with Liz Truss.

Attempting to institutionalise a right-wing political ideology, the Conservative Party has deployed the public appointments system to install sympathetic individuals in prominent government roles.

This strategy has been adopted by Truss, seen actively during her time as International Trade Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, which involved the awarding of public positions to Tufton Street insiders.

In October 2020, for example, the radical, right-wing website Guido Fawkes gleefully reported that Truss had appointed a swathe of free market think tankers to her refreshed Strategic Trade Advisory Group a forum of businesses and academics, which meets regularly to consider the UKs international trade policies.

These appointments included:

Lord Hannan himself was also appointed as an advisor to the Board of Trade a commercial body within the Department for International Trade in September 2020. His Initiative for Free Trade was formerly based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with Colviles Centre for Policy Studies, based around the corner from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Following these appointments to the Strategic Trade Advisory Group, former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake wrote to Truss, asking whether proper due diligence had taken place in the recruitment process. Brake asked her to explain what additional checks had been carried out on the organisations that employ these individuals which have a history of failing to declare their donors to ensure that they are not funded by those who might be deemed to be agents of a foreign principal.

Core members of Truss own team have also been drawn from the Tufton Street network.

Sophie Jarvis who previously worked as head of government affairs at the Adam Smith Institute has been a special advisor to Truss at the Department for International Trade and now the Foreign Office. Nerissa Chesterfield, former head of communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, was also employed as a special advisor to Truss from August 2019 to February 2020 leaving to work for Rishi Sunak, one of Trusss main competitors for the Conservative leadership.

Truss has also recently been given responsibility for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU tasked with ensuring a diplomatic resolutions to various trade disputes. Assisting Truss in this task is Minister of State for Europe Chris Heaton-Harris who chaired the European Research Group, a network of hard-right Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, from 2010 to 2016.

In August 2019, Truss appointed eight advisors to recommend locations for new, post-Brexit freeports ports where normal tax and customs rules do not apply two of whom were senior members of Tufton Street think tanks. One was Tom Clougherty head of tax at the Centre for Policy Studies. Clougherty was previously executive director of theAdam Smith Institute, managingeditor at the libertarian Reason Foundation, and senior editor at the CatoInstitute co-founded and part-funded by the Koch brothers, two radical, right-wing American billionaires.

Truss has surrounded herself with Tufton Street figures, with her departments often relying on their policy advice. She and her ministers held a swathe of official meetings with representatives of Tufton Street think tanks and lobbying groups during her time at the Department for International Trade, departmental records show.

Controversially, two meetings between the Institute of Economic Affairs and Truss were removed from departmental records in August 2020 justified on the basis that they were personal rather than official meetings. Labour accused Truss of appearing to be evading rules designed to ensure integrity, transparency and honesty in public office, and the records were subsequently reinstated.

It was also revealed in December 2018 that Truss met with five American libertarian groups during a visit to Washington D.C. that cost taxpayers more than 5,000. The organisations included:

The majority of these organisations have been closely associated with climate change denial or policies that obstruct efforts to address climate change and its effects.

Americans for Tax Reform belongs to aninternational coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations, according to DeSmog. This includes the TaxPayers Alliance an influential UK libertarian pressure group founded by Matthew Elliot, who was the CEO of the Vote Leave EU Referendum campaign.

Elliott, an authoritative figure on the right, reserved special praise for Truss after an event hosted by Policy Exchange in September 2021, in which they both participated. Truss was on great form, he said, outlining a bold, exciting vision for how boosting international trade benefits UK consumers and workers across the country.

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Truss, along with a number of her colleagues, recently signed up as a parliamentary supporter of the Free Market Forum a new free market project launched by the Institute of Economic Affairs and advised by Elliott.

The MP for South West Norfolk since 2010, she is viewed widely as a political chameleon a former Liberal Democrat and a supporter of the Remain campaign in 2016 but her libertarian convictions have been evident since entering Parliament in 2010.

At the September 2021 Policy Exchange event, the Oxford University graduate emphasised her desire to [champion] open markets and free enterprise, saying that protectionism is no way to protect peoples living standards. This could well have been a veiled swipe at her boss, Boris Johnson, who has been seen as an interventionist Prime Minister using state spending and powers to achieve his political objectives, and raising taxes as a result.

At this critical time, we need trade to curb any rise in the cost of living through the power of economic openness, Truss added.

These sentiments chime with the attitudes of the Tufton Street network, establishing Truss as the Thatcherite contender in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest whenever it may take place.

Johnson has authoritarian instincts, and is certainly not a moderate Prime Minister. However, whichever direction the Conservative Party takes in the post-Johnson era, it seems likely to be more radical particularly in relation to economics. Truss, as the Tufton Street candidate, represents the sharp end of this spear.

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My older brother, Bill, claimed to be a libertarian, although I think he was closer to an anarchist. He believed that most of societys ills were caused by government, and claimed to want no government at all.

As one form of protest, he refused to wear a seat belt, since the state required it. And being a taxi driver in Hawaii, he was taking quite a chance.

Too much of one, as it turned out. One fall day in 1983 he got into a serious accident, one that was nearly fatal and required a four-month hospital stay. He was never the same after that. His motor skills were compromised, he limped slightly, he was unable to play sports. He also became prone to strokes, and died at the age of 74, a premature death in my family.

Apparently Bill was both unconcerned about the possible harm he might bring upon himself and unmindful about the grief he caused our parents, who had to suffer through several weeks of doubt about whether he would live, and several months of concern about what his life would become.

I have to admire him for being so faithful to his beliefs, though. Even after the accident, he refused to wear a seat belt for the rest of his needlessly shortened life. But for resisting the law when the only possible consequence was injury to himself, that I find reckless and asinine.

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I didnt think there were a lot of people like Bill who were so irrational about their political beliefs. Then the other day it occurred to me that there are a great many of them, all around me. In fact the similarity to my brothers situation is striking.

These people are in proximate danger to their lives and health; the consequence of losing their gamble with fate is harm to themselves and suffering of their loved ones; avoiding the problem is remarkably easy; and their reason for resisting is a perceived affront to personal liberty.

Im referring, of course, to those who accept the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines but refuse to take them. Their actions carry the same consequence as my brothers, with one notable addition. The unvaccinated can infect others, who then may fall ill or die. A car accident doesnt spread like a virus.

I have encountered several cases recently of someone in serious need of emergency care who has not been able to receive it because so many hospital beds are taken by COVID-19 victims, most of whom are unvaccinated.

At this point, accepting vaccination has little to do with political views or personal liberty. Refusing vaccination doesnt give you any rights you dont already have. But it is a way of giving possibly life-saving help to a fellow citizen.

Bob Murley lives in Grass Valley.

Go here to see the original:

Bob Murley: Give life-saving help to a fellow citizen Get vaccinated - The Union