Here’s a good way to understand politics in America: The State, and its boosters, use State power to shackle or crush its rivals, such as the Church, private charity, local community and the free market.
This is at play in the Obama administration’s contraception mandate and the current stage in the gay marriage fight, which involves outlawing commerce by those who don’t accept gay marriage. This is in evidence in the writings of liberals who argue that defending voluntary association is trying to “eliminate any notion of the public” or writers who are “tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises [hospitals, schools], hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars — and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy.”
But it’s not just liberals who crack down on civil society — it’s also authoritarian Republicans. Witness Ohio’s latest move, as described by the Cato Institute’s Jason Bedrick:
I expect, in coming years, more of an all-out assault on homeschooling and private education. We can’t have people who reject the State’s ideology “indoctrinating” our kids, can we?
