Wednesday, April 1, 2015

The lesson of Indiana’s RFRA controversy is that if anything, we have underestimated the commitment of the secular left to enforce fealty within a naked public square, where tolerance is no longer a virtue and the power of government must be used to stamp out dissent.

The End of Tolerance And Enforced Morality - The Federalist

...It’s instructive to observe George Stephanopoulos’s behavior on this topic, given his role as a very public shill for the Democratic Party. He’s not interested in having a debate on the subject or in acknowledging the importance of RFRAs – something he obviously did two decades ago while working for President Clinton. He’s interested in spouting aggressive talking points to frame Republicans as bigots for giving people the ability to defend their religious freedom in the courts. That’s the entire goal here: turn religious liberty into something that lives within the bounds of scare quotes.

And this goal is motivated not just by the political aims of the left, but by a broad rejection of tolerance as a virtue. It was all well and good when tolerance was about conservatives and religious types swallowing their objections and going along with things – but now that the left is being asked to do the same thing? Forget about it....