An Observation About Hobby Lobby & the Left

David French writes:

[The left's hysterical reaction is] instructive because it demonstrates the extent to which the Left is emotionally and ideologically committed to the power of the regulatory state. For some time, the Left has been selling the public and the courts on the notion that somehow the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually the entire panoply of property rights. In effect, your business is not “your” business at all, but instead all aspects of its operations exist at the whim of the state, and if the state wants to draft you into its child-killing abortion crusade —-- or wants to muzzle you during political campaigns -- then you best salute and fall in line.

It occurs to me that the Left is attempting to create a system wherein there are two different classes of citizenship, one fully possessed of its right to speak and act politically, the other whose rights in this regard are sharply curtailed.

That's obvious, that's not the interesting part.

Here's the interesting part, I think: The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.

Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business as your conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.

And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

This seems to me to be very congruent with the Left's conception of a cadre of people who will Do all the thinking for the rest of the country -- the revolutionary vanguard -- and the rest of the people who will actually generate the economic surpluses that the vanguard will then divvy up.

The Left continues to conceive of their idea of a Utopia in which some -- they themselves -- are the the thinkers, the plotters, the dreamers and the schemers -- and everyone else is merely a doer, a revenue-generating economic unit which is expected to follow the orders issued to them by the Thinking Class.

posted by Ace at 05:24 PM

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