Monday, July 07, 2014

I remember the '60s ...

Then, during the '60s, many public figures, Joan Baez being the one that comes to mind, as an act of conscience had withheld a portion of income tax equivalent to the part of the federal budget financing our nation's effort in Vietnam to continue French imperialist counter-nationalist policy that the French themselves abandoned after Dien Bien Phu.

Then the government sued against that act of sincere pacifist conscience, and the courts compelled the absent portion of taxes to be paid with penalty, and they were paid. Nobody went to prison over it, but that was the alternative to compelled financing of warfare, in which the objectors did not believe.

Now we see that these were individual acts, not part of any long established sect dating to Constantine or more recent in its formation. But, so what? Why should organizational number games be a determinant of sincerity of conscience? David Green of Hobby Lobby seems a bit of a lone duck in his upheld world/belief view, but that's hunky dory with the Hobby Lobby five, themselves having lived to this point allied to the Roman sect.

Following dogma announced by others, nations away, is less directly an act of conscience than formulating thoughts for oneself. Obedience to dogma is less rational.

However, we have Hobby Lobby, on contraception; whereas war is a far greater hell, the intentional murder of others who are conscious prescient actually sentient adults having their lives intentionally cut short by other conscious prescient actually sentient adults, often in very ghastly ways, and yet Constantine's church has not categorically formed any dogma about war as evil, and indeed historically has welcomed war in the political interests of Constantine's church; the crusades and war in Europe during Reformation years being examples.

If there is a resolution of what appears a clear logical inconsistency, it might lie in amending the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), to undo Hobby Lobby's worse aspects and implications.

I struggle with the notion war is okay, contraception choice is not. Where is the sense of proportion to that?

(Sorry about the clear mischoice of words, which has been updated. Prescience is often too lacking in wartime.)