Should You Have To Pay A Tax To Live In Accordinace With Your Conscience?

At the Supreme Court yesterday, left wing justices questioning lawyers representing Hobby Lobby suggested that the company wasn’t really mandated to provide contraception coverage they find immoral. After all, according to Justice Elena Kagan, the company could just drop insurance for all employees and pay a $2,000/employee tax:

There’s one penalty that is if the employer continues to provide health insurance without this part of the coverage, but Hobby Lobby would choose not to provide health insurance at all. And in that case Hobby Lobby would pay $2,000 per employee, which is less than Hobby Lobby probably pays to provide insurance to its employees. So there is a choice here. It’s not even a penalty by – in the language of the statute. It’s a payment or a tax. There’s a choice.

In other words, the owners of Hobby Lobby and other companies like it would essentially have to pay a tax if they want to run their businesses in accordance with their conscience.

What’s next? A tax on Jews? A tax on free speech? A poll tax?

This is what happens when fake rights come up against actual rights.

Real rights – those enshrined in the Constitution – are negative rights. They restrict others from putting limitations on your liberty. Your right to speak. Your right to worship. Your right to assemble, etc.

Fake rights are positive rights, which hold that you are entitled to be supplied with something (health care, contraception, etc.) by somebody else. But positive rights are, essentially, slavery. Nobody has the right to demand the unwilling service of somebody else.