Leviathan & Liberty

Whatever one's ultimate opinion about any number of contemporary topics -- from the Affordable Care Act to the limits of executive power, from government regulation of health care to the promotion of individual and religious liberty -- The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer made some keen observations about ten days ago with which everyone should wrestle.



In "The Gospel according to Obama," he builds to this summary of the the tension (he says "contradiction") in the president's expressed understanding of religion at the National Prayer Breakfast, on the one hand, and through newly announced administration rules concerning certain types of medical health coverage, on the other:

To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.

Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651)

Although perhaps I should say more about this in a separate post, to my mind, Krauthammer is on to something.  But the most important point of the whole flap over requiring provision of contraceptive, sterilizing, and abortifacient medicines and procedures is not strictly the Catholic Church's views on the subject.  It is not about Mr. Obama's perhaps conflicting views on what counts as religion per se and in public life.  The heart of the matter is about the apparent ease with which liberties that define on paper the American political sphere may now in practice be threatened by unlegislated executive fiat.  


Krauthammer, I believe, is a secular, agnostic Jew.  He does not have a dog in the Catholic contraception (or abortion) fight with the administration.  His interest is this particular incarnation of state power.


But many people of a contrary persuasion, perhaps best represented by the editorial board of The New York Times, disbelieve, it seems, that anyone like Krauthammer could have an objection to the president's mandate based on liberty.  It has to be about birth control politics pure and simple, as the Times editorial "The Freedom to Choose Birth Control" from February 10 argues:

The president's solution, however, demonstrates that those still angry about the mandate aren't really concerned about religious freedom; they simply don't like birth control and want to reduce access to it.

Some might be forgiven for wondering how the Times editors know all of the reasons in the minds of objectors.  As for the "demonstrable" evidence in support of this assertion, what about the fact that the editors of The Wall Street Journal saw it differently in their February 13 "Immaculate Contraception: An 'accommodation' that makes the birth-control mandate worse?"  (Log in may be required.)  And so goes the editorial and op-ed back and forth from arguably the nation's three leading newspapers.


The WSJ editors, like The Washington Post's Krauthammer, are not really focused on birth control.  The former explains their scruple with the president's so-called "accommodation" in economic terms that underscores the new reach of presidential, cabinet secretary, and regulatory agency power:

Yesterday's new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly.

University of Chicago professor John Cochrane offered a slightly different economic objection in his op-ed "The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate:"

Every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums. If your employer is paying for your health insurance, he could be paying you more in salary instead. Or, he could be lowering prices and selling his product to you and all consumers more cheaply. Someone is paying. Not even HHS tries to claim that these "recommended preventive services" will lower overall costs.

Harvard's Greg Mankiw pointed out a semantic objection to the "accommodation" as a distinction without a difference.

A.  Administration's original position:  An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B.  Administration's new position:  An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance.  The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

The administration maintains that A is effectively not B.


Moreover, if, as widely reported,Vice President Biden (a pro-Roe, pro-contraception Catholic) opposed the president's birth control mandate primarily because of the likely political backlash but also because the policy imposed a moral view on religious objectors, is it really true that those who still oppose the mandate just simply don't like birth control and are out to reduce access to it?


Reasonable people may disagree about the merits of one position or another, but determining what is the practically virtuous viewpoint and course of action in a just society requires squarely assessing the deep issues at stake -- and why people hold the view they do.


The significance of Krauthammer's column and the editorial by the WSJ is this:  the spotlight they throw on the lingering, and perhaps increasing, tension between Leviathan and liberty.