But the distinction is on the other side. A private person can be racist, sexist, and religiously non-neutral. The government cannot be.
The government is constrained in ways that private actors are not constrained.
Yes, in part.
What? No, where did this come from? It’s true that an individual employer could have imposed such rules way back when, but it’s far from shown that all such employers did, or even that a majority did. And what of self-employed pharmacists, who are their own bosses?
Agreed – it is valid. In the case of these particular regulations, I contend it’s unwise.
Yes.
It would be valid, but unwise, to demand that henceforth all teachers must obtain a master’s degree.
And a pharmacist is an agent of the government, his job exists in the first place only because of the government.
And behavior like this undercuts the entire excuse for the profession existing; if pharmacists aren’t going to behave professionally, then the argument that they know better how to dispense drugs safely than some vending machine is moot because they are refusing to act on that knowledge. At least a piece of hardware isn’t going to be out to get me because of some bit of religious or political dogma or sheer spite. And no, this isn’t just about Plan B; if a pharmacist can use his “conscience” as a justification for denying women Plan B, then he can use the same “justification” to deny or mis-dispense any sorts of medication to anyone. A pharmacist who can deny a woman Plan B because of religious hatred can deny a black man antibiotics because God hates blacks, or deny someone anti-AIDS medication, or deny anyone anything they please.
In matters that are truly matters of personal freedom; you can hate Jews until the cows come home, you can only date whites, you can think that people who don’t go to church every Sunday are dirty heathens who can’t be trusted. But in matters that are not actually related to personal freedom, you can no longer enjoy the same degree of action.
Once you go to work as a real estate agent, you cannot refuse to rent to people because their names sound Jewish. Pharmacists may dislike people who don’t follow their religious views, they may hate and scorn them, they may agitate for the laws to be changed against their behaviors. But they should no more be free to deny other people services based on their personal religious beliefs than someone can be to refuse service to people because of their personal racial beliefs. That’s not a matter of personal freedom.
Who I date, that’s personal freedom. What I think, that’s personal freedom.
How I conduct myself in business, especially how I conduct myself in a business which has been granted an iron clad, government enforced monopoly, that’s no longer a matter of personal freedom.
It is valid, and wise, to demand that all teachers teach all the material to all students.
Well, this is probably the crux of our disagreement. If I thought that a pharmacist was an agent of the government, I’d have no objection to the government telling its employee what he had to do, any more than I now object to Walgreen’s telling their employee what to do.
But I don’t agree that a pharmacist is an agent of the government. I don’t agree that mere licensing makes an agent. The government doesn’t pay the pharmacist; indeed, the pharmacist pays licensing and business fees to the government.
Knowing that I dispute the characterization of ‘monopoly’ you’ve applied here, it’s unclear to me why you choose to repeat it in a message that’s presumably designed to persuade me.
In any event, I agree there are areas in which society has made a clear, unambiguous declaration that personal freedom can be vitiated in favor of broad social goals – such as racial equality in society.
However, I don’t agree that Plan B distribution falls into that same category. Far from broad social consensus, a majority of states explicitly reject the ideas you’re pushing.
So I disagree. And in more than half the country, your fellow citizens also disagree.
It’s not, I assume you’ve come to your conclusions.
I’m posting for the onlookers.
But luckily we can still do what’s right even when a majority does not agree. Slavery and Jim Crow were wrong even when a majority agreed with them. The test of a position is its internal logical coherence and the validity of its starting principles, not the number of people who agree with it.
Even assuming I buy your position, which I don’t, that’s still not an argument for letting pharmacists harass, hurt and kill people out of “conscience”. It’s an argument for nationalizing the industry. If there’s no other way to keep pharmacists from abusing their positions than to make them outright government employees, then that’s what we should do.
Oddly enough… I might agree.
I don’t reach that conclusion by saying that “If there’s no other way to keep pharmacists from abusing their positions…”
But if there is a broad consensus that we should, as a society, make certain medications available without regard to business or conscience concerns, then having the government take on the job makes sense.
Are you seriously trying to claim that your position is somehow objectively correct?
This is the problem I find often in discussion with people that identify with “the left.” The belief that yeah, yeah, sure, government of the people and all that, except if the people lack the wit to understand the value of a particular proposition. Then, fuck the people, my way should still be accepted.
That’s a view more suited to a government run by a wise philosopher king.
If your position is supported by " internal logical coherence" and “validity of its starting principles,” then you must persuade a majority of your fellow citizens to support it – that’s what we do in a democratic republic.
Can I try to put it into a bit of a different perspective?
Religious freedom needs to be like this:
Bob is Catholic, and hence believes that Plan B is sinful.
Mary is in a position to be possibly pregnant. How she got that way is entirely moot. She believes that her best option at this point in times is Plan B. She is over 17. Legally she may obtain and use Plan B.
Mary goes into the pharmacy, requests and purchases Plan B as dispensed by Bob.
Bob may not withhold the Plan B as it is a legal request for her to make.
Bob feels Plan B is a sin, Bob is not required to feed Plan B to himself or his wife. Bob has no right to enforce his religious beliefs on anybody but himself. In fact, if his wife requests a dose of Plan B, he has no right to refuse it to her, as she is over 17 and has every legal right to take Plan B if she so desires. He can try to convince his wife not to take Plan B but he can not prevent her from doing so. He has no right to discuss the issue of sin and Plan B with Mary as she is not Bob, nor Bob’s Wife, nor Bob’s daughter. His only option is to dispense a legal option of medication to Mary.
And that is the issue - Bob is trying to enforce his religious beliefs on someone other than himself or his direct family. Mary has the freedom of religion to believe something other than what Bob believes. So what Bob is doing by refusing to issue a dose of Plan B to Mary is force her to follow his religious beliefs. Any other discussion is moot. Religion has no place outside of the family, and church/temple/whatever you call your congregation.
“Objective” and “subjective” are rabbit trails when dealing with morality. I claim that my position is based on valid starting principles cogently connected and brought to reasonable conclusions. I contend that allowing people to make personal religious decisions in their lives, but prohibiting them from forcing their religious beliefs upon others, is the only way to properly maintain a complex society. I further contend that the claim that someone is having their religious freedoms violated because they are unable to impose their religious views on others is poisonous to reasonable discussions of social policy. It is jabbewockian semantic gaming for me to claim that I’m being oppressed and denied religious freedom because I cannot compel you to practice tzedakah.
As I don’t, I’m not quite sure what your point is here, and this is less than a fruitful diversion.
It’s never been “government of the people”. We live in a republic/representative democracy, we do not live in a direct democracy. And we have accepted for quite some time that the views of people can be subordinated to valid principles. If asked, most people would not want to pay taxes. We pay taxes. When asked, most people did not want blacks to be released from bondage or have full civil rights. They were set free, they do have full civil rights.
Pointing to simple numbers is an argument for mob rule, not valid social policy.
No, it isn’t. You know this full well, considering that you’ve often championed a view that the opinions of a few men and women in robes determine the only correct interpretation of the law of the land. Rather obviously, these folks don’t first take a Zogby poll before deciding on how the laws should be interpreted. Moreover, this is nowhere near as controversial as you make it out to be. “Well, a majority of people in our state would like to discriminate against blacks, so nyeh nyeh!” does not hold water these days except among the lunatic fringe represented by some hardcore libertarians.
Should all doctors be required to perform abortions?
Wait — why is that point of view better suited to Platonic autocracy than a democratic republic? My understanding has always been this is the very reason why the US is a republic rather than a truer democracy, viz., the ability to tug on the reins when majority opinion might err. If one feels that by withholding Plan-B a pharmacist acts unjustly or dangerously then why should he consider whether a majority agrees? In the final accounting that’s nothing but a procedural snag.
(And of course he feels his opinion is objectively correct. Most of us do, or they wouldn’t be our opinions.)
False equivalence. All doctors are not qualified to perform abortions. All pharmacists are qualified to dispense Plan B.
No. Because somehow we change from active to passive.
I don’t accept the view that Bob is “forcing” anything upon anyone by remaining passive. If he leapt up and knocked away the Plan B from Mary’s hands? Sure, he’s then forcing his beliefs on her. But if he simply folds his hands and takes no action, then he’s not doing a damn thing.
If he/she/it is an OB/GYN, and the woman in question falls within the legal limits for abortion, yes. [I don’t think you should ask an ENT to do one, they probably don’t remember the procedure from their OB rotation who knows how many years previously]
I would prefer to have a doc that is reasonably proficient in women’s reproductive systems messing about with my girly bits. In an emergency almost anybody with a touch of medical training can deliver a relatively troublefree birth. Heck, mrAru participated in 10 or 12 deliveries when he was training for EMT and doing his practical at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, and did 3 when he was running ambulance with VB1. I would trust him to do a delivery, but not to do an abortion. Training and practice makes a big difference.
Not all doctors even know how as far as I know. But some doctor whose job it is to perform abortions should be required to perform them, even if they think the woman in question is “sinful”.
What happens if the OB/GYN is not capable of performing an abortion, if he or she does not have the proper equipment or training? Still required to do so?
What happens if the pharmacist is not capable of giving out Plan-B, if he does not carry it in stock because it is unprofitable, or he does not agree with dispensing it (for ANYone)? Still required to do so?