EPPC Briefly: Hobby Lobby Victory for Religious Liberty
July 1, 2014
July 1, 2014
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Hobby Lobby Victory for Religious Liberty
From the inception of the so-called HHS contraceptive mandate, EPPC scholars have led the way in exposing the mandate as an unconscionable assault on religious liberty, including in a Supreme Court amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby case.
In the immediate aftermath of the Hobby Lobby ruling, EPPC President Ed Whelan, who has extensively presented the legal case against the HHS mandate, offered his take on the competing opinions in Hobby Lobby and what they may portend. (Click here to watch Mr. Whelan’s Tuesday appearance discussing the case on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.)
In “The HHS Mandate Fight Will Continue,” EPPC Senior Fellow James C. Capretta celebrates the “clear and important victory for religious liberty” but warns of the important battles ahead.
EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin observes that the Hobby Lobby ruling “did not resolve the fate of the mandate, but it did reinforce the broader tradition of American religious liberty, and the foundations of American civil society.”
EPPC Senior Fellow Mona Charen writes that the Hobby Lobby ruling dealt a blow to the Obama administration’s “attempt to steamroll our varied and yes, diverse, nation into conformity on subjects that remain deeply divisive and keenly felt.”
Republicans hoping to win more support from Hispanic Evangelicals – a growing share of the electorate – are aware that these voters tend to be quite socially conservative, but differences emerge over the “core economic questions that animate many conservative activists,” observes EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen in an article for National Review. The solution for conservatives is not to “throw away our principles in search of votes,” but to articulate a vision of “active but not expansionary government” that resonates with Hispanic voters – as some in the GOP are already doing.
See also this piece by EPPC Senior Fellow Peter Wehner explaining why the demographic trends shaping America require Republicans and conservatives to take up the task of “appealing to groups that have not traditionally been supportive of them.”
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EPPC President Ed Whelan, reviewing a new biography of Justice Scalia, discovers that it delivers “a cartoonish and incompetent account” of how Scalia’s political views and religious faith supposedly influence his decisionmaking.
EPPC Senior Fellow Mona Charen excoriates the Obama administration for “contempt of country” in thwarting the ongoing investigation of IRS targeting of conservative groups.
EPPC Senior Fellow Roger Scruton argues that Sunni Muslims have a faith identity that is “incompatible with secular law and national boundaries” and that Iraq and Syria have therefore been “places of constant conflict.”
Addressing the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel urges him to reconsider comments that “have inflicted new wounds on the Body of Christ while exacerbating tensions in world politics.”
EPPC Senior Fellow James C. Capretta explores what a credible replacement for Obamacare would entail and makes the case that Obamacare’s unpopularity “is providing opponents of the law with a not-to-be missed opportunity.”
EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin and co-author Ramesh Ponnuru, two of the authors of a new book of conservative policy reform proposals, respond to prominent critics including David Brooks and Paul Krugman of the New York Times.
On June 18, EPPC was pleased to co-host this year’s Bradley Symposium in Washington, D.C., an event exploring the broad trends that will shape America’s future. To access the complete audio and video recordings of the 2014 Bradley Symposium, including remarks by EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin and featuring EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen, click here.
This new volume from EPPC’s journal The New Atlantis seeks to discover how, given American economic and social life as it now exists — and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme — we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society.
This summer, join EPPC Resident Scholar, and American Spectator movie critic, James Bowman for a series of movies set in the rural and small towns of America’s Midwest. This eighth annual series is presented by EPPC and the Hudson Institute. For more details, click here.
