RRPP: Rights, Responsibilities, Power, and Privilege.

The more I hear about this health insurance issue that conservatives call a War On Religion and liberals call a War On Women, the more I hear people talking past each other. So, here’s my attempt to bridge the gap and show that although both sides have valid concerns, they’re both ignoring some key points.

Before we get started, though, let’s get the question of writer bias out of the way. Here’s where I stand, generally speaking. If you haven’t read it yet, take a few minutes and do so. We’ll wait.

…Okay, are you back? Good. Back to the issue at hand.

For those of you who don’t know the issue I mean, here’s what happened. The federal government took a rule that 28 states already had in place and applied it on a national basis. That rule requires that employer-provided health insurance coverage must include preventative care with no copay…and it defines contraception as preventative care.

The conservatives objected to this because, as a labor law, it applied to all employers and made no exceptions for religious organizations or religious institutions. More specifically, the Catholic Church demanded that it be allowed to refuse to cover contraception for employees of either the Church itself or of non-church organizations it runs (hospitals, charities, and so on). In turn, the liberals objected to that as a violation of the rights of female employees.

So, who’s right? Neither of them, not entirely. I agree with the position the liberals have taken, but not with their “War On Women” rhetoric. This is where RRPP comes in.

This isn’t about religious liberty. Both the employers and the employees have the right to freedom of (non)belief, so the religious freedom issue applies to both sides and thus drops out of the equation altogether.

This also isn’t about sex or contraception. While that was certainly the trigger for the debate, it is not the true issue here. That takes out the reproductive rights/women’s rights issue. This isn’t even about health insurance, Obamacare, or labor law.

So what is it about? Balance. Specifically, it is about the balance that must exist between the rights of the privileged and the responsibilities that come with that power. In that light, I believe the situation becomes clear: the right of the employees to proper medical coverage outweighs any right the employer may have to impose his prejudices through the power he wields. There is a critical distinction between the position of “employer” and the person who holds that position, and that’s what’s getting lost here.

If nothing else, it’s a numbers issue. One man, no matter how rich or powerful, should not get to use his position of power to impose his morals on those under him. Whether it’s a Catholic bishop denying contraception, a Jehovah’s Witness denying transfusions, or a Christian Scientist denying everything but prayer, that’s not their right. Yes, those people absolutely have the right to refuse such care for themselves, but they cannot be permitted to deny those options to others.

I can hear the objection now, though: “But Obama’s using his position as President to impose his morals on employers!” Well, no. See, preventative health care is a fiscally responsible policy. It lowers insurance costs, because the insurer pays a little bit now instead of a lot more later. The rule makes financial sense, which really exposes the idiocy of the argument used by those who want to be exempted from it. They’re saying that they don’t want to “pay” for contraception, when the truth is that they have to pay extra to deny that coverage. Run that by me again?

That’s why Obama’s compromise was a stroke of genius: by saying that the insurance provider will cover those costs for institutions claiming a religious exemption, everybody wins. The insurer wins by saving money in the long term. The employer wins by maintaining the legal fiction that he’s not covering something he morally opposes. And, of course, the employee wins by getting better health care.

And yet, the conservatives are still complaining about this. I would ask why, but we all know the answer: This is an election year.

Robert A. Heinlein’s “Future History” timeline records that in 2012, a backwoods preacher named Nehemiah Scudder was elected to the Presidency and transformed the nation into a theocracy. Frighteningly prescient, eh?

So, it looks like I may post some political content here, too. Comes with the territory, I guess. However, I want to start off by getting my biases out of the way right up front. After all, people are going to wonder what they are anyway, so why not save everybody the trouble?

I am a straight white male. I live in the southeastern United States, or “The South.” I was raised Southern Baptist in the fundamentalist tradition, but I became an atheist during high school. That’s “atheist” as in “one who does not believe in any gods,” not as in “one who believes that there are no gods.” If you cannot or will not distinguish the difference between the two positions, you might as well stop reading right now; I am very choosy about my words, because I want to communicate clearly. Shades of meaning are important, especially when discussing highly-charged issues.

Politically, I used to side with Democrats on social freedom and Republicans on fiscal responsibility. Up until about 2009, I was a libertarian, believing that all would be fine if we just slashed government to a fraction of its size and privatized most of its functions. However, I was cured of that belief through a series of discussions with a libertarian of much more extreme views, which forced me to admit that the public sector is the most logical custodian for certain powers. That is, privatizing some things would lead to bureaucratic nightmares. My main concern now is not the private/public divide, but the question of scale and how power gets concentrated in any institution that becomes big enough that it caters to a few powerful people at the expense of most of those it claims to serve.

These days, I am more prone to agree with liberals than with conservatives. I’ve never had much patience with social conservatives, because I value my freedom and do not need them to impose their values on me with the force of law. If I agree with their values, I am perfectly capable of adopting them for myself; I don’t buy the whole “I don’t like it, so you can’t do it” argument that characterizes their position. I believe that the government should take no side when it comes to “purely moral” issues, commonly called “victimless crimes.” Gay marriage, prostitution, drugs…none of those are things I’d practice, but I completely think they should be legal. I’m big on freedom with responsibilities.

I do not trust Fox News, or the Republican Party to which they belong, for one simple reason: they lie, frequently. The proof is everywhere, and even when confronted with stark evidence, they will not take responsibility for something that basic. This tells me that I should not trust them with power, no matter what they promise to do.

By contrast, I trust MSNBC, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report because they show their evidence and - more importantly - admit it when they make mistakes. They also don’t pretend to be unbiased, so I am better able to check their assertions.

The Democratic Party…oof. I side with them really because I don’t have a practical choice. I wish there was a party that was genuinely fiscally responsible and would stay out of my bedroom, but there isn’t one. As it stands, I have two real options. The Democrats aren’t perfect by any stretch, but at least I can see that they have some contact with reality. The Republicans, however, appear to be completely insane. They want “small government” that is orders of magnitude more invasive than the “big government” they oppose. They are anti-science and pro-religion, anti-poor and pro-rich, and against government except when it does something they like. In short, the GOP is half-theocracy and half-libertarian, and the two halves are (ahem) fundamentally incompatible, leading to institutional schizophrenia.

So, that’s pretty much where I’m coming from. Now you don’t have to guess.

So it looks like I’m starting a blog now.

That’s not exactly new territory for me, but it’s something I haven’t done in ages. When I decided to spin off my DVD/Blu-ray livetweets into their own Twitter account, though, it seemed reasonable to make a blog archive for ‘em.

More info to come.