Kathryn, Rich, Mario, and others have eloquently and repeatedly shown how the coercive HHS contraception mandate is an assault on our civil and religious liberties (the two being inextricably linked, of course). But it’s just as much an attack on representative government and another insidious step toward government by fiat.  Since when do elected officials get to decide that they are “done compromising,” as the president’s chief of staff asserted? Obviously, politics, which at its heart is the art of compromise, is too pedestrian, too . . . democratic for this administration.  

In the eyes of the White House, the sham compromise on insurance payments was a sop to the serfs, granted by the magnanimity of the president, but in no way designed to derail the ideological objective of the policy. If we let this stand, if we buckle before such bureaucratic capriciousness, then we will have taken another significant step toward the imposition of government rule by fiat, and not by the will of the people. And once that victory has been secured, then the small steps will become larger and come faster and will not cease until liberty is defined solely by government officials. Or until they are opposed by a will just as strong and unyielding.