And Now For Something Completely Different: Megan McCardle Gets it Completely Right

This isn't really in line with the general thrust of this blog, and I'm still reviewing the day's articles to see if there's one that deserves a takedown, but Megan McCardle's piece on the Hobby Lobby decision is superb and deserves to be widely read.  A taste:

When very different groups are trying to live together in one big country (or one big city), you inevitably end up with sharply clashing desires, harshly discordant visions of what constitutes the good life and the public weal. Compromise should be sought where compromise is possible, but sometimes it isn’t; sometimes, the law has to choose one side or another. For the side that loses, this is not just perceived as a loss, but also as a demotion, a relegation to outsider status: The government cares about them, and not me.

It shouldn’t have to be this way. I like to think that I care about both the women and the religious conservatives who share this great nation of ours. It seemed to me from the beginning that being made to pay for something that someone views as deeply morally wrong (or to facilitate the transaction for same, if you take the general view that employee health insurance ultimately comes out of employee wages) was going to be a giant burden on people of conscience. And because the loss to women was small, it seemed fairly obvious to me that we should grant the freedom of conscience to people who clearly have some very deeply held beliefs -- not because women’s health is not very important, but because this was not going to have a very important impact on women’s health.