Two wrongs do not make a right

"By definition," said the Justice Department, "a secular employer does not engage in any 'exercise of religion.'"*

By definition everything which is JUST (something to ponder for a "Justice Department") engages in keeping the Ten Commandments. Whether you call that an exercise of religion or not. It is obviously not an exercise of religion as in the sense of providing religious services. But it is living a Christian life, and that is mandatory for all Christians whether employers or employees.

"It is well established that a corporation and its owners are wholly separate entities, and the Court should not permit the Newlands to eliminate that legal separation to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity or its employees," said the Justice Department.

Wrong again. Coca Cola Company is indeed separate from its owners, because it is a Limited Responsibility Company. If Coca Cola should run into debts (like after a health scandal due to aspartame in the Zero line of Diet Cokes), the usher can take away all assets from Coka Cola Company, including whatever investments Mr. NN made into it by buying a share and becoming a share holder. But he cannot get into Mr NN's bank account because it was the company and not Mr. NN who decided to produce sodas with no sugar and yet sweet due to aspartame. That is what Limited Responsibility means: Mr NN took responsibility for the debts of Coca Cola Company only as far as his investment - the share he holds - is concerned, not Full Responsibility as in a Personal or Family Company.

One cannot argue that the same applies to a Company which is owned exclusively and also run by four people having the same last name except for one who also had it until she married.

Since the law text of Obama-care, unjust as it is, provides that the mandate applies if there are more than fifty employees, one can foresee Catholic and other religious employers of sixty persons reducing them to fortynine (of course sacking first those employed last) or splitting company into two smaller ones of thirty employees each.

England tried to make Catholic Ireland depend on it, just after the birth of the free state, and look how its policies ruined many exporters and their land or assets were sold to many smaller peasants or similar catering for the home market. Ireland may be as rich in one farm cheeses as France, or even richer.

Whether Newlands take a fight to keep company as it is and Catholic or take one of these solutions, they are in the right, and the department of Justice are in the wrong. They are so much in the wrong that they are actually doing one of the things the Declaration of Independence ACCUSED George III for: trying to depopulate the area back then known as thirteen colonies and now a vaster area comprising it and known as US of A. Their two wrongful premisses do not make their wrongful conclusion right.

As a Swede I shudder at the thought that Kathleen Sebelius might be sharing my Swedish heritage.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
In a library of Paris
31-VII-2012


*http://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2012/07/25/doj_family_cant_run_their_business_as_catholics/page/full/