The phony uproar over Indiana passing essentially the same law that 97 senators voted for and Bill Clinton signed in 1993 protecting the conscience rights of American citizens makes this a good time to revisit some notable examples of how liberals claim the right of conscience to escape their basic duties of citizenship.

At the outset, the liberals’ purpose in going to Christians’ flower shops to get bouquets for their same sex ceremonies is not to obtain goods and services available nowhere else. It is solely and expressly to force believers to do something against their conscience in order to demonstrate the liberals’ power over them. It is bullying, pure and simple. Liberals seek to humiliate believers, to force them to bend their knees to liberals’ will instead of God’s as the dissenting believers understand it, and liberals take the same sadistic pleasure in this cruelty that a big playground punk might take while making a little kid eat grass.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the new and lower standard for social interaction this sets – the fact is that the traditional social and Constitutional understanding that society must respect the rights of conscientious minority dissenters protects liberals too. So perhaps we should get rid of exceptions to the rules that liberals enjoy. After all, the current crusade against dissenting cake bakers and photo takers is merely about access to wedding vendors. If it is a compelling government interest to ensure that one may get his angel’s food and bridal candids from the precise providers he chooses, then certainly we can dispense with accommodations regarding even more vital matters.

For instance, it is certainly a compelling interest for society that we promote unity and respect for our government – in fact, many liberals would probably argue that we should encourage its active worship. So how is it that we allow students to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance just because it offends their notion of conscience? It’s a basic ritual that binds us together as a cohesive, collective whole.

Why do liberals hate unity?

Sure, the Supreme Court upheld a right of conscience not to say the pledge in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) 319 U.S. 624, but wasn’t the ruling in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) 310 U.S. 586, much more persuasive if you think we should bankrupt recalcitrant bakers?

National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression of opinion through handbills.

Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs

My wife taught high school in wealthy Manhattan Beach a decade ago, so there were always a couple of rich, entitled poser kids who ostentatiously refused to say the Pledge because their well-developed, coherent and wise seventeen-year-old consciences saw America as evil. And this was allowed! Well, we can’t have that because mere personal beliefs can’t be allowed to trump our desire to see dissenters forced into uttering words that they abhor to promote some social good we desire. In this case, it’s a vague notion of national unity; for liberals today, it’s some ambiguous, unfocused concept of nondiscrimination.

Plus, not saying the Pledge was a hate crime because my wife escaped from Castro’s tyranny and the idiocy of her students made her feel unsafe, triggered and oppressed. Classrooms should be a safe space and stuff.

Now, I was about to deploy to war while my wife was teaching, and one of her moronic charges observed that, “Well, if I was drafted, I would go to Canada.” Predictably, my wife observed that, “I can’t help it if you’re a coward,” illustrating why she did not go back to teaching after our daughter was born. But the craven trustafarian’s overshare raises an important issue. He did not have to go to Canada. For draftees, and even for people in the military, there is the option of seeking an exemption from military service as a conscientious objector. Clearly, that exception needs to go.

To be clear, many conscientious objectors are pacifists who still served – sometimes with amazing distinction – but without carrying arms, often as medics. I am not discussing these heroes and want to make sure that is clear. The issue is those people, who through a misreading (to most Christians’ minds, including this one’s) of the Bible, through a naïve adoption of pacifism, or though straight-up cowardice masquerading as principle, seek to escape their duty to fight for their country.

Clearly we can’t have that. One has to concede that in the big scheme of things, the government has a greater interest in national defense than in ensuring same sex Bridezillas get the photographers of their choice. So how can we let one’s purported “conscience” excuse him from the duty every other citizen has to pick up a rifle and move to the sound of the guns – especially when, in so many cases, it’s really just a ploy to get the perks of being a loathsome coward without being called one? Am I right? Because dissenting religious people really don’t want to be associated with same sex ceremonies because they hate gay people and not because of sincere, deep religious convictions? Isn’t that the liberals’ narrative?

So, liberals, welcome to the Army. This way to the barber.

Liberals will often assert that “true Christianity” does not bar one from doing business regarding a gay marriage ceremony. My Christianity does not, and maybe yours doesn’t. But maybe it does. Isn’t the point of having a conscience that we decide such matters for ourselves, not for others, either individually or as a society? Unless we are willing to accede to establishing a federal Department of Religious Legitimacy Determinations – and I have no doubt many liberal brownshirts would drool at the prospect of unionized government bureaucrats grilling people to determine if minority religious beliefs are “valid” – then that determination belongs to the individual.

Wise people don’t want to change that, but liberals are notable for their inability to understand that society’s norms do not remain static when they unilaterally change the rules to their benefit. They imagine that they can perpetually get the benefits of a tolerant society that allows room for an individual to act according to his conscience when they themselves enforce intolerance. They think others will always live by the rule of law while they live by the rule of force, for what is the government except force? The Serbs thought that too. I walked through the ruins of their villages in Kosovo after the Albanians they tried to ethnically cleanse returned the favor. At the end of the road of the rule of force lie wreckage and mass graves.

So when some budding fascist starts yapping the talking points about the need to arrest or bankrupt people who would prefer not to personally photograph a gay wedding, detonate that narrative before liberals detonate the social contract that has kept America free and peaceful.