Overview:
Post-1960s Progressivism has steadily eroded religious liberty and the freedom of association in America. Measures such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and many anti-discrimination laws express a new understanding of rights that rejects the Founders’ view of religious liberty and the freedom of private associations to govern themselves. Recent Progressivism follows the early Progressive belief that effective freedom requires government to redistribute resources in order to provide equal access to the goods that promote mental development and that make life comfortable. This redistributive agenda is combined with a new emphasis on the empowerment of victim groups, sexual liberation, and an aversion to traditional Christianity and Judaism that requires government intervention in the internal affairs of private organizations. Religious liberty today is divorced from the freedom of association and the free exercise of religion, which the Founders understood to be essential for a free society.