I have a really hard time listening to NPR sometimes, these days.
I have a really hard time listening to NPR sometimes, these days. They are currently having an argument about the right, as in legal right, of churches to not be taxed. This is, I assume, about the Johnson Amendment and the restriction on ALL 501c3 non profits that they can't endorse political candidates.
There's a whole thing about free speech that gets up in here, and I really don't understand that one, either. Say whatever you want. If it is political speech, you have violated the privilege of your tax free status, which is contingent upon you not acting as a political organization. Also, I thought free speech had to do with public speech? Which is different than conflating freedom of religion, which it seems is also occurring here?
Meanwhile, the host is trying to get the person representing the churches to answer a question about whether or not religious institutions have a right to tax exemption and the person keeps parroting "free speech! free speech!" and never answering about the taxes.
If you give powerful religious institutions permission to directly intervene in the political process as if they were PACs/Super PACs, you are abrogating one of the lynchpins of the founding of this country. Our founders made deliberate efforts not to recapitulate the structure of Europe (or other places), where religious institutions had political power, often in opposition to non-religious authorities. There have been a few wars in this regard, iirc.
Tax exemption may be a traditional privilege of religious institutions, but that doesn't give you a right to that privilege. Besides, I'm pretty sure that there is a specific small minority of churches and religious groups behind this that want to have it both ways precisely because they want to interfere even more in temporal politics. Thanks, but no. I don't want to live in a theocracy. Especially not the one they want.
And this is from just hearing 10 minutes of this program. Going back to not listening.
There's a whole thing about free speech that gets up in here, and I really don't understand that one, either. Say whatever you want. If it is political speech, you have violated the privilege of your tax free status, which is contingent upon you not acting as a political organization. Also, I thought free speech had to do with public speech? Which is different than conflating freedom of religion, which it seems is also occurring here?
Meanwhile, the host is trying to get the person representing the churches to answer a question about whether or not religious institutions have a right to tax exemption and the person keeps parroting "free speech! free speech!" and never answering about the taxes.
If you give powerful religious institutions permission to directly intervene in the political process as if they were PACs/Super PACs, you are abrogating one of the lynchpins of the founding of this country. Our founders made deliberate efforts not to recapitulate the structure of Europe (or other places), where religious institutions had political power, often in opposition to non-religious authorities. There have been a few wars in this regard, iirc.
Tax exemption may be a traditional privilege of religious institutions, but that doesn't give you a right to that privilege. Besides, I'm pretty sure that there is a specific small minority of churches and religious groups behind this that want to have it both ways precisely because they want to interfere even more in temporal politics. Thanks, but no. I don't want to live in a theocracy. Especially not the one they want.
And this is from just hearing 10 minutes of this program. Going back to not listening.
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