U.S. presidential aspirant Beto O'Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O'Rourke's suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan to tax the "excessive" exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA's painful lesson about the perils of moral grandstanding illustrate how progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion.
Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet recommends a "hard line" against people who deviate from progressivism: "Trying to be nice to the losers didn't work well after the Civil War" and "taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945." Apparently it is progressive to regard unprogressive Americans as akin to enemies vanquished in wars.
Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says Congress shall make no law ... abridging the right of the people "to petition the government for a redress of grievances."