Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

L’affaire Robertson

Posted on Thursday, December 19, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

Unaccustomed as I am to writing about current events as they unfold, I can only suggest a few takeaway lessons from the l’affaire Robertson, as he might put it. As I have been able to reconstruct the events, A&E put Phil Robertson on hiatus from the reality show Duck Dynasty for making disparaging comments about homosexuality in GQ magazine. The memorable words of T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets come to mind — “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

This goes particularly for toney producers of reality shows, who are unaccustomed to having one of the swamp people emerge from the fens to inform them, denizens of a sophisticated and urbane cosmopolis as they are, that the human body was given just one sex organ and the poochute is not it. They got a little too much actual reality from one of their reality stars and so they went all Eliot on him.

Three lessons then. That should be sufficient, at least for the time being.

1. If we want to act like we understand what it means to live in a free country, and if A&E is privately owned and operated, then we have to cheerfully acknowledge that they have every right to refuse to broadcast people they don’t want to broadcast. Not only so, but the flip side of this is that conservative Christians who dislike what they are doing to Robertson have every right to stop watching their stupid shows. If we don’t want a privately owned Hobby Lobby to be forced to act contrary to their conscience, we shouldn’t force A&E to act contrary to what’s left of theirs.

2. Social discipline is inescapable. This is another one of those not whether but which situations. It is not whether there will be enforcement of social norms, but rather which social norms will be enforced. In this case, A&E is defending the tenets of a worldview that wants to posture as though they are champions of diversity while simultaneously cracking down on the first appearance of it on their network. This illustrates, as few other things could, the inescapability of worldview enforcement. Somebody is always going to tell somebody else “no.” As Lenin once put it, in his clear-headed way, “Who? Whom?” We should not fault A&E for defending the doctrinal purity of their denominational network. What we should fault them for is not understanding that this is what they are in fact doing. But, returning to point 1, they do have the constitutional right to remain as muddled as ever.

3. I thank the Lord for the clear-headed and straightforward way Phil Robertson quoted a Bible he was not ashamed of. In this, he puts a lot of Reformed theothinkers with large foreheads into the shade. One redneck out in public just went and said it. He didn’t refer it to a study commission. He didn’t circumlocute the heck of it. He didn’t get well-known authors to blurb the comments he was about to make (for many of them, had they been asked, would have declined to do so). He didn’t check in with the feelings of Rachel Held Evans beforehand. He just went and said it.

Letter From the UK (About Thought Police)

Christian arrested for calling homosexuality a ‘sin’ warns of ‘real-life thought police’

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that he thinks homosexuality is a “sin”.

By John Bingham,
Religious Affairs Editor
Daily Telegraph

11:45AM BST 04 Jul 2013

Tony Miano, 49, a former senior police officer from the US, was held for around six hours, had his fingerprints and DNA taken and was questioned about his faith, after delivering a sermon about “sexual immorality” on a London street.

Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, said his experience suggested that the term “thought police” had become a reality in the UK. He said he was amazed that it was now possible “in the country that produced the Magna Carta” for people to be arrested for what they say.

Mr Miano, who was provided with a solicitor by the Christian Legal Centre, was arrested under the controversial clause of the Public Order Act which bans “insulting” words or behaviour. The clause has recently been dropped by the House of Lords after a high-profile free speech campaign but the change has yet to come into force.

The father of three, who took early retirement from the police to become a full-time preacher two years ago, was detained after was preaching outside a shopping centre in Wimbledon, south west London, on Monday.
He was speaking from a passage from Thessalonians which mentions “sexual immorality” and listed homosexuality alongside “fornication” as examples what he believed went against “God’s law”.  A woman out shopping called the police to complain that she was offended, prompting two officers to be dispatched to arrest him.

In a video placed on YouTube he can be seen explaining the changes to Section Five to the officers who said they were not aware of it.  During the subsequent questioning at Wimbledon police station he was asked about his beliefs on what constitutes “sin” and about how he would treat gay people in hypothetical situations.  “As the questioning started it became apparent that the interrogation was about more than the incident that too place in the street but what I believed and how I think,” he said.

“I was being interrogated about my thoughts … that is the basic definition of thought police.”  He said he had arrested many people in his career but never over something they believed.“It surprised me that it is possible for a person to be taken to jail for their thoughts,” he said. “It surprised me that here in the country that produced the Magna Carta that an otherwise law abiding person could loose his freedom because one person was offended by the content of my speech.”

He said he feared Britain and other countries were already on a “slippery slope” towards the erosion of free speech and has written to MPs outlining his experiences.  Andrea Williams, of the Christian legal Centre, said: “We might joke about there being ‘thought police’ but this case shows that it has already become a reality.  “Sadly we are seeing cases like this increasingly often”.

Mr Miano said that after he was questioned he was advised by his solicitor that police had indicated that they expected to charge him with a public order offence.  But after being sent back to his cell for around another hour he was informed that an inspector had decided that no further action would be taken. He was released about midnight.

He added that at one point he was passed a Bible through the food port of his cell, something he said underlined the “ridiculous” situation.  “I believe that every human being should have the right to speak their mind,” he said. “Homosexuals should have the right to free speech, as should atheists, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.

“All I’m asking is that we are allowed to be part of the conversation and that society stops treating itself as tolerant when the authorities are intolerant to the Christian point of view.” A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “Police were called to Wimbledon Hill Road, SW19, at approximately 16.40 on Monday, July 1, following reports of a man speaking through a public address system who was alleged to have made homophobic comments. Officers attended and arrested the man, aged 49, on suspicion of offences under the Public Order Act. He was taken to a south-west London police station and spoken to by officers before being released with no further action later the same day.”

Church and State–Whither Now?

Constantine Versus the Apostle of the Secular Public Square

The issue of church establishment is one which Christians need to start thinking seriously about again and commence reading, writing and debating the teachings of Scripture and of the historical church.  In the West our debates and discussions and research will of necessity be largely academic and theoretical (although not completely so) because of the small (and shrinking) proportion of the population that is Christian and because of the dominant strength of secularism. 

The same cannot be said of other regions and countries, where Christian growth is explosive.  It is also true that in countries where Christians live under authoritarian governments and the church continues by means of state permission, the issue of church and state is alive and very pressing. 

But we in the West have one great contribution to make to this discussion: we have proven that a secular public square, neutral to religion, is a chimerical myth.  It is an oxymoron.
  Better to argue that wine is a non-alcoholic drink.  The state is incurably a religious institution and it operates in accordance with religious constructs insofar as all religions deal with values and ultimate beliefs regarding human birth, life, and death–and all things in between.  A particular state always reflects the establishment of one religion or another in its laws, rules, and regulations.  The West has foisted upon itself an irrational proposition that the state can be above religion and religious belief and that it takes to itself responsibility for those parts of life which are secular and irreligious.  It has failed miserably–as was inevitable. 

Even those professedly irreligious now see the folly of the West’s position and argue trenchantly that neutrality is an impossibility and that the so-called neutral public square is an imposition of a particular perspective, philosophy, and world view upon all citizens.  This is the West’s great negative contribution to the debate about liberty and a Christian state establishment.  Christians in the West are also slowly learning a related lesson: there is no such thing as private faith.  There is only faith which inevitably has both private and public expression and reification. 

Because these issues are of great moment, renewed study of Constantine the Great  is essential.  Constantine, as Roman emperor, established the Christian church in some important ways.  He was not entirely consistent in his actions.  There were few precedents to draw upon.  Mistakes were obviously made.  Nevertheless, mistakes and weaknesses and inconsistencies ought not offend us.  There is still much to learn.  Here are some of the most important things to consider:

1. His policy of toleration of all religions.
2. That religion is a matter of freedom and liberty of conscience.
3. Freedom is an opportunity for conversion to the true, Christian faith; but conversion cannot be forced, nor bribed.
4. The state was not neutral towards religions, but was most definitely Christian, reflecting the Emperor’s own faith. 

Peter Leithart points out that it is the fourth point that would rile most today in the West.  It strikes down the pretension of state neutrality with respect to religious belief.  It runs counter to Western notions of liberty. 

The apostle of religious freedom in the West is John Locke.  Yet from the very beginning Locke ended up arguing for secular oppression and interference in religious practice under the guise of religious freedom.  In other words, Locke demonstrates philosophically the reality which is now increasingly emerging before our eyes: state neutrality towards all religions eventually turns the state into a persecutor of religious belief.

Locke, says Leithart, assumes that the essence of religion is internal; the realm of the magistrate is that which is external–or what we today would call the “public square”. 

The church’s realm is the care of souls, and everything external is committed to the civil magistrate.  Such a definition of religious as nothing more than inward “belief” or piety is at odds with most major world religions, and is certainly at odds with Christian orthodoxy.  [Peter Leithart,  Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010), p.142.]

Locke also employed another foundational premise which is theologically radical–yet it also demonstrates apostles of neutral public squares draw upon religious dogmas and theological precepts to make their case.

In addition, Locke’s claim about the character of religion depend on an equally radical disjunction of Old and New.  If you want a de-Judaized faith, Locke provides it.  He describes the Jewish commonwealth as “an absolute theocracy” and contrasts it with the faith of the new Testament. “If anyone can show me where there is a commonwealth at this time, constituted upon that found [i.e. established by God],” he wrote, “I will acknowledge that the ecclesiastical laws do there unavoidably become a part of the civil, and that the subjects of that government both may and ought to be kept in strict conformity with that Church by the civil power.”  It is nowhere to be found: “there is absolutely no such thing under the Gospel as a Christian commonwealth.”  (Ibid.)

So, if a Christian commonwealth is an impossibility, what sort of commonwealth ought we to have?  Well, one where the civil magistrate controls public religious expression, of course.

Though [Locke] claims to be arguing for toleration and freedom of religion, he ends up ceding final  determinative authority over religion to the civil authorities. . . . [Believers] are inclined to “mix with their religious worship and speculative opinions other doctrines absolutely  destructive to the society wherein they live.”  Catholics are especially apt to do this, in Locke’s view, since they blend “opinions with their religion, reverencing them as fundamental truths, and submitting to them as articles of their faith,” and therefore “ought not to be tolerated by the magistrate in the exercise of their religion . . . ”  (Ibid.)

But it gets worse.  The Western apostle of religious liberty goes on to argue against religious groups which call for loyalty and attachment to fellow adherents greater than to fellow citizens.  When a sect such as this becomes numerous, the

magistrate should do what he can “to lessen, break, and suppress the party, and so prevent the mischief.”  Quakers are tolerable because they are few, but “were they numerous enough to become dangerous to the state,” they “would deserve the magistrate’s care and watchfulness to suppress them.”  Magistrates would act even if Quakers are “no other way distinguished from the rest of his subject but by the bare keeping on their hats.”  Hats are a “very indifferent and trivial circumstance,” yet too many people wearing the same hat might “endanger the government,” and thus it is the magistrate’s duty to “endeavour to suppress and weaken or dissolve any party of men which religion or any other thing hath united, to the manifest danger of his government.” (Ibid., p. 143). 

Beware the subversive hats!  Leithart points out that Locke’s true position is nothing more than a theoretical endorsement of de Tocqueville’s “tyranny of the majority”.  We might also add that in practical terms Locke’s magistrate resembles Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Not that this was in any way to be regarded as religious persecution.  No, of course not.  For religion is only ever inward.  It has nothing to do with hats.

Locke is the apostle of the secular public square.  He correctly shows us how it inevitably leads to religious oppression as we are now experiencing in the West.   Try home schooling your children in Germany, for example.  Or try wearing a burka to school in France, or a pendant cross to work in the United Kingdom. 

Constantine’s policy in these matters was more coherent than Locke’s because it was more honest, says Leithart. 

Locke pretends to offer a level playing field but tilts it in the direction of a latitudinarian and sectarian Protestantism.  Constantine openly favoured one religion, Christianity, and dedicated the empire’s pulpit, its incentives, is persuasive powers to encourage ultimate unity in religion.  He allowed other religions to continue, in the hope that their adherents would convert.  (Ibid., p. 144)

We expect that if indeed a new Christendom emerges in the Southern hemisphere these issues will come inevitably to the fore  Constantine has much to teach us, both positive and  negative. 

Old Friends

Living With the Dragon

New Zealand’s relationship to China provides an interesting case study with lots of fascinating permutations. 

Here are some of the issues and  paradoxes which drive the permutations:

• China is in our geographical region which means it is a logical trading partner for New Zealand (given our geographical isolation from the rest of the world.  Last time we checked there was not much trade going on with Antarctica.)
• China is the most populous nation upon the globe, with a rapidly emerging, higher spending middle class which is developing tastes for Western foods and high protein product.  It is also a dirty food producer.  New Zealand’s industrial and productive strength is clean food production.  But it will be small and insignificant in the longer time frame, only ever capable of meeting an infinitesimal portion of China’s growing food demand.  
• China is an authoritarian country, with an abysmal record of human rights.  It is run by oppressive, xenophobic, plutocratic, and corrupt governments–at all levels (national, regional, and local).  Commerce is conducted only by means of oleaginous fragrant grease.  Chinese leaders hate dissent.  The culture as a whole hates to lose face and be subject to public shame or ridicule.  All trade and business contacts with China risk contamination by Chinese oppressive and corrupt tactics. 
• Chinese culture remains strong and deeply rooted.  New Zealand’s cultural tradition is fragmented and thin: its people philosophically and culturally rootless.  For decades it has denied and derided its Western cultural heritage.  Its schools pride themselves on teaching nothing–so wedded have the prevailing philosophies of education become to neo-Marxism and post-modernism.  New Zealand exists in a cultural vacuum.  It stands for very little and falls for just about anything.  
• Chinese military power will only grow to where it will become the dominant military power on the globe.  There is simply no way New Zealand could ever defend itself successfully against Chinese attack.  Moreover, the Chinese government already has pressured New Zealand to triangulate with China in foreign affairs (over such issues as Tibet and the Dalai Lama) where China has attempted to pressure New Zealand to adopt the Chinese government position on issues.  

The only way forward for New Zealand is to make itself three things to China:

Politically neutral.  We need progressively to shed our alliances with other nations so that we can genuinely front China as a neutral, independent nation which refuses to be drawn into geo-political alliances.

High integrity trader.  Our trade with China must be scrupulously driven by the rules of commercial law with zero tolerance for breach of our own trade standards.  The New Zealand trade marks (e.g. quality certifications) need to be maintained rigorously with substantial penalties for any New Zealand business which violates or breaches standards. 

Long term focused, with clearly espoused, unbendable principles and integrity.  Culturally, the Chinese appreciate “old friends” and longer term relationships.  Unfortunately, these tend to operate within the Chinese culture as a means of control.  All too readily the “old friends” category operates more as a patronage system akin to the Mafiosi modus operandi.

Of these three necessary pre-requisites, the only one which has both skeleton and muscle at present is the second: we are a high integrity trader.  New Zealand quality assurance has meaning and substance and it is generally well-supported in New Zealand.

When it comes to political neutrality and the necessary moral integrity to avoid being captured and corrupted by the “old friends” category, however, we are hopelessly at sea.  New Zealand is too riven by party politics to have stable principles and consistent integrity to maintain a consistent longer term relationship.  Culturally New Zealand is too insecure, to thin, too rootless, we fear.  Our political neutrality is already compromised due to our military alliances with the United States and Nato.

Yet the window of opportunity remains open–at least for the present.  We have an excellent free trade agreement with China, which sets the frame for high-integrity trading.  We clearly produce what China increasingly demands and requires.  Chinese manufactures are increasingly penetrating our economy.  The Chinese are allowing our dairy industry to invest in China, even as they are investing in our dairy industry in New Zealand.  All of this bodes well–as far as it goes.

But what of the Chinese government’s latent hostility towards the Christian faith?  Tactically, the best thing is to persuade the Chinese authorities that Chinese Christians represent no threat to China, any more than they represent a threat to the United States, to Brazil, or to South Korea.  Such things can probably best be communicated within the bounds of a mutually respectful, high integrity relationship, rather than through one government hectoring another. 

The Perfect Reactionary

 The Return of the Imperium

Under President Obama’s direction, the US Federal Government is imposing penalties on any business which does not provide health care coverage for its employees.  It also stipulates that the coverage must include abortifacient drugs and abortions.

Christian churches have objected conscientiously and are suing the Federal Government for violating the consciences and religious freedom of its citizens.  Obama and his coterie disagree.  They argue that what he is forcing people to do has nothing to do with violating their religion. But he dissembles–whether stupidly or maliciously each must decide.

Many, if not most, Christians believe that abortion (in any form) is murder.  The human being being wonderfully nurtured in the mother’s womb has done nothing good or evil; therefore executing the unborn babe (however that babe came to be conceived) can never be justified.  Christians are, therefore, arguing the Obama administration is breaching their First Amendment rights.  (The First Amendment prohibits government from establishing a religion and protects each person’s right to practice [or not practice] any faith without government interference).  Christian seminaries, colleges, schools, hospitals and social services which employ others are caught. 

The Obama administration argues that there is no breach of the First Amendment because that Amendment is restricted to worship (not practice).  In other words, the religious person is prohibited from institutionalising his religion, from practising it, in any sphere of life apart from services of religious worship.  Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of this position is incandescently exposed by the President himself.  He has made no secret, and has publicly boasted, that his religion (which he loosely terms “Christian”) tells him to push his progressive agenda down the throat of everyone. 

So, the US government now has a radically new interpretation of the First Amendment.  The religion of all US citizens may be freely believed and followed, but must be confined to individual (maybe family) and corporate worship.  The religion of the President (his particular perversion of Christianity) shall be imposed on all other spheres of life. 

Justin Taylor profiles the radical threat and intimidation and persecution being faced by Christian businesses in the United States, and by businesses owned by Christians. 

What’s a Christian Business Owner Supposed to Do?

Mark Taylor is president of Tyndale House Publishers in Carol Stream, IL. He recently wrote in World Magazine about the penalties the federal government is seeking to impose on Tyndale in violation of their freedom of religion and right to act in accord with their biblically informed conscience:

My parents founded Tyndale House Publishers 50 years ago as a Christian publishing company. From the very beginning we have published Bibles, and we also publish a wide range of other Christian books. Our corporate purpose is “to minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through literature consistent with biblical principles.”
I’ve always thought—in a theoretical way—that I might someday face a situation where the government was asking or telling me to do something that was counter to God’s law as I understood it. If such a situation arose, I hoped I would have the backbone to stand tall and disobey the government mandate. Well, that day seems to have come.

Later in the piece he enumerates the costs to his company:

The HHS mandate became effective for Tyndale House on Oct. 1. If we did not comply, we would be subject to fines of up to $100 per day per employee. We have 260 employees, so the fines could be $26,000 per day. That’s $780,000 per month, and $9.36 million per year—all because our moral and religious compass says that it is wrong for us to provide abortifacient substances or devices under our employee health plan. The federal government is telling us to violate our conscience or pay fines that would put us out of business.

You can read the whole thing here.
Prayers against this ruling, it seems to me, are appropriate, in line with 1 Timothy 2:1-2: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” The HHS mandate prevents Christian companies from fulfilling their vocations in godly ways that respect human life and dignity, therefore we should pray that God would move in the hearts of those in high positions so that the government would fulfil its primary calling: the practice and promotion of justice.

Obama is very clear on the nature of evil and sin.

Or as Senator Obama put it when he was asked, “What is sin?”.  Sin he explained, is “[b]eing out of alignment with my values.”  [Cited by Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012),  p. 83]

So, here’s the score.  Obama has a set of values.  In terms of political ideology these require he adopt a secular progressive agenda which necessitates government bringing its version of the Kingdom of God upon the United States.  Not to act according to that agenda would mean violation of Obama’s values.  This, says Obama, would be sin (for him).  Obama is the only one (apparently) who can extend the practice of his religion beyond the private sphere.

But his progressive agenda violates the consciences and values of other citizens (as we see above).  Obama is requiring them to sin–to submit to the Federal Government and do things which are “out of alignment” with their values.  Thus we have now gone precisely back to the situation (mutatis mutandis) that existed in the Roman Empire in the second century.  The Emperor declared that he did not care a fig about what citizens and subjects did in the privacy of their own homes or places of worship.  What he did care about was loyalty of the Emperor and the Empire–which all citizens would show by publicly offering incense to the Emperor and the gods–or face imperial wrath. 

The position of the Obama government on this matter is breathtaking and brazen.  That it could occur in a so-called free country which protects religious freedom by means of the First Amendment to its Constitution is startling.  But the evil here is an ancient one.  Obama is so “progressive” he has acted as the consummate reactionary.  He has gone back to an ancient, evil empire and begun to smear its turds on the faces of free citizens, whom Obama regards as subjects–men and women to be made subject to his “values”, his religion, his version of good and evil. 

 

Here to Help

Jabba the Hut Gives us Nightmares

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the most dangerous sentence in the English language was, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”  Authoritarian rulers who believe they know what is in your best interests (better than you do) and who have pompously convinced themselves that they are kindly, considerate, and thoughtful–that is, they have noble motives–are the most dangerous of all.  After all Judas believed he was doing his people a great service, having their best interests at heart, when he betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver.  In reality, he had fallen under the control of the Devil (Luke 22:3). 

Consequently, since the price of liberty is perpetual vigilance, we have to scrutinise very closely “well-meaning” governments.  The more well-meaning they are, the more dangerous they become.  At the very least it evidences a mode of thinking which considers citizens to be infantile children.  Such arrogance is both demeaning and minatory.

New Zealand’s privacy laws are an example.  Conceived by civil righters and faceless bureaucrats and NGO-bureaucrats, privacy has become a classic example of the genre of authorities knowing what is best for you even if you don’t.
  (Children, after all, cannot be expected to understand what is in their long term best interests.)  So, after a due amount of huffing and puffing about dire threats to human existence and evil Rodents of Unusual Size which inhabited the badlands, threatening outlying villages we passed Privacy Laws and even appointed a Privacy Commissioner.  The citizen-children at last could sleep in peace with untroubled dreams of privacy gobbling monsters.

But the world is a dynamic place and the privacy threatening rodents merely changed their tactics.  They developed new technologies.  They thought up new ways to invade the children’s cots.  Vigilance was required.  And new laws and regulations.  Always new restrictions, more controls, more Dictats.  Until, one day, the children began having new nightmares.  Not about intrusive rodents from the badlands, but huge hulking slugs, like Jabba the Hut slobbering over the cots, licking the citizen-babes to sleep.  Welcome to the loving embrace of the Privacy Commissioner: the biggest slug of them all.  It stinks with a malefactory odour. 

An editorial in the NZ Herald, reacting to the slug’s latest moves to protect us from advertisers,  puts the matter in proper perspective:

The Privacy Commissioner wants to go much further, attacking direct mail at its source in the information that can be gathered about individuals’ spending habits and preferences. The commissioner wants the powers of the office widened so that it no longer acts only on complaints from the public but can take action against organisations that might be gathering and using information without the subject of the information being aware of it.

Is this so bad? It sounds sneaky, even creepy, but it is simply trying to sell people things they might like. All advertising attempts to reach the most likely buyers of the product it is selling. Advertising is not regarded as a public service because it is done for a profit, but public service and profits are not mutually exclusive. All trade is an exchange of benefit.

Is privacy so important that we do not want direct advertising to know what we might like? Privacy is a relatively new concern of legislators and regulators. It is a concern that originated in rarefied circles of policy-making, not from popular demand.

Principles of privacy are now written into public service rules, sometimes to the detriment of sensible advice that health professionals, for example, might give to family members of a distressed person.

It is hard to write a privacy code for everybody. Information that some people would keep to themselves, others put on Facebook. Individuals differ widely on what they want to share and what they regard as private. The best way to regulate such a variable and subjective human right is to adjudicate on complaints.  Complaints involve real people with real concerns. We might be much less concerned than the commissioner thinks we should be, or would be if we knew what consumer information was being exchanged about us. But do we really care?

If it means we get alerted to travel deals or gift possibilities or it is just another addition to the waste paper collection, it is harmless. Strict privacy is for hermits, the rest of us interact with the world and can judge when marketers exceed our tolerance.

Strict privacy is for hermits and babes in hermetically sealed nurseries.  It is not for adults and free people.  We will judge for ourselves, thank you.  When we make mistakes we will learn from them.  We will follow our own preferences, including this: intrusive Rodents of Unusual Size are much less a threat than Jabba the Privacy Commissioner Hut.  Spare us from nannying, do-gooding government.  It is positively dangerous, and eventually, nightmarish.