From Justice Scalia’s dissent:

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.  Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage.  It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. 

I’m pretty sure there was a book on that subject:

Indiana Shows the Left Has No Concept of Freedom

What interests and concerns me about the fight over Indiana’s religious freedom law is not its implication for gay weddings and whether pizza will be served at them.

Much more important are the basic principles that are being invoked to argue against the Indiana law. These arguments set out to define religious freedom out of existence, and they end up defining all freedom out of existence.

At the end of last year, I complained that “The basic problem with the left’s conception of freedom is that it doesn’t really have one.”

[…]

Now, when we say that gay marriage is legal, what we actually mean is that the government is required to offer and recognize these marriages. But Tomasky assumes that what the state must do, private citizens must do also. If a law binds the actions of the state, it is also binding on Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. There is no distinction, in Tomasky’s mind, between government action and private action.

It’s that old principle of tolerance: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

[…]

Blow also echoes Tomasky when he thunders, “Anything that even hints at state-sponsored discrimination—blatant and codified—is not only discordant with current cultural norms but also anathema to universal ideals of fairness and human dignity.” Did you catch that phrase? “State-sponsored discrimination.” Anything that is allowed by the government is therefore sponsored by the government. To not arrest you for doing or saying something is to adopt that action or idea as the official policy of the state.

That which is not forbidden is mandatory. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state.

…if they can only take off their blinders for a sec:

10 Americans Helped By Religious Freedom Bills Like Indiana’s

The federal government passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. It was authored by Chuck Schumer, passed with nearly unanimous support from both parties, and signed by President Bill Clinton. The legislation was needed after a bad Supreme Court ruling delivered by Antonin Scalia that limited religious freedom for Native Americans who smoke peyote as part of their religion. A later Supreme Court ruling ruled that the RFRA didn’t apply to state or local governments. Twenty states passed RFRAs and another 13 have protections like the ones in RFRA.

And yet when Indiana passed the legislation last week, the media characterized it as nothing more than a bigoted anti-gay bill and celebrities and activists called for a boycott against the state. The media is highly uninformed about the topic and despite RFRAs being around since 1993, no one can provide any evidence to substantiate the outlandish claims made against them. In fact, RFRA simply allows religious people to challenge government activities that encroach on their beliefs. They have to show that the government action substantially burdens a religious belief that they sincerely hold. And if they prove all that, it falls to the government to show that the challenged action is justified as the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest. Having a RFRA doesn’t mean that you know which side wins, it just sets the terms of the debate.

Faded glory. Faded freedom.

Quoting Edward Gibbon:

In the end, more than freedom. they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all……security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished foremost was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

Something to think about. Keep our current predicament in mind as you do so.