Morals and Mandates

Prompted by Bob Hockett's characteristically thoughtful (and nicely focused) questions in his MoJ post entitled "Request for Clarification on Revised HHS Mandate," Sherif Girgis and I have written an article for Public Discourse entitled "Morals and Mandates."  Here is a link:  http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/02/4736. Readers who do us the honor of having a look, might while at the Public Discourse site also take a few minutes to read yesterday's article, by Matthew Franck, entitled "President Obama, the Right Not to Do Wrong, and the Politics of Ruse and Delay."  I should note that Sherif and I composed our article before Rob Vischer's MoJ post entitled "Dazed and Confused (on the HHS Mandate)" appeared. I think, however, that the article makes some points and arguments that are relevant to Rob's very good questions about what the mandate does and how it is to be evaluated from the moral point of view.