The authoritarians in the Obama administration who can’t abide private institutions choosing to adhere to their own beliefs when one of its bossy support groups demands obedience (in this case, the abortion zealots; in other instances, it’s Big Labor, the greens, or other pressure groups demanding something from the government) have chosen to deceive the public by charging that opposition to the contraception mandate amounts to a “war on women.” Roger Pilon of Cato Institute has an acute rejoinder here.

Can anyone argue that he’s mistaken in saying, “the coercive elements inherent in any socialized scheme come to the surface when conflicts like the one before us arise”? Politicizing medical care or anything else necessarily means that some will be forced to go along with decrees they abhor.

The effort to turn the wrong of coercion against a religious group into a supposedly worse wrong (a “war” against women — how despicable!) shows how little respect the administration and its allies have for the intelligence of the voting populace. But that might be well-founded. After all, “public education” has been lowering the thinking ability of Americans for generations.