Consistency Is the Whole Business

The standard does not ask how we feel about a harm, only whether we would accept the same treatment in the same circumstances. Apply that test without exemption and most of what we call politics collapses into a single question about who is being made to bear a cost they never agreed to. This is why the case against coercion is not partisan. It indicts every side that reaches for the leash, and it does so with the same argument every time.