State-approved religions

What a Hoot on PoliNation: "Some have been building a case… that to exempt the Amish from social security based on their faith… is the state approving they are a legitimate religion and giving preferential treatment"….

I opined on my vanity site about Independent Religionist's Liberty. The subject was more about religious exemptions for drugs, like the (legal) Peyote Indians, and a then-pending case for Rastafarians (they lost, I think), and regarded individual (non-sectarian) religionists' rights not being recognized at all, but the point's the same. The gov't defines what is a religion or not, what that religion's allowable precepts are, what its taboos and sacraments can be. Similarly, for many drug charges, courts are now structured that, despite the seriousness of the charges and consequences, there is often no recourse to trial by jury? Such is the unAmerican direction of the judiciary over many decades now. (First they came for the....)

"also usurps all individual rights because they are all intrinsically intertwined" — 'strue. I just call it the "human right."