When the state eats up the individual

There is currently going on a great controversy in Kentucky. Kim Davis, the County Clerk for Rowan county, Kentucky, has been arrested and imprisoned for refusing to perform same-sex ceremonies. She cites freedom of conscience and Divine Authority as the basis for refusing the court order. A great lie has been foisted in response, disguised with a kernel of truth.

The kernel of truth is that we do not want government bureaucrats running amok, "doing what is right in their own eyes," instead of following the law. We do not want Islamist bureaucrats enforcing sharia law, Amish refusing to license or register "devil machines," or pacifists refusing to register guns, etc. There is, however, an extreme overreaction that endangers not only the freedom of conscience of people while they work in government, but freedom of conscience wherever it is expressed.

We are being told that when the life of the individual intersects the life of the state, that freedom of conscience no longer exists. We are to simply and unconditionally follow all orders regardless of their morality or justice, and the moment we cannot comply, we are to retreat the area of state.

Many people do not see through this deception because they believe that this expansion of the state affect only issues relating to the state. However, the state has expanded its tentacles into so many areas that the application of such a principle leaves very, very little left to the individual. Consider the following areas in which the state has infiltrated our lives:

• People get marriage licenses from the state, implying that we need the state's permission to marry. Marriage has now, via Obergefell vs Hodges, defined as nothing more than a construct of the state.
• We live in buildings that were built only because someone got building and zoning permits, implying we need the state's permission to possess and occupy buildings.
• We live on land whose property lines are defined by the state via deed.
• Most businesses are constituted using articles of incorporation  that define the business as a construct of the state. Many other use as Doing Business As, in that case the business name is a construct of the state.
• Most real property is financed by financiers who are licensed by the state (or Feds).
• Most people received their education and professional training in context where either the state directly financed them or the state facilitated the financing. 
• Via Roe vs Wade, personhood is nothing more than a construct of the state. Personhood is the container of legal rights. Without legal recognition of personhood, there is no Constitutional way to enforce one's legal rights in the American legal system.

If every time the individual life intersects the life of the state, the individual must surrender the claims of conscience to the state; then there is no area in which that individual can ever say no to the state. Many who support Kim Davis' incarceration believe that the total surrender of conscience to the state affects only state actors such as Ms Davis in her capacity as County Clerk, but given the numerous threads of state involvement in our lives, the strict application of this surrender makes us state actors in virtually every encounter with the state. The tyrannical statists will make the case that our personhood rights, our property rights, and our business rights are all derived from the authority of the state, and that exercise of said rights makes us state actors subject to whatever whims the state decides to impose. This is why Hillary Clinton said that businesses did not create jobs and Why President Obama said  “You didn’t build that." What we see as individuals innovating and implementing, they see as nothing more than products of  constructs of the state acting with authority derived from the state.

The only defense against the state eating up the individual is to affirm that each individual has a right of conscience and derivative rights, that the state is obligated to provide reasonable accommodation to these rights as it fulfills its duties, and that these rights are grounded in a Higher Law given by a Benevolent Lawgiver that transcends societies and states.