coercion and contract

From FEE:

Executions and the Morning-After Pill: When Can One Refuse?

2/27/2006

"No one disputes that there are circumstances in which people have a fundamental right to assert a moral or religious objection to performing duties ? such as military service ? and thus cannot be pressed by law into performing them. The problem lies in sorting out who can opt out and when. Consider, through that lens, the parallels between California physicians who refused last week to participate in the execution of a convicted killer and the growing numbers of pharmacists around the country who refuse to dispense morning-after pills." (Washington Post, Monday)

Basic distinctions between state and private sector -- coercion and contract -- would be helpful. [emphasis added by bk]

FEE Timely Classic

"The Person and His Society" by Edmund A. Opitz

Hear, hear!*

To the libertarian, so many of what generally pass for tough questions aren't tough at all.

Is that because we're simplistic zealots who see a multi-hued world in black and white?

Or is it because the questions themselves are based in statist assumptions that depend on the conflation of coercion and contract. To read them properly, we have to highlight the assumed starting phrase, "Assuming the legitimacy of initiatory coercion..." and recognize that rest of the question can usually be summarized as "When is it going too far?"

In other words: no principles; all judgment calls.

Feh.