Reviewing Religious Liberty and the American Founding, by Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Thomas Kidd writes:

People involved in American political life in the late 1700s disagreed vehemently about the proper approach to church-state separation. But Muñoz shows that there was near-universal agreement among people of widely differing faiths and ideologies on religious liberty as an inalienable natural right. A “natural” right was one not granted by government or by any human authority. Such rights were part of the natural order; they resulted from principles derived from “the laws of nature and nature’s God,” as the Declaration of Independence put it. These rights were “inherent” in the sense that they inhered in human nature, and all people rightfully enjoyed them. . . .

In one of his more controversial conclusions, Muñoz insists that there is little evidence that the Founders would have believed that “free exercise” must allow conscience exemptions from otherwise constitutional laws. He puts a great deal of emphasis on the fact that debates over exemptions (or replacements, to be more precise) from militia service for Quakers and other pacifists almost never cited the requirement of protecting free exercise of religion.

This is a worthwhile observation. But I wish that Muñoz had given more space to the Constitution’s own religious “exemption”: that of allowing people to “affirm” rather than swear to support the Constitution. This was an accommodation of Quakers’ scruples and those of anyone who literally applied the Bible’s injunction against swearing oaths. The existence of this alternative for conscience, within the Constitution itself, suggests that the Founders believed the government should not unduly burden or violate people’s religious conscience in crafting civil laws or even in framing the Constitution. Exemptions or alternatives were a familiar option among the Founders as paths to avoid this classic dilemma.

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.