Going Amish. Like Going Rogue?

I'm loving the new conservative love affair (see comments) with the Amish and Mennonites. Because word got around a week or two ago that the Anabaptists can and have successfully claimed religious exemption from paying insurance, including the new health care mandate, teabagging, hands-off-my-hard-earned-money types are flirting with the Anabaptist ways.

They won't be flirting for long. But like every other conservative love affair that is founded on fuzzy ideas of "traditionalism" and ideology but has little basis in fact, these faux-converters will soon learn that there's a reason we're not all Mennonite (I'm a generation removed).

Religious freedom, guaranteed by the Establishment clause, works both ways. No one knows this better than the Anabaptists, persecuted and killed for centuries after the radical reformation. The Anabaptists are quite happy to do their own thing and take care of their own without imposing their faith doctrine on federal and state laws. It's a give-and-take I doubt teabagging types could live with.

So don your bonnets and strings, teabaggers. Time you thought a bit about what religious liberty means!