Not for Kamala Harris. No way. No how.

This Never Trumper sees dangers from the Harris-Walz ticket, some of them severe, to the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments, perhaps the Fourteenth Amendment, and to significant structural essentials of the main body of the Constitution.

And that’s before even considering all her radical policy preferences, both domestic and foreign, not to mention her anti-Catholicism or her unforgivable cheap-shotting of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh both after and before ludicrous sexual assault claims were aired against him. And more.

Let’s start with Harris’ threats to the First Amendment, which are the most obvious and egregious. She has shown hostility to all four of its guaranteed freedoms — of speech, of the press, of assembly (or “association”), and of religious exercise.

Just this week, Harris repeated an anti-free-exercise attitude that should scare anybody and everybody. Asked point blank if she would recognize “religious exemptions” of the sort that would excuse devoutly traditionalist Christian doctors from performing abortions, she said, “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.” This is consistent with a law she introduced in 2019, and with a policy the Biden-Harris administration tried to impose unilaterally in 2022 before being blocked by the courts.

This refusal to recognize religious exemptions, even for cases where a doctor believes he would be committing murder, should be anathema for anybody, whether pro-life or pro-choice, who has the slightest appreciation for what liberty means, not to mention basic decency. This isn’t about abortion per se, but about state compulsion. It is one thing for government to prohibit personal actions injurious to others, but a different and profoundly dangerous thing for government to be able to compel action against one’s faith or conscience.

Even in the one situation where state compulsion has been accepted in virtually every society since time immemorial — that of conscripting citizens for the common defense — this nation always has allowed for “conscientious objectors” who serve stateside or as medics instead. Again, even for people who believe there is a “right” to an abortion, Harris’s position should be recognized as a moral monstrosity.

Meanwhile, where freedom of assembly and of speech intersect, in what the Supreme Court describes as the “freedom of association,” Harris is so radical that the high court rebuked a stance she took that would negate a landmark victory not of some right-wing group but of the NAACP…. [The full column is here.]