Hezbollah officials say they cannot coerce young people, because it would only create rebels like Mr. Olaik.
The scouts argue that the state and federal governments cannot coerce their choice of leaders.
"If the decision is acceptable to them, they will cooperate; if it is not acceptable, [the king] cannot coerce them into it".
The principle has been clear ever since St Thomas Aquinas said that sins and crimes are different things; and at least since the second Vatican council, the Catholic church has argued that religions should not be privileged by the state, that the state cannot coerce in matters of faith, and that citizenship is not contingent on beliefs or membership of institutions.
The limitation to congressional spending power, which basically says that the federal government cannot coerce states into obedience, could call all sorts of popular federal programs into question – think of Title IX, which transformed women's athletics in America, or the Clean Air and Water Acts.
If a vegetarian cannot coerce a steak house into serving a vegetarian dinner, why should a same-sex couple be able to coerce a baker into making same-sex cakes.
They cannot forever coerce Catholics into being British, and must resort to an unfamiliar methodology, that of persuasion.
But this line of reply is also open to challenge, since the idea of public reason does sometimes appear to operate as a first order normative claim, for example, it can be deployed to justify why one person cannot permissibly coerce another, or why the latter person is justified in forcefully resisting that coercion.
