Friday, February 21, 2014
Obama's War on the First Amendment
Phyllis Schlafly
When President Barack Obama said he planned to "fundamentally transform" the United States, he wasn't referring only to spreading the wealth around or even to conforming our foreign-trade regulations to the dictates of globalist busybodies. He is also working openly and covertly, through administrative regulations and supremacist judges' decisions, to transform us into a sanitized secular nation.
The cutting edge of Obama's war on religion will come into public view on March 25, when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about the Obama administration's attempt to force private companies, such as Hobby Lobby, to cover abortion-inducing drugs for their employees, even though the company's owners are morally opposed to them. Hobby Lobby has courageously stood up for its religious principles against this requirement despite the threat of fines of $1.3 million daily for not complying with this Obamacare mandate.
Another company, Conestoga Wood, has also stood up against this suffocating infringement on freedom of religion by Obamacare. The Supreme Court will hear both cases on the same day.
Hobby Lobby is a prime example of America as a land of opportunity. The family-owned company was started in 1970 with a $600 loan and garage workshop. Today, it boasts 588 stores in 47 states and 13,000 full-time employees.
The owners are devout Christians who treat their employees extra well, donate a big hunk of their profits to charity, and are closed on Sundays. The issue being addressed in the Supreme Court case is the Obama administration's attempt to force Hobby Lobby's owners to provide abortion-inducing products that violate their religious beliefs.
Hobby Lobby's owners are not demanding for these products to be banned or that anyone (including employees or customers) be prohibited from buying or using them. Hobby Lobby's owners just do not want to insure items that violate their moral principles.
This same Obama argument is already being used against adoption service providers and against Catholic hospitals. But all that is only the beginning of Obama's direct attack on religion.
We are already seeing regiments of Obamaites prosecuting smaller and smaller business owners who invoke the First Amendment to be faithful to their religious beliefs. These include the baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage and the photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex marriage ceremony, although they were quite willing to do any other business with gay customers.
The supremacist judge who ruled against the photographer and imposed a fine pompously declared it "the price of citizenship." Has kowtowing to Obama's redefinition of the First Amendment now become the price of American citizenship and of doing business in the United States?
Since Obama became president, two other groups have joined his anti-religion campaign, the military and the public school system. Perhaps they want to curry favor with the commander-in-chief or with the grant-awarding bureaucrats in the Department of Education, or maybe they merely want to show they are politically correct.
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26 comments:
More right wing fiction. Do you people have no shame?
Freedom of Religion only means the right to hold any religious opinions and to practise any religion within the law of the land, and to be able to hold public office etc. regardless of religious affiliations.
It doesn't include the right to defy laws and regulations that apply to everybody else, especially if they are operating a business for the public or employing people.
They are of course free like everybody else to campaign for a change in laws or regulations they disagree with.
Think what muslims can do with religious freedoms they might feel entitled to when seeing what some christians/catholics do in defiance of the law!
Yes, be careful what you wish for! Religion includes a lot more than just Christianity (and even under the "Christian" umbrella are many sects and denominations including the excentric ones like the notorious Westboro Church).
Ah, the majesty for the law defense rears it's ugly head. Laws made by men are only as fair and equitable as the men making them. Take a good look at the makeup of Congress and claim that anything that emerges from that den of thieves is either.
Ukraine is a great example of what eventually happens when corrupt despots subvert the will of the people. North Korea is what happens when the people lose.
So what is 3:42 suggesting - a violent insurrection in the US, or yet another revolution or civil war?!
Anon 3:48............No, I'm suggesting rolling over and boarding the trains to the concentration camps peaceably, like good little government educated drones. Oh wait, that's more in line with your position than mine. All for one and all for the collective, right comrade.
From RWW:
Ms. Schlafly said "Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t want any expression of religious faith in any public place, including buildings or schools or events. He wants to redefine the First Amendment from “free exercise” to “freedom of worship,” which means you would only be able to go inside your church, shut and perhaps lock the doors, and say a prayer where no one else can hear you."
Actually that transparently false first sentence is enough. No expression of religious faith in any public space? Has Phyllis Schlafly ever listened to an Obama speech? Did she watch either of his inauguration ceremonies? His National Prayer Breakfast addresses?
It’s one thing to disagree with the Obama administration’s position requiring insurance coverage of contraception, and to take a position that private corporations have the right to exempt themselves from laws that company owners say violate their religious beliefs. It’s another to make the ludicrous leap that the administration is out to force all religious expression behind closed doors.
In her column, Schlafly says “Make no mistake; we are in a war for religious liberty.” Clearly, in Schlafly’s war, truth is already a casualty.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/phyllis-schlafly-s-ludicrous-lie#sthash.dwhKzV31.dpuf
within the law of the land
That is an absolute inversion of what the First Amendment says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; …
— First Amendment, United States Constitution
Yes, be careful what you wish for! Religion includes a lot more than just Christianity
Unfortunately, you're correct. But it's there because the alternative is worse.
Of course, then what do we do about Islam? Its teachings contradict the entire Constitution, including the First Amendment.
Wow, the troll sure wants attention today. Musta losered out again and needs a fix.
The rest of the argument is pretty straightforward, as most other commenters have noted: govt wants total control, people want indiv freedom for all.
Luke is saying that the meaning of the US Constitution is that exercising a religion allows doing anything regardless of other laws, but then who decides what is a religion and what is an anti-social or otherwise criminal activity.
3:05 pointed out that the freedom of religion applied/applies to opinions and activities that weren't against the law. 3:05 also pointed out that anyone is free to campaign or lobby to change laws in a democratic fashion. The US is not a police-state with concentration camps etc. as some paranoid posters here have suggested. They sound like the type who stockpile arms and supplies in mountain hide-aways ready for a showdown with the police and military!
Luke himself is admitting that some cases of religious freedom can work against and subvert the US Constitution as a whole.
Apart from the practical impossibility of making special concessions for all the numerous "religions", all citizens should be equal under the Law - ie. laws apply to everybody with no special privileges (just as some on this site often say that minorities shouldn't have special treatment under the Law).
Anon 1:52 ... Not a police state yet. Yet being the operative word. Perhaps you can come up with a non-paranoia inducing reason multiple departments of our benevolent government are stockpiling millions of rounds of ammunition. While you're at it you can also explain why SWAT teams are routinely deployed in policing situations where no violent criminal activity is involved. The jackbooted thug incidents are too numerous to mention, but you are free to ignore their implications at your own peril. Free for now, that is. Btw, the Constitution and Declaration with all the protections guaranteed therein are after all only pieces of paper representing ideals. They are only good as long as the authorities operate within their constraints. No, lip service doesn't count. "I've got a pen, I've got a fax." Ring any bells? If Dear Leader wants something done, legalities are just small bumps in the road.
Think this government is somehow different from governments across the globe? Why? Do you really think the vast majority of politicians and bureaucrats regard themselves as public servants
any longer? If so, you have a vast capacity for self
delusion.
In closing, you do recall the internment camps for Japanese-Americans' during WWII. They were US citizens, their Constitutional rights were trampled.
Do you think you have some special dispensation if you're identified as an enemy of the State? Good luck with that "head in the sand' thing. You'll need it.
While Muslim mentality may still be back in the 7th century, it seems many Americans (especially on this site) think they are still in the 18th century - fighting religious and political persecution by the tyrannical regimes in the European homeland then, and in Washington now. Yes, government can become corrupt and overbearing, but no need to go overboard and think there's grounds for a popular uprising (tho' some here seem to think anarchy is better than any society maintained by a system of law).
2:47 - WWII was a genuine war of survival, and no risk could be taken with possible spies and 5th-columnists, so anyone who might have had links to enemy countries had to be confined - hence the internment camps for Japanese, Italians and Germans. Hopefully they were not the type of prisons that the Japanese and Germans had!!
Anon 2:47....So the answer to when Constitutional protections apply is "flexible" depending on the determination by "officials" as to what constitutes an emergency. I seem to recall Honest Abe jailing a political opponent who was advocating a peace agreement with the South. This done extra-Constitutionally due to those extraordinary circumstances. Protections that are that flexible are no protections at all.
Btw, neither German-Americans nor Italian Americans were interned wholesale, as were the Japanese-Americans.
Wow, so 4:42 thinks it's debatable whether WWII was a genuine emergency warranting extraordinary measures for the survival of the country. Better the Constitution was temporarily suspended than later destroyed altogether by the enemy!
Anon 5:32........Well, at least you can always be counted on to miss the point and go off halfcocked.
Simply explain why this emergency required the abrogation of Japanese-American rights when the rights of German-Americans and Italian-Americans were not similarly infringed. Indeed the FBI obtained the help of the Mafia (Italians) to counter potential sabotage at East Coast ports. Then, as now, some Americans apparently are entitled to more rights than others. This determination is usually made by fiat, though occasionally the cover of (dubious) law is used.
Simply explain why this emergency required the abrogation of Japanese-American rights ...
The President at the time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D), judged the Japanese immigrants to be more loyal to Japan than to America, whereas he judged (de jure or de facto, I forget) that not to be the case for other immigrant groups. One suspects the fear of Japan directly and successfully attacking the West Coast, given what had happened at Pearl Harbor, played into his thinking.
Decades later, a different president, Ronald Reagan (R), apologized for all of this on behalf of the US govt.
Stinky..........yup, FDR via Executive Order 9066. And the Supreme Court two plus years later upheld a West Coast exclusion zone, but did not address the issue of the internment per se. See how easy it is. Be regarded as an enemy of the state by an overreaching Executive Branch and there go your rights. Oh you might get them back later or maybe not. Might get an apology even, posthumously. Well I feel better about it already.
20/20 hind-vision is all too easy when it concerns the decisions taken during the fog of wars and national crises.
Anon 3:12AM.........You presume too much. I did not say whether I agreed or disagreed with the action taken, given the extraordinary circumstances. What I did say is that it was clearly unconstitutional. Further, if they did it once, they can and likely will do it again.
"Justice delayed is justice denied", William Gladstone
"If it takes years of my life and all of my wealth to
obtain justice , that's no justice at all", Me
3:25 Now you are agreeing that the Constitution is circumvented in times of emergency for obvious reasons of national security, and that can indeed happen again - and obviously it isn't always justice for some people, but is done in the interests of the nation as a whole (It's not all about you!).
Everyone must be prepared to make sacrifices in time of war, even the Japanese-Americans. At least they were spared having to risk their lives fighting the enemy like other Americans, and nor were their homes and properties bombed like the civilians in Britain who stood up to the Nazis.
Anon 7:35
Your inability to stay on topic, the Constitutionality of various government actions, is on a par with your knowledge of WW2 history. Try looking up Nisei Division, aka 442nd Infantry Regiment, regarding the safer at home comment. As to their properties being safe: since they where forced to sell whatever couldn't be carried to the camps, they had no property to bomb. Btw, what sort of price do you think they received when the buyers knew the "everything must go" circumstances. Pennies on the dollar maybe. I suggest you man up and admit your error.
Apparently if the government seized your house in the name of a housing crisis your attitude would be, "well at least I don't have to mow the lawn." Incidentally, the Revolutionary War was fought, in part, over just such actions taken by the Crown. The seizing of the house, not the lawn mowing. The Constitutional protections that you so casually
cede were designed to prevent such actions by a government against the people.
Well, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
Lastly, a little reading comprehension is in order. I never disagreed that these sorts of actions are taken in times of emergency. I specifically did not say whether I agreed or disagreed with the taking of those actions. While you're pondering all this, you might want to think about what constitutes an emergency and who's judgement do we take that such an emergency exists. Seems I've heard John Kerry call Global Warming an emergency. Better not throw another log on that fire or you may wind up an enemy of the State.
5:56 - I'm sorry you feel you have to descend into personal rudeness to make your points. I see no purpose in arguing in circles, especially using insults as you do.
I'm also truly sorry if your relatives were any of these Japanese-Americans so affected. I had relatives in Britain during WWII who were quite prepared to accept that war meant giving up their homes and businesses according to government requirements so the country could fight the war against Nazism, and I admire them for their sacrifice, as well as some having to die in the blitz (bombing of cities) and some dying abroad in the armed forces. (Yes I'm not totally ignorant of WWII as you suggest).
Please don't bother to respond as this exchange has become pointless.
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