Posted on 07/15/2010 5:49:25 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
James Carville, Bill Clinton's political strategist supposedly coined the now infamous: “It’s the economy stupid.” This admittedly smart strategy, widely attributed to have won Clinton the Presidency, is now being chanted, mantra-like, by the mainstream media and the Washington political elite as they fundamentally misunderstand the brewing anger and frustration amongst everyday Americans.
They think this is all about dollars and cents. They think that it’s all about a $13-trillion debt and trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future. In their arrogance, Washington thinks this is all about spending the people’s money.
But, that’s a somewhat superficial reading of the people’s discontent. The grassroots grumbling is not just about money. It’s about freedom. The people are justifiably annoyed that their pockets are being picked; but they know that the loss of their God-given, Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms is as grave a concern.
The past eighteen months have been a brutal assault on liberty. As government grows, personal freedoms shrink. The private industry buy-offs and bailouts, cap-and-trade, the government takeover of health care. The price tags are bad enough; but what’s truly frightening is how they diminish freedom.
Take religious liberty, the first among equals, so to speak. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, “a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”
When it comes to religious liberty, this Administration has vacillated between indifference and contempt – both of which are equally dangerous to this important and fundamental human right. For instance, only a few weeks after moving into the White House, the Obama Administration filed a rescission proposal to undo a Bush-era regulation protecting the conscience rights of health care workers. And, the sweeping changes to American health care delivery just signed into law similarly include no real conscience protections.
The Obama EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) reversed a previous EEOC ruling, accusing a small Catholic college in North Carolina—Belmont Abbey College—of sex discrimination because it doesn’t cover contraceptives in its faculty health insurance plan. By their reasoning, what religious institution – be it hospitals, colleges, nursing homes – will not be forced to choose between upholding the doctrines of its faith and meeting its secular mission?
Some could argue that this is just as much an aversion to all things George W. Bush as it is the stereotypical liberal distaste for all things religious.
But, the Obama Administration has been equally disdainful of religious liberty activities championed by the Clinton Administration.
President Bill Clinton and his State Department signed the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act into law and aggressively executed its protections. However, President Obama did not nominate an Ambassador to fulfill that role for a year and a half, signaling that senior envoys for HIV/AIDS and Guantanamo took precedence over worldwide promotion of religious freedom.
But, the American people are not contemptuous of or indifferent to religious liberty. Perhaps that is why Professor Robert P. George is emerging as a leader in today’s movement for freedom.
As the McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence at Princeton University; founder of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank; and founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which is being emulated on college campuses from NYU to Williams, Professor George is best known in academic circles as a Constitutional and legal scholar.
But, George is equally respected amongst policy-makers and commentators, having pursued the practical application of his ideas as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Hailed as “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker,” George was recently featured in a long profile in the New York Times. He is considered a bridge between academia, policy, and religion. Politicians, including several presidential contenders, seek his scholarly insight and, religious leaders seek his political acumen. As Rev. John Myers, Archbishop of Newark, has put it, “Whenever I venture out into the public square, I would almost invariably check it out with Robby first.”
George does not shy away from the culture wars. In fact, he seems to relish his confrontation of the “secularist orthodoxy” of today’s liberals. He sits squarely on the side of the so-called Religious Right; but that would be a far too simplistic characterization of his dogma.
At the center of George’s philosophy is the premise that the principles of morality are not necessarily divined through faithful revelation; they are born of right reason and natural law. In spite of this seeming dissociation with faith – or perhaps because of it, George passionately defends the right of every person to pursue their relationship with his Creator in the way that suits his conscience.
I was recently a vice chairman of the dinner when George was honored by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty for his work promoting this fundamental right. He received their Canterbury Medal, joining a prestigious group of defenders of religious freedom, including Elie Wiesel, Chuck Colson, and Archbishop Chaput. In a tribute to George and recognition of the importance of religious liberty, the Four Seasons stately dining room where the award was presented was filled to capacity with religious, intellectual, and political leaders.
The Becket Fund and Family Research Council, on whose boards George sits, are dedicated to defending religious liberty. For more than a decade, the Becket Fund has pursued freedom of faithful expression in all its forms, -- from defense of the words “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to defense of the conscientious objections of faithful pharmacists to pursuit of international religious freedom. The Becket Fund and FRC are taking Washington ’s assault on religious liberty head-on.
And Washington better start listening. As George recently said: “The moral foundations of economic conservatism are precisely those of social conservatism, namely, respect for the human person, which grounds our commitment to individual liberty and the right to economic freedom and other essential civil liberties….”
The mainstream media and the political elites may not have made the connection yet; but freedom is at the heart of this grassroots insurrection. And they are ignoring this at their own peril.
Stupid is a big problem.
Just because we won against the nutty King George III, didn't remove the original problem(worse than original sin).
Also, the empire of the crown and it's subrosa power engine(internationalista banksters) didn't die or lose any power, it just went underground like the disgusting vine that it is.
One little fact that gets lost in all the heated rhetoric and name-calling is that Marx was an economist, and Marxism is, at core, an ECONOMIC theory...
So, of course, to a Lib, anything beyond ‘money’ is the ‘territory of the blind’.....
Obama is going to burn in Hell if he doesn’t repent.
“Obama is going to burn in Hell if he doesn’t repent.”
Burn in Hell??? Obama IS Hell.
No. The true loss of freedom occurs at the local level first, and it is becoming vicious.
Democrats are in political hot water over the joblessness and the deficits together (the War is not helping him either). If those numbers were different, voter approval of democrats would be much higher. It's a political reality.
As far as our loss in freedoms goes, Obama is building on top of all the progressive leaders before him including Bush. That is why most of what he is passing is safe from the courts, prior precidents allowing expansion in federal power. Will this same interest in our freedom all go away when another Republican president (like RINO Romney for example) is in the WH?
Defeating King George solved the problem on one tyrant 3000 miles away. It left us with the problem of 3000 tyrants one mile away.
If you read Das Kapital, you would know that Marx is no economist. His notion of the modern state with skilled manufacture emulated his notions of the Souther Plantation with unskilled slaves. A few in “the big house” to tell people what to do.
As will every unrepentant sinner...
Yes, sin, rebelling against God, is the reason this country is in the mess it’s in, and the reason we have 0bama as president. Whether he is God’s punishment on the nation, or simply the natural consequence for a nation that rejects God is up for debate.
The nation can/could survive 0bama as president.
It’s much less likely to survive what put him there.
Socialism, Communism, Marxism = SLAVERY! I say NO thank you to the 3.
I stand with Patrick Henry “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”
You are so right. Every day I pray that God would send us national repentance and revival and deliver us from the evil that afflicts our land.
Actually, God doesn’t ask for the whole nation to repent, but just His people who are called by His name.
(2 Chron 7:14)
That’s us, not the unbelievers.
You're right. I need to be more precise in my prayer life.
What can be done about ignorance, gullibility, bloc voting, and ntitlement mentality that delivered the White House to the usurper?
Natural consequences for ignorance, gullibility and entitlement mentality will “solve” them.
To “enforce” these natural consequences, all we have to do is stop using the government to force responsible people to pay for the consequences of the irresponsible.
Back in the 1850s, there were a number of pro slavery "thinkers" who believed all people who had to rely on other people for money were by definition slaves. Only people who were completely and utterly self sufficient were truly free. Large or small scale farmers who made or grew everything they needed : Free. People who worked for wages : Slaves. ergo, sailors, factory workers, soldiers, artisans=all slaves. Whatever the merits of this position, these 'thinkers' took this position to the extreme of advocating that factory owners decree their employees their property, and presumably start selling their workers off to each other on the auction block.
Northern anti slavery abolitionists retorted that factory workers were always free to quit their jobs, and that workers had (at least in theory), the opportunity to save up and go into business for themselves, maybe even employ other people as factory owners some day , or perhaps to go west and buy their own farm or ranch . (Back then, it was pretty much illegal for workers to "combine" to try to get higher wages or better working conditions-unions wouldn't be a factor to consider for a few more decades.)
This is a piece of American intellectual history that is pretty much ignored or maybe forgotten today : That back in the 1850s, pro slavery advocates openly applauded socialism, and touted plantations as a perfect example of true socialism : The workers were fed, housed, and provided with free clothing and medical care by the plantation owners , the workers getting all these splendid benefits in exchange for labor and obedience. (The pro slavery advocates assured their readers that plantation owners would never, ever abuse their power because it was in their interests not to over work or under feed their "hands", while Northern factory owners were not only at liberty to do so, but profit margins would compel such abuses-and so these writers urged factory owners to declare workers their slaves. Just how these writers thought the owners could get away with declaring their employees their personal property I do not recall.)
Anyway...Every time some presumptuous ass of a politician starts going on about "jawbs" in a way that makes it plain s/he thinks "jawbs" are all the American citizen (excuse me..."human resources" on the north American landmass) really care about, and that religious or moral issues, issues of national defense, etc, are all REALLY "jawb" issues at heart-that we SAY we care about issue X but issue X is just a cover for underlying economic worries-then I think about the pro slavery advocates and how they thought it was morally acceptable to not only retain slaves in the south, but to reduce all laborers to the level of property so long a s a benevolent overload fed, clothes, and took care of their medical needs, and I wonder just what is happening in my country . :-(
I pray that he does one or the other very soon. perhaps by the end of the week.
Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8
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