Posted on 03/06/2012 2:19:26 PM PST by IbJensen
Anyone who believes America's culture wars are behind her should have started out Friday reading The Washington Times.
The headlines on the three top stories on page one read:
"California judges asked to say if they are gay."
"'Tebow Bill' for home-schoolers dies in Virginia Senate panel."
"Opt-out on birth control defeated in Senate."
The California judges story dealt with the lately passed Judicial Appointments Demographic Inclusion Act, which mandates a survey of all of the state's 1,600 judges -- to find out how many are homosexual.
Purpose of the law: "Promote and increase the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the ... judicial branch."
The questionnaire sent to the judges asked each to identify themselves by race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
Forty percent of the judges balked, refusing to reveal their sexual orientation. One percent said they were gay. One percent said they were lesbian. One judge identified himself as transgendered.
Welcome to 21st century America.
Under the old American ideal, the lawyers who proved the most qualified by wisdom and experience were to be elevated to the bench.
The new ideal is that California's judiciary should mirror the diversity of the state. Whites, Asians, Hispanics, males, females, blacks, gays, straights and bisexuals are to be represented on the bench in the proportion that they are found in the population.
Yet another triumph of diversity over excellence.
Were an Olympic team or symphony orchestra to be chosen on the basis of this kind of diversity, they would be a joke.
The "Tebow Bill," named for Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who played high school football while being home-schooled, was crafted to allow home-schooled Virginia kids to try out for the tennis, football, baseball and basketball teams at their local high schools.
The Virginia House approved the measure 59-39.
But a Senate panel sank the Tebow Bill on an 8-7 vote, denying 38,000 Virginia home-schoolers their last chance to play high school sports. Every Democrat on the panel voted as the Virginia Education Association dictated.
But it is the top story in the Times, about the 51-48 defeat of the Blunt Amendment, that best reveals the shifting correlation of forces in the religious and cultural wars sundering the country.
The amendment of Sen. Roy Blunt would have assured Catholic institutions and Catholic employers of their freedom to opt out of providing health insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients and sterilizations for employees, if they have religious objections.
The position of the Catholic Church on this issue is neither new nor is it unknown. It was reaffirmed in 1968 in the famous encyclical "Humanae Vitae" of Pope Paul VI. Artificial birth control is unnatural and immoral. This is high among the beliefs that differentiate Catholic teaching from other Christian faiths.
Nor is it any secret. And any government that orders Catholic institutions and employers, against their religious beliefs, to provide contraceptives, "morning after" pills or sterilizations for employees has crossed the line between church and state to trample upon the First Amendment religious freedom it was established to protect.
Sandra Fluke, a 30-year-old student at Georgetown Law School, has emerged as the heroine of the Democratic establishment, being phoned by President Obama after her excoriation by Rush Limbaugh.
And what is Fluke's demand? That Georgetown University pay for and provide birth control for herself and all coeds and law school students.
Consider if you will the chutzpah on display here.
Fluke attends one of the most prestigious law schools in America. She is among a cognitive elite whose future is secure. Why should she not pay for her own birth control, even if she has to borrow money? Why is providing her birth control someone else's obligation?
This is not an abandoned woman on welfare. Why should other students or the university be forced to foot the bill for Fluke's exercise of her freedom to pursue her personal lifestyle? She has talked of $3,000 a year being the annual cost of birth control for a Georgetown student.
Georgetown University and its law school presumably remain Jesuit institutions. For Fluke to demand contraceptives or birth control pills for herself and her fellow students is to demand that Georgetown enable and subsidize behavior the church and the Jesuit community teach to be immoral.
Fluke has an extraordinary sense of entitlement.
Undeniably this episode, where the Democratic Party, traditional political home of America's Catholics, is now demanding that Catholic institutions and employers be forced to subsidize what their church teaches to be immoral conduct, tells us much about the sea change that has taken place and is taking place across America.
The America of Barack Obama that is emerging appears to be a country where civil disobedience may yet become a duty of traditional Christians and devout Catholics.
The historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. once called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."
In Obama's Washington, it is becoming so again.
If Obama is reelected, he will legalize the 30MM illegals already here. This will be done by fiat. The Republicans in Congress will contine to do nothing. Chain migration will bring in another 30-50MM within five years, basically Open Borders will become a reality. Most of the new arrivals will pay no income tax and will swear Obeisance to Obama. The tipping point will be reached.
Next up in the cross hairs will be the two term limitation. Might take a few years but you can count on the new arrivals to scream for "Four More Years" and pious, disingenuous calls from the Left to "Let the People Decide." Once that little detail is dispensed with you will have a President for Life. I might add we are but one vote away from a 5-4 Leftist Majority in the Supreme Court. Once that is accomplished, a little "Court Packing" will ensure a Progressive Slant for all time. You think the Republican will object? I think not. I believe they are rapidly becoming irrelevant if not extinct. The military will will continue to be systematically castrated. The emphasis for promotion will be Fealty to Diverstiy.
What you will then have is a de facto Coup D'Etat. No need for a messy revolution in the streets. The revolution and takeover will have been accomplished neatly and legally. You can count on the New Supremes to back it up every step of the way!
I sense a weariness on the part of the Electorate and the Ruling Elites regarding Democracy. Tom Frieden openly admires the Chinese Politboro for its ability to just "get things done". No messy elections to deal with. No need for persuasion. Just do it! Opposition can be .... dealt with.
In the most consequential election of our lifetime, an election where EVERYTHING is on the line, the issue du jour is...contraception? You must be joking. (Sorry, Dear. Pay for your own birth control!) You would think the Republicans would have put someone up who would fight for our traditions, our history, what makes us unique in all the World. Instead, the primary criteria is someone whom the Republican Elites believe might have a chance to be elected. Maybe? Possibly? Hopefully? No storming the Bastille here. The great themes of our history are submerged. At this juncture, you would think we would be having a crusade. Instead, we have a vapid campaign to elect a student body president. The Republicans are delusion if they belileve they shall inherit the Earth with such a pusillanimous approach.
Perhaps, even at this late date, a hero will arrive deus ex machina. Perhaps. Until that happens, I think Obama will roll up Romney like a carpet and our democracy will vanish not with a bang but a whimper. What a sad and pathetic denouement for the greatest country that ever was.
Additionally, Sandra Fluke, a law student at an elite university, doesn't realize, by forcing insurers to pay for all the sex she is having, it actually makes prices go UP for everyone else, including less advantaged and poor people. But of course, in liberals minds, we'll just draw from the never-ending pot of gold that is government. News for liberals: there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Get with reality.
if Obama gets to implement everything on his wish list, in five years time there won’t be enough cash left in the Federal Treasury to pay for Sandra Fluke’s contraception, let alone anything else.
As depressing as it is, that is one excellent post.
Well put. I think it's important to recognize that the values of the administration may very well be the values of the majority in this country--including the political class of both parties. The people who do not share the most important of those values are in for a very difficult time.
OY VEY!
Yup.
Mitt: Not Going To Say Outrageous Things About the President
laffing until ya die...
Anyone who just states the truth about Obama is going to be saying “outrageous things.” Why should Obama’s thin skin dictate the topics of political discussion this fall?
Exactly. Obama already owns Romney on Baine & Romneycare. Romney won’t even call him a Socialist (much less a Marxist).
I guess the only solace I can take from this if it were to go on another 4 years, is that it CAN’T go on forever. It’s not sustainable.
We’ll just have to inevitably get to that point and watch it all implode. It will be nasty and horrid.
I suppose that’s what it’s going to take with all of the dunderheads we now have across the country, in politics, and in the voting booths.
However, I will continue to have hope ... I just don’t go down that easily myself.
I think it’s going to take crashing & burning to wake enough people up to do something about the pathetic state we’ve gotten ourselves into. I hope there will be enough folks left with the true American spirit, the kind that originally founded this country, to build something good back out of the ashes.
It might take a lot of spirit, because there could be a lot of ashes after CWII.
The First Amendment, as pertaining to relationships beween religion and the state, has been re-interpreted (i.e., turned on its head) at the instigation of the Anti-Christianity Litigants’ Union (ACLU), and other like-minded activists, to ban all expressions of Christian beliefs or practices from the “public square” and whatever might be considered “goverment” or public spaces and/or functions. Jefferson, on the other hand, intended “separation of church and state” as an assurance to the Danbury Baptist Association that the government of the new nation then a-bornig would not interfere with their practice of their religion as they saw fit. The notion that the general public or the State should be shielded from any influences or expressions of the religions of the people would have been appalling to him.
No doubt.
“an election where EVERYTHING is on the line, the issue du jour is...contraception?”
Good post , but this is by design. Acclimating us to Obamacare, mandating free services for all. Food control is next.
Whites, Asians, Hispanics, males, females, blacks, gays, straights and bisexuals are to be represented on the bench in the proportion that they are found in the population.
So if dogs make 26 percent of the US population does that mean there should be dogs on the bench?
What happened to merit?
Your post really made me stop and think. Your argumentation is solid and your predictions seem sound enough based on what we know about the progressives and their philosophy.
Sadly, I can only see one way out of the current madness, assuming that Obama retains power, and that is destruction from an outside force. It makes me wince even to think about it. An EMP attack, outright warfare from Islam, a severe solar flare... any of those might just be enough to wreck the central government sufficient enough for the people to reform themselves locally and reconstruct the institutions that protect liberty. Of course, this would be horrible beyond words, just as the full realization of the left to take over the United States would be horrible beyond words - probably far worse than the 25 million deaths gleefully predicted by Bill Ayers that would be needed for his ilk to take over.
God help us.
Romney has already lost then.
That’s pretty much how I’m seeing things these days.
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