Intolerable Acts

Congressman Robert Andrews stood up in Congress and said that violations of the Peoples Constitutional right to free exercise of religion wasn't important.  He said that the concerns by Religious Colleges and Universities about Religious Freedom were "not compelling questions".  He's trying to tread water on the subject, but refuses to apologize for letting slip his belief that the Constitutional Guarantees of Rights and Liberties to religious believers are not "compelling".  In other words, Andrews believes that an appointed board, in this case the National Labor Relations Board, can tell a person or an institution whether or not they are religious.  It is intolerable to lovers of Liberty that some section of the Government--an unelected, appointed and very powerful section--can tell someone, or some educational institution, that they don't believe something that they profess. It is intolerable act from a Member of Congress.

The Regime has told a major publisher of Bibles and religious titles that it isn't religious.  The reasoning is simple--they are a major publishing house, and even though their entire business and business model is based on the promotion of Scripture and devotional reading because of their religious beliefs, the Regime maintains that they are in business, so they do not have a right to practice their religion in the conduct of their business.  I could swear that the Constitution gives us the right to free exercise of religion.  Our rights are ours, they are not granted to us by the government, by Congress, by the President and most certainly not by a board of political appointees. Our rights are things we, the people, have carved out from governmental interference from the Founding of our current Republic and form of government, and they may not be transgressed with impunity.  It is intolerable that the government of the United States would seek to place limits on free exercise of religion on the basis of it's practitioners engaging in commerce in the public square.  This is an intolerable act by part of the bureaucracy that increasingly rules our lives.

Last Friday, Carol Jackson , a US District judge threw out a lawsuit by a small business owner against the HHS mandate, saying his business wouldn't be substantially burdened.  This is so egregiously oppressive that it boggles the mind.  First, we're not talking about a burden on business per se, but a violation of an individuals constitutional rights.  Such violations are by their very nature substantial burdens on the life of the individual and of our collective life as a Republic.  Second off, the idea of the plaintiff is that he is going to be required to do something that violates the dictates of his religion to such a degree that he can logically be expected to have anxiety over the state of his soul:  paying for abortions is material cooperation with murder, a mortal sin that can land him in hell, according to his religious beliefs.   That's a very heavy, substantial, burden to carry through life.  Third, one sees in this yet another attempt by the Government, in this case by the Judiciary, to limit our right to freely exercise our religion in such a way that our ethics cannot be brought to bear on our business practices.  (It's not odd when one thinks about it.  The current economic mess was brought about by poor ethics and politicized lending practices.  The Regime has numerous people from the very companies and institutions that brought it about, and favors expanding the practices that led to the debacle.  They want no ethics to interfere, and business must be politicized.)  Once again an intolerable act of oppression is being perpetrated against the people of this once great Republic, by our own Regime.

The American Spectator has an interesting article on the increase of both Governmental and Social restrictions on and hostility toward religion, and the rates have almost doubled under the current Regime.  This too, is intolerable, for as the article points out, well financed and organized groups are trying to turn the First Amendment upside down, by disregarding the free exercise clause.  Who are these people?  I don't know, the identities of those who would remove us from public life are obscured by all the confidentiality policies and fund swapping endemic to political action groups.  But the numbers are themselves what is important--these acts are intolerable.  Culture Digest has some interesting information on this study, and the Spectator has links to the text, so you can see for yourself how the number of intolerable acts piles up.

Mitch Landrieu , the Mayor of New Orleans, attempted to make religious speech on Bourbon Street a criminal offense.  Think about it.  Both a religious activity and free speech criminalized because this guy wants to make sure that drunkards and prostitutes on Bourbon Street don't here anything that might make them spend less money or perhaps re-think sex work.  Tourism and money are more important, in this man's view, than Constitutional Rights.  This particular intolerable act of oppression was, thankfully, blocked by a courrt order.  However, it was attempted, and that's intolerable.

Social oppression grows apace as well.  Filmmakers are trying very hard to make Christians either into objects of derision, possibly insane object of derision, as in the movie  A Perfect Family  (which depicts among other things the deliberate profanation of the Holy Eucharist by a Catholic Housewife who is trying to make everyone believe she has the perfect family)  or hateful, violent killers as in the Kevin Smith movie Red State .  Now Hollywood's hostility to religion isn't universal-they seem to have very good feelings about the sensibility of Muslims, even attempting to hire a Muslim clergyman  to vet the script for a movie on the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.  These actions are insidious and are intolerable acts of hostility, meant to marginalize Christians in the public square.  Filmmakers went from providing entertainment to attempting to dictate our culture, while having almost nothing in common with Mainstream America. 

Yes, we live in an era of Intolerable Acts, and if you find them as threatening to your freedom as I do, here's a song for you.  If you don't, consider this--when the Regime can trample any part of the Constitution, it can trample all of it.  Without the Constitutional limits on Government Power, without the limits of law being required and enforced, we have no  protection from our government, and no redress for anything it might do. So, listen to the song, and realize that there must a line in the sand, where we will stand and say "Enough with your Intolerable Acts of Oppression!"

After all, in a few more weeks, we get to vote--make it count.