War on Religious Freedom

Reposted because we thought this is a very important topic

by Phyllis Schlafly

November 6, 2013

Americans who believe in God had better wake up and realize that a well-orchestrated campaign is moving to fundamentally transform the United States into a scrupulously secular nation. If this succeeds, we will no longer enjoy our First Amendment right of “free exercise” of religion but will be forbidden to speak or display any prayers, Bible quotations, or other evidences of religion in any public place or event.
The major strike force working to accomplish this consists of the ACLU plus various atheist groups. They are always ready to file lawsuits to get some supremacist judge to restrict religious expression.
This effort is magnified by two other organizations that have a major impact on our culture: the military who feel the temptation to be politically correct and the liberal bureaucrats in public schools who now feel free to teach their leftwing views. Barack Obama’s fingerprints are not on most of these acts, but his anti-religious attitudes are widely enough known to encourage those on the public payroll to charge ahead with extremist politically correct policies.
We’d like to know if Pentagon officials have met with any Christian leaders to balance the aggressive lobbying by those who want to silence all religious expression by members of the military. Nine senior Army or Navy officers were dismissed this year, and some wonder if this was a purge of senior officers suspected of not toeing the Obama party line.
A Young Marines program in Louisiana, which has been helping at-risk youth for 25 years, lost its federal funding because its graduation ceremony mentions God. The oath says simply, “I shall never do anything that would bring disgrace or dishonor upon my God, my country and its flag, my parents, myself or the Young Marines.”
Graduation also includes a voluntary and non-denominational prayer that, in 25 years, no one ever complained about. But Obama’s Department of Justice discovered the oath and prayer in a random audit and then demanded that both be removed or else the government would cut off its $15,000 in federal funding.
Some public school busybody bureaucrats are trying to suppress any and all religious mention on school property. Their orders are far more extreme than anything courts have ever held to be violations of the First Amendment.
Sports are a favorite target of the anti-religious crowd. A high school football coach, Marcus Borden, was forbidden even to bow his head or “take a knee” during voluntary student-led prayers before the games.
In Texas, a boy’s track relay team ran its fastest race of the year and defeated its closest rival by seven yards, which should have enabled it to advance toward the state championship. The team’s anchor runner pointed to the sky to give glory to God as he crossed the finish line, but someone didn’t like the gesture so the authorities disqualified this winning team because of it.
The ACLU in Rhode Island filed a lawsuit to force Cranston High School to remove a prayer banner in the auditorium, even though there had been no complaints in 38 years. The banner reads in part: “Our Heavenly Father: Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship, help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.”
High school officials in Kountze, Texas, and a Wisconsin atheist group called Freedom From Religion made a tremendous effort to stop the cheerleaders from displaying a banner before a football game that read: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”
In North Carolina, a high school junior knelt for a brief two-second prayer before a wrestling match, and the referee penalized him a point for doing so. A senior at Tomah High School in Wisconsin was given a zero on an art project because he added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A Sign of Love” to his drawing of a landscape.
You can laugh at the following rule issued by the principal at Heritage Elementary in Madison, Alabama, but she was downright serious. She allowed Easter observances including a costumed rabbit, but she issued this imperious warning, “Make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter bunny’ because that would infringe on religious diversity.”
America was founded on very different beliefs about government actions. As Alexis de Toqueville, the Frenchman who traveled around our country in the mid-19th century, wrote: “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. … The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

Get it Right: Ode to the Bulldogs of Freedom

“The people who do not revere the deeds of their ancestors will never do anything to be remembered by their descendants.” 

So said British historian Lord Macauly. It is notable, then, that history so well favors Samuel Adams, Boston's unyielding bulldog of American independence. Two and a half centuries ago Adams turned colonial anger at unfair taxation into full-blown American independence. Three recent patriots, Utah County's homegrown Senator Mike Lee, along with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently invested themselves in a modern crusade against repressive taxation,as well.

On May 24, 1764, Samuel Adams took to the rostrum in Boston's Faneuil Hall to instruct new representatives to the Massachusetts provincial legislature. That day, Adams, the consummate politician so at ease in Boston's political arena, lit the bonfire that ultimately chased the British from colonial America. A fundamental transformation had been foisted on the colonists, as British Parliament declared its intention to violate colonial charters and tax American prosperity to enrich British coffers. Adams said, "If our trade may be taxed, why not our lands and everything we possess or make use of? This ... annihilates our charter(ed) right to govern and tax ourselves." The rest is history. Samuel Adams drove his principles to national independence as those who could hear the infant chant of freedom responded to his clarion call.
Over the last few weeks a similar refrain echoed through the United States Congress as three legislators put themselves on the political grill to plead freedom from unethical taxation. While Cruz took to the Senate rostrum in a marathon filibuster, Lee and Ryan worked the partisan crowd. They also fought fundamental transformation that will enslave one-sixth of the American economy to total government control. Like Adams, their past experience with myopic, runaway government fueled their fears.

Samuel Adams fought the Sugar Act, a seemingly benevolent law the British claimed would increase colonial prosperity by reducing taxes to half the amount of previous policies. The problem, however, was that this tax would be strictly enforced rather than universally ignored, as was its predecessor. Our recent legislative triad fought the ill-named Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), a supposedly benevolent policy to bring health insurance to the uninsured. Its problem is 2500 extra pages of pork barrel, government-imposed fee structures, reduced availability of medical care, an open format that allows endless additions to the law and a legion of add-ons that have nothing to do with health care.
Both Adams and our current legislators feared the precedent set by federal appetites -- what will come next if we permit this power grab? Both responded to the bullying of federal authorities -- Adams to Parliament's scorn of the colonists; our modern legislators to the resentment of Americans who watched the ramrod passage of an oppressive law by extortion, bribery and outright lies.
Political forces moved against Samuel Adams in the aftermath of his stand against tyranny. British Governor Bernard and British-loving Tories clamored for his removal, and those who later embraced his activism initially viewed him with skepticism. So, also, forces within their own party turned against the modern trio of legislators. For Lee, within his own state under the Count Your Vote initiative, powers are at work to unseat him for his stand against bureaucratic health care.
The more things change the more they remain the same -- in history, in politics, in leadership. Repressive governments seek control; patriots seek liberty. Party leaders can shamefully turn on their own who take the moral high ground. Unfair taxation leaves welts on the backs of those who suffer under the political lash. The ledgers of history record that Samuel Adams, the bulldog of American freedom, never gave up. Is there more our modern bulldogs can do to derail Obamacare, this fast track from partial to full socialism? Pray that there is. If not, another major segment of liberty has become history.

Get it Right: Whining to the Feds

America is racing toward bankruptcy, with debts beyond any ability to repay. The debt clock stands near 17 trillion, with future combined federal liabilities (social security, prescriptions drugs, Medicare, ect.) at 126 trillion, an incomprehensible sum. Yet we still beg for federal funds. Why? The government has no money. To feed its gluttony, it borrows every cent it gives and vastly more. Why do we add to it, boarding a rapidly sinking ship, only to sink it further?

Conservatives routinely bewail the entitlement mentality. Lest we forget, cities, counties and states can embrace entitlement as well. Under our Constitution, the federal government has only 26 responsibilities: twenty for Congress and six to the president. Funding non-federal projects, such as Alpine's $750,000 flood mitigation project, is not among the 26 duties, yet that request graces the desk of federal bureaucrats.
It's not that the project is not necessary or good; it's just not a federal matter, and making it so embraces entitlement. If the project is necessary, it should be locally funded with citizen support, strong priorities, and a paring knife aimed at current expenditures.
America, under our original Constitution, became great through independence. As a basic system, anything non-essential fell to private enterprise. Anything essential for the community was funded there; ditto for the county, double ditto for the state. Each state was an independent laboratory; a sovereign body with the duty to care for its own. Beyond what all states needed, such as a national navy, unified postal system, uniform bankruptcy laws and patents, a universal monetary system, the states were the boss. There was no whining to the feds.
Things have changed! Now we "run home to papa" -- the federal government. But papa is broke; he has no money. His life savings are gone, he's in hock to the bank for a whole lot more than he owns and the banks have threatened to shut him down. Yet we still run to papa for funds. As an example, students go to him for loans -- almost half, 45 percent, of Utah graduates owe the Feds over $17,000 at graduation, with $1 trillion owed nationally. Their grandparents bought houses for that amount two generations ago. It is not one of the 26 federal duties to loan money to students. In a tight job market, can they repay, or will we excuse the debts as a down payment into Entitlement Villa?
How about if we leave Papa and support ourselves? Personal responsibility is the basis of a constitutional republic. Without it; with papa paying the bills, we cannot be a constitutional republic; we must be a socialist nation, where people, businesses, and governments need nursery care. The more money we take from the feds, the more they can dictate to us. You pay your bills, you make the decisions; someone else pays, he tells you what to do. Freedom versus control; it's a simple equation. Entitlement saps our strength, convinces us that we are helpless, and we become slaves. With our subscription to civic entitlement, we reap a culture of slavery.

Do we want freedom, or do we not? This is not a cake-and-eat-it-too deal, either we care for ourselves, or we let the federal government do it. Which? If freedom is our goal, personal and civic responsibility bid us abandon our place in line at the federal feeding trough, even for pet projects.
Probably all of us have partaken of the entitlement feast, though perhaps not knowingly or willingly. It has become a way of life, but it exacts an indelible toll. Federal money is habit forming. Like street drugs, it sucks your resolve, crushes your future, and makes you dependent.
What do we want? It's our decision: freedom, with its responsibility and self-sacrifice, or ever-growing social and economic slavery? We should actively make the decision, however, not continue to bellyache about entitlement while we practice it. Hypocrisy is not good for the soul.