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USANews版 - Contraception, Churches, and the Left's Phony Argument
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话题: catholic话题: obama话题: church话题: government话题: mr
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l****z
发帖数: 29846
1
By J. Robert Smith
You've got to hand it to liberals. They stick to a script. On the
contraception-Catholic Church flap, the script is that most Catholic women
favor contraception (and, one guesses, abortion-inducers). Ergo, the
Catholic Church should buckle under and accept President Obama's mandate.
Conscience and religious liberty (and a little thing called the 1st
Amendment) just don't stack up against what a majority of Catholic women
want -- or what liberals say they want. You know, vox populi and all that.
So if vox populi is good enough for the Catholic Church, why not for
liberals and the Democratic Party -- or more exactly, for policies favored
by both? Like ObamaCare.
Liberal talking heads, like little wind-up toy soldiers, have been all over
the airwaves, yakking about the supremacy of "women's health" and what a
majority of Catholic women are supposed to want. (Isn't it nice how
liberals always appoint themselves spokesmen for others? Call it the Jesse
Jackson syndrome. The Reverend Jackson has an unerring talent for showing
up and speaking on behalf of people who never asked him to.)
If liberals are all fired up about majority rule, why shouldn't they apply
that principle to ObamaCare? That's right, ObamaCare. Seems that a
majority of Americans oppose the president's government-run health care
scheme. Rasmussen reports that 54% of Americans want ObamaCare axed.
Majorities never wanted government-run health care in the first place.
ObamaCare was rammed down Americans' throats.
But that's not how majoritarianism works, evidently. See, where liberals
can use majority sentiment to justify and advance their statist polices,
well, by all means. Hence, efforts to bulldoze the Catholic Church and
mangle the 1st Amendment are cloaked in a concern for what a majority of
Catholic women desire.
When a liberal policy aim fails to muster a majority, tough luck. ObamaCare
is what Americans need, whether they want it or not. Liberals insist on it
. And what could average Americans possibly know about what's good for
their welfare? If liberals and government can't run other people's lives,
what purpose is there for either?
Take another issue: federal spending. According to Gallup, a lopsided
majority believes that Washington spends too much. No need for more or
higher taxes, either. Perhaps President Obama needs better staff briefings.
Mr. Obama could be nicknamed "President Spend-a-Lot," because, boy, has Mr
. Obama spent and borrowed a lot. In fact, if Mr. Obama isn't stopped, he'
ll spend the nation into debtors' prison.
So where are the liberals who'll champion the majority position on federal
spending? Will anyone see Tamara Holder, for instance, on Sean Hannity's
show championing the majority's opposition to Mr. Obama's credit card
spending and his desire to hammer Americans with higher taxes? Nope, afraid
not.
Big government, lots of spending, and higher taxes are to liberals what sun,
water, and soil are to plants. No way, no how will liberals let a majority
of Americans put their will to work when it comes to the size and scope of
government. Government, you see, is increasingly for elites. Government of
, by, and for the people is almost as quaint as the original intent of
federalism.
Of course, the Catholic Church is very different from government. It's
organized around faith in God. The Church's principles and rules flow from
God's teachings, as the Church understands them. Those principles and rules
aren't subject to plebiscites (or opinion polling results). When God gave
Moses the Ten Commandants, He didn't tell him to check with other Jews to
see if they agreed. Ditto Christians.
The fact that churches answer to a higher power isn't lost on liberals; it's
just irritating and troublesome. More importantly, churches and synagogues
are impediments to unfettering state power -- meaning unfettering the left'
s power. Leastwise those churches and synagogues that aren't the equivalent
of reservation Indians of old: servile, pliant accommodators of their
secular masters' wishes.
We've heard the arguments why Mr. Obama and the left want to ride roughshod
over the Catholic Church: election considerations (rally the single women),
mainly. Nor does Mr. Obama want to give much ground in the fight to
entrench government-run medicine. Left-ideology dictates bigger government,
though the reason why Mr. Obama is trying to bully the Catholic Church has
to do primarily with the aforementioned appetite for power. There's nothing
much progressive about the left's power-cravings.
Hungering for power is as old as Homo sapiens and accounts for much of human
history. The genuinely progressive mind seeks ways to thwart the drive for
excesses of power. The Founders keenly understood human nature, and they
understood that not only is a government of checks and balances required to
stymie the power-hungry, but institutions and social arrangements outside
government are essential bulwarks against government.
Faith is a basic right; churches are where many of the faithful go to
worship. But churches are also a line of defense against tyranny. That
notion wasn't lost on the Founders.
Mr. Obama's and the left's attack on the Catholic Church is indeed an attack
on the 1st Amendment -- not only for Catholics, but for all faiths. The
state, not God, is supreme among the secular left. The quest of the left is
to be absolute in government. Hence Mr. Obama's recent attempt to subject
churches to discrimination laws (an effort struck down unanimously by the U.
S. Supreme Court, which should give one an idea of how flagrant was Mr.
Obama's overreach).
But beware -- leftists are persistent cusses. We've heard only the opening
bell in the assault on churches and the 1st Amendment. The left has a
decades-long track record of assaulting rights and freedoms, and with no
little success.
Catholic Archbishop Dolan is saying that there will be no compromise on Mr.
Obama's end-run to force Catholic institutions' insurers to pay for
contraception and abortion-inducers. Let's hope that Archbishop Dolan's
stand is truly non-negotiable. Moreover, let's hope that Catholic bishops
have gotten a wakeup call. The bishops' "social justice" agenda has often
aligned them with the left and big government. Now the bishops are
experiencing the perniciousness of big government when turned on Church
beliefs.
The Catholic Church needs to join fully with freedom-loving Americans in
defending natural rights, the rule of law, and the Constitution, which aims
squarely against predatory government. Let's also hear the bishops insist
that liberals apply their own arguments about majority rule where it counts:
to government, where, under President Obama and the Democrats, the will of
the people has been consistently denied; where rights are being trampled;
where the seeds of tyranny are being sown daily.
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相关话题的讨论汇总
话题: catholic话题: obama话题: church话题: government话题: mr