Leftist Tyranny

How to Win the Marriage Debate

Defend Marriage Orthodox wedding by Selwyn Duke –
The big news on the culture-war front is a federal court’s striking down of Proposition 8, California’s constitutional amendment protecting marriage.  In a two-to-one ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote, “The people may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry.”

Now, I’m not sure why the judges mention a “disfavored group,” as if singling out a “favored” one for unequal treatment would be okay.  As far as I know, the 14th Amendment, on which the court based its ruling, doesn’t offer equal protection to only those the current fashions deem “disfavored.”  Thus, I think this is an example of emotionalism influencing a ruling and its language, sort of as if a judge sentenced a defendant and, adding an adjective, announced him as “stupid” Mr. Smith.  Calling a group “disfavored” is similarly a subjective judgment.  This is not the only thing the judges were subjective about, however. [Read more…]

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Obama Admin Finalizes Rules: $1 Abortions in ObamaCare

Obama Abortion HHS mandate by Steven Ertelt –
It’s official. The concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed, as the Obama administration has issued the final rules on abortion funding governing the controversial health care law.

Nestled within the “individual mandate” in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government — approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an “abortion premium mandate.” This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion. As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.

The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a final rule regarding establishment of the state health care exchanges required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. [Read more…]

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Socialism without Guns

Greece communism socialism by Larrey Anderson –
As their economic orgy fades to its inevitable end, the people of Greece find themselves in a country that resembles more of a debtor’s prison than a representative democracy. The Greeks have sold their freedom for a mess of pottage. If the United States is not careful, we could soon find ourselves in a very similar situation.

Unlike the former Soviet Union, there was no violent Marxist “revolution” in Greece. Freedom was taken from the country’s citizens without a single shot being fired. The Greeks squandered their freedom by electing, time and again, politicians who promised an unsustainable socialist utopia. The Greeks committed political suicide by creating socialism without guns. [Read more…]

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The American Left and the Erosion of Public Discourse

American Left Socialism Communism progressives by Steve McCann –
Much has been made of the precipitous decline in the level of discourse in the United States. Many attribute this to the coarsening of the language and the ever-widening gulf between the various factions in the political spectrum. However, these factors are a symptom of a current underlying and foundational dilemma: the inability of not only the general public, but nearly all of the so-called societal leaders and opinion-makers to generate an original thought, as well as a stubborn refusal to use reason and logic when confronted with irrefutable facts and arguments.

These traits can be explained, insofar as the general public is concerned, as the consequence of their subjection for the past forty years to a woeful and deliberately incomplete education bordering on indoctrination. However, this factor does not fully explain many of the so-called best and brightest falling into the same abyss and being unable to coherently expound on an original thought or concept. While this is true for a few on the conservative side of the political spectrum, it is overwhelmingly the case among those who self-identify as liberals or progressives. [Read more…]

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In the Face of Secularism, It is Time for a New Defense of Christianity

New Defense of Christianity by Michael Terheyden –
In the Face of Secularism, What is needed is a Defense of the ancient yet ever new faith which sets people and Nations free
The Obama administration’s unconstitutional mandate regarding birth control coverage reminds us that we live in the age of secular humanism, when many people no longer believe religious faith is reasonable or important.

The message this administration sends to Christians is that our faith is bad for modern society, and we will no longer be allowed to live according to our beliefs in this nation. Therefore, as we prepare to enter into the deepest mysteries of our faith this Lenten season, perhaps it would be helpful if we compare the reasonableness of our faith with secular humanism.

The renowned Catholic theologian Germain Grisez provides us with excellent information on this subject in Volume 2 of his book, Living A Christian Life. This article was inspired by the excerpts in the section on faith which focus on secular humanism’s claim that Christianity is not rational, scientific or tolerant. But before I proceed, I want to be clear about how I use the term “secular humanism.”[Read more…]

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American Exceptionalism Under Assault

American Exceptionalism Under Assaultby Emil W. Henry, Jr. –
The Obama presidency has turned the American Social Contract on its head.

In this election cycle, one noticeable phenomenon is how the Republican presidential candidates are emphasizing our country’s founding principles — liberty and freedom — more than in any campaign in the modern political era. Each speaks often of the Declaration of Independence. Citing articles of the Constitution is commonplace.

The president’s record of evoking such themes stands in stark contrast. In his State of the Union address, for example, our president made only one perfunctory reference to the Constitution and then went on to misquote it. [Read more…]

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Canada’s New Tyranny: The State’s Takeover of the Family

Canada Tyranny Christian Family Persecution by LifeSiteNews Editors –
The great English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.”

But if what Chesterton says is true, then Canada fails the test, because the Canadian family is no longer free.

In the past week we have witnessed the Supreme Court of Canada dismiss the appeal of a Quebec family for permission to exempt their child from that province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course, which critics say is “relativistic,” and teaches that all religious are equally valid. And we have heard a spokesperson for the Alberta education minister state that under the province’s new Education Act even homeschooling parents will no longer be allowed to teach their children traditional Christian sexual ethics. [Read more…]

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Cardinal Dolan: Cannot Rest When Faced with so Grave a Threat to Religious Liberty

Cardinal Timothy Dolan by Deacon Keith Fournier –
“If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end? This violates the constitutional limits on our government, and the basic rights upon which our country was founded. Much remains to be done. We cannot rest when faced with so grave a threat to the religious liberty for which our parents and grandparents fought. In this moment in history we must work diligently to preserve religious liberty and to remove all threats to the practice of our faith in the public square.” (Cardinal Timothy Dolan)

NEW YORK, NY (Catholic Online) – Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, recently returned from Rome, is continuing to provide clear and courageous leadership to the Catholic Church in the United States. We are facing one of the greatest struggles in our history.

We offer below the full text of a letter which was sent on Ash Wednesday, from Cardinal Dolan, to his brother Bishops. It is co-signed by another heroic figure in this critical hour, Bishop William Lori, the Chairman of the Bishops Committee for Religious Liberty. [Read more…]

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Obama’s Unholy War Against Christianity, Not Islam

American Spectator - War Against Christianity by George Neumayr –
The more illiberal a religion, the more liberals tend to like it. Western liberals who propose no place for God in the public square can usually be counted on to excuse non-western religions that impose a false and dangerous one upon it.

The explanation for this apparent contradiction goes beyond the childish and self-hating affinity of western liberals for all things non-western. The deeper reason is western liberalism’s attachment to irrationality. Having ruptured a once-harmonious relationship between reason and religion in their own culture, western liberals can’t seem to stop themselves from championing similar ruptures in alien ones.

By different routes of irrationality, western liberals and militant Muslims arrive at the same spot. Western liberals reach it by a distorted “reason” without faith, militant Muslims by a distorted “faith” without reason, with each imbalance producing its own culture of death: abortion and euthanasia in the west, jihad in the east. [Read more…]

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The First and Foremost Freedom, Freedom of Religion

Christian persecution, loss of religious liberty America by Chuck Colson –
I’ve been talking a lot lately about the Obama Administration’s relentless attempts to restrict religious freedom.

You know by now that the Catholic bishops have strongly rejected the president’s so-called “accommodation” to exempt religious organizations from paying for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.

Good for the bishops. What the president outlined changed nothing: religious organizations will still have to provide insurance that covers services that violate their religious beliefs, even if they don’t have to pay for them directly.

Now why does this matter? Why is it really such a big deal? The Administration is hoping you will think this is all about contraception, which not many people, even the majority of Catholics, care that much about. But this is not about contraception. This battle is all about religious freedom—the first and most important of all our freedoms. [Read more…]

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