The No Religious Freedom Mandate
and
The President Can Issue Unilateral Mandates Mandate
and
The Let’s Sneak Abortion into ObamaCare While Nobody’s Looking Mandate
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York, President of the USCCB
The recent conflict, which erupted between President Obama and the Catholic Church in March 2012, over Obama’s insertion of a “Contraceptive Mandate” into ObamaCare, has raised a number of important questions.
We will explore below, how this actually represented an attempt by the Obama administration to sneak in control measures over the American population into previously passed legislation, while using the age-old distraction tactics practiced by movie villains and by villains in real life.
Background
- When in previous American history has a President included new mandates (dictates, as in dictatorship) into legislation that has already been passed?
- When in previous American history has an administration required all Americans to purchase a product, which is controlled by the federal government?
- When in previous American history has a President violated, by issuing his own mandate, the mandate of the First Amendment which states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ?
What does the Obama Administration Want?
The Obama Administration clearly wants a federal health care system, ObamaCare.
They also clearly support abortion.
They have a record of promoting gay “rights,” for example in the military.
Clearly, the Obama Administration has a radical liberal agenda.
But there’s an obstacle.
It’s called democracy.
America is mostly conservative (Gallup 2012: 40% Conservative, 30% moderate, and 21% liberal). Gallup: Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.
So voting, or democracy, will not work in furthering the Obama administration’s radical agenda.
However, establishing the right of a President to mandate stuff would work much better. That way, you don’t have to mess with getting the people’s approval.
So President Obama wants to exert more control over American citizens.
He wants to establish the right to issue mandates unopposed.
He wants to issue mandates favoring his favorite causes; government health care, abortion and gay “rights” are included.
Who stands in his way?
Christians. (80% of America)
Which Christian denomination has the most members in the U.S.?
Catholics.
Which Chirstian denomination has the biggest national organization/communication network in place?
Catholics.
So What’s the Battle Plan?
If you could issue a mandate, while creating a diversion so nobody notices it, and weaken your biggest opponent in the process, wouldn’t that be a brilliant plan?
Yes, and that is exactly what the Obama administration has attempted.
You issue a mandate that forces U.S. Citizens to do something.
Pick something that would weaken your biggest opponent; something that will weaken Catholics.
Something that will either make them surrender their beliefs to comply, or close most of their largest institutions if they cannot comply .
AND, find something on which the Church is divided, so there is confusion in the ranks when the attack occurs.
Yes, we have it!
Require that the Catholic Church pays for Contraception.
What a brilliant plan; that covers all the bases.
For good measure, make sure you catch them unprepared.
Invite them into the White House, assure them that their rights and liberties are foremost in your agenda, and send them home satisfied that they do not have to prepare for a fight. That way, when your announcement comes, it will be a surprise attack and they will not be prepared.
The Distraction Tactics
- By introducing contraception, you divert discussion to an inflammatory side issue.
- By attacking conservative political pundits who discuss the issue publicly, you distract the American public from the real issues: Presidential proclamations (mandates) and violations of religious freedom.
How Obama Implemented the Plan
This is exactly what happened.
President Obama invited the President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to the White House, assured USCCB President/now Cardinal Dolan that he will respect the rights of Catholic institutions, and invited President Dolan to relay the message to all the other bishops. The Wall Street Journal interview in which Cardinal Dolan describes the November 2011 Oval Office meeting included the following excerpt:
“I [Cardinal Dolan] said, ‘I’ve heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?’ [Mr. Obama] said, ‘You bet it does.'”
The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. “You don’t have my permission, you’ve got my request,” the president replied.
Cardinal Dolan
Then the axe fell at the end of January, when President Obama declared that the contraception mandates would remain in place and no religious exemptions would be granted to the Catholic Church.
Details of the deception can be found in the Wall Street Journal Interview and in the FOX video Interview of Cardinal Dolan. Of course, the Cardinal refrains from calling the President a liar and shows utmost respect for the office of the Presidency. But the interviews expose the facts, which we can evaluate ourselves and determine whether intentional deception was part of the plan.
Imagine inviting the head of the Catholic Church to the Oval Office 3 months in advance of issuing the Contraception Mandate, and assuring him, and inviting him to inform all United States Bishops that President Obama is very serious about the protection of the rights of conscience of Catholics, then issuing mandates violating those rights. That took some premeditated planning.
A Double Standard
The Amish have an exemption to ObamaCare
Religious exemptions have been granted to various groups on various issues at President Obama’s discretion; exemptions to Native Americans to kill eagles for religious ceremonies (for which the U.S. government facilitates and stores feathers and eagle body parts at taxpayer expense), as well as exemptions for Amish (as well as Muslims and Christian Scientists) from ObamaCare
Further Villainy
After Cardinal Dolan and the Catholic Bishops stood up to the President’s Contraceptive Mandate, President Obama pretended to compromise, by requiring the insurance company to pay for the free contraceptives, and claiming that the Catholic Institutions will not have to pay for the free contraceptives (and abortifacients and sterilizations) which violate the moral beliefs of Catholics. (See how abortion got snuck in there, oh, so subtly!)
"We Inside Yet?"
- Never mind that most Catholic Institutions are self-insured or employ Catholic insurance companies, so Catholics are still being forced to pay for immoral services.
- Never mind that Obama did not even speak with the head of the US Catholic Church, Cardinal Dolan, before making this final pronouncement.
- Never mind that President Obama has surrounded himself with “Catholics” in name only in an effort to legitimize his proclamations (Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius and Sister Carol Keehan, who have all publicly opposed the Catholic Church’s teachings and policies and are better described as dissidents, not Catholics).
President Obama has challenged the chain of command in the Catholic Church, by choosing to communicate with hand-picked dissidents, then pretending that his has Catholic support. Separation of Church and State? Obama reorganized the chain of command in the Catholic Church!
Summarizing the Attack.
O.K.
So the President managed to issue his dictatorial command.
He managed to dictate what the Catholic Church must do against their conscience.
With a double standard that was not applied to Native Americans or to Amish.
He also managed to divert the issue from Presidential dictatorial powers and from violation of freedom of religion by the President to national discussion of a topic that is controversial in the United States; a topic on which more Americans are likely to agree with the President, but which actually has nothing to do with the dictatorial and freedom of religion issues at hand.
The final blow was to attack a popular national conservative spokesman, Rush Limbaugh, when he ridiculed the need for exaggerated quantities of birth control on college campuses. This attack has now morphed into a serious attempt by the left to get Rush Limbaugh’s voice off the airwaves. Wouldn’t that be nice for the President? What about freedom of the press? Hey, the White House can blast the first amendment simultaneously on TWO counts; religious freedom and freedom of speech!
More discussion of the national liberal attack on Rush Limbaugh at Knights in Shining Armor.
The Main Point Was Almost Lost
Lost Point
Meanwhile, the main point was almost lost.
The President of the United States has issued a proclamation in opposition to his previous promises to Congress (promising Stupak that abortion would not be included in ObamaCare, and that an Executive Order would be issued to that effect).
- A proclamation that controls what the largest Church in the US (28% of U.S. citizens belong) must do against it’s conscience.
Americans are not Stupid
President Obama overstepped his authority, and miscalculated on several fronts.
He miscalculated the courage of the American Bishops.
He miscalculated the gullibility of the American people.
He miscalculated the cost of his bluff.
The American Bishops did not back down, but dug in, in defense of religious freedom in America. Jews and Baptists and many others have joined them. Obama has singlehandedly managed to achieve a unification of Judeo-Christian believers, which we have struggled to accomplish with decades of ecumenical efforts. Now, Rabbis stand up before Senate panels and defend the religious freedom of Catholics.
The American people are jumping ship as well. The Wall Street Journal indicates that Obama has gone too far for most moderates who supported him in the last election. His dictatorial disregard for the religious freedom of Catholics, combined with his cavalier delusional palling around with Russians in front of hot mics in defiance of his electorate, followed by jocular references to the embarrassing mic incident, have been just too much. Peggy Noonan writes, in an article entitled Not-So-Smooth Operator – – “the level of dislike for the president has ratched up sharply the past few months… and it’s his fault, too.”
The cost of Obama’s bluff can also be calculated in dollar terms; some estimate $100 billion costs to the US associated with the closing of Catholic hospitals; others estimate higher. The Fiscal Times writes : “it would create a disaster for the delivery of health care in the country, and rapidly escalate the public costs of health care.
So, Catholics vs. Obamacare is NOT About Birth Control
There is also the cost of reigniting the cultural wars.
John Leo of The Fiscal Times writes:
The mainstream press keeps telling us that the struggle of Catholics vs. ObamaCare is about birth control. This is partly ineptitude, partly an effort to depict the controversy as irrelevant, since Catholics use contraceptives at almost the same rate as the general population. And, consciously or not, this ordinary bit of journalistic malpractice pins an anti-contraceptive label on Republicans in an election year.
Leo also discusses Jean Bethke Elshtain’s theories on establishment pressure, called “liberal monism:”
Liberal monism refers to the fact that those who talk the most about diversity and pluralism are often the most willing to mandate that all private and religious institutions conform to one ideological framework, theirs.
Why Would an American President Intentionally Sow Division in the Nation?
Some shocking new theories are surfacing to explain President Obama’s agenda.
Obama does not seem to adhere to the American Dream of our Founding Fathers.
He does not seem to adhere to the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., of a society which does not judge by the color of the skin but by the content of the character, and in which the sons of former slaves and slave-owners can sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
Dinesh D’Souza, the President of the King’s College in New York, an Indian born in Mumbai who came to America and profited from the American Dream, proposes a theory that Barak Obama does not adhere to the American Dream, nor to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream, and not even to American liberalism, which seeks to take money from rich Americans and redistribute to poorer Americans, but adheres instead to a concept many Americans are not familiar with, anti-colonialism.
Anti-colonialism is an angry attitude found in some places across the globe, in which America’s success is viewed not as a product of America’s moral and religious hard work ethic, but as a product of imperial exploitation of other nations. An exploitation by America which needs to be reversed and to be “atoned for” at any cost. An attitude fueled more frequently by envy, than by fact. A philosophy that seeks to take America down a few pegs, not build her up.
An anti-colonial President would not have America’s best interests at heart, but would be more devoted to taking America down a few pegs. A President who would serve as Judge, Jury and Executioner of the American people. A President who would gladly violate his oath of office to defend the Constitution, because he has “higher” loyalties. A president who is a traitor. A President who does not adhere to an absolute morality. A President who believes that the ends justify the means, and any means toward humbling America is justifiable.
Whether there is any truth to D’Souza’s theories about Barak Obama’s destructive agenda for our nation, we can examine for ourselves by reading Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father, and by watching D’Souza’s movie, 2016, produced by the producer of Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park and Brave Heart, and which will be released in June, 2012. The trailer for the movie, followed by a 12-minute background presentation by Dinesh D’Souza has been viewed by almost 1 million people on You Tube already.
Time will tell, and President Obama’s actions will tell, whether there can be even a shred of truth in D’Souza’s claims.
The Triple Mandate
Speculations on Barak Obama’s motivations for Issuing what is now commonly known as the Contraception Mandate aside, it is important to realize that whatever the motivations, the contraception mandate is actually a triple mandate, and is much more important than simply a contraception mandate.
Obama’s Mandate is actually the:
No Religious Freedom Mandate
and
The President Can Issue Unilateral Mandates Mandate
and
The Let’s Sneak Abortion into ObamaCare While Nobody’s Looking Mandate
This Mandate Cannot Stand
Whether this Triple Mandate is taken down by the Supreme Court decision to be released in June on the Constitutionality of ObamaCare, or whether this mandate is considered separately by the Supreme Court under religious freedom violation considerations, or whether the November 2012 election removes President Obama from office and replaces him with someone who will steer us in a different direction, the Triple Mandate cannot stand.
If it does, we are in the U.S.S.R. We have opened the doors wide for communism under which the State has most power, in the place of democracy, under which the individual has most power:
The government will tax and hold all the money.
The government will decide who can have money and how much and when.
The government will decide who can have health care and who cannot.
There will be little free enterprise.There will be lots of black market.
There will be little religious freedom.
Churches will be marginalized.
Religion will be eliminated from education
Conservative thought will be declared bigoted and illegal.
Mandating (dictating) will determine what we can and cannot do.
Mothers will probably be required to work outside the home.
Children will probably be required to attend school, like in Germany today.
Schools will probably be required to teach mandatory radical liberalism.
Home schooling will probably be outlawed.
Children will probably be encouraged/required to report on parents who stray from the compulsory New Order.
Ridiculous?
It’s happened more than once during the past 100 years.
My parents lived through it.
Pope Benedict lived through it.
My grandparents were sent to Siberia for 20 years under the USSR.
People can recognize the signs, and the Contraception Mandate is certainly a big one.
What makes you think that the US is immune to despots who want to eliminate democracy and freedom, and who want to control our nation, instead of being accountable to it’s people, as the Constitution was designed to ensure?
Could the fact that 47% of America already pays no federal tax and many live off government handouts, be part of a devious plan calculated purposely to ensure the dependence (and the votes) of numerous people on radical government
Next Step
Obama has already taken the next step today.
Remember the division of powers in the U.S. Constitution which sets up a system of “checks and balances,” and prevents one branch of the government from exercising too much power? The balance between the Executive Branch, the Legislature and the Judiciary that we all learned about in grammar school?
Previoiusly, Obama, the Executive, commandeered the Legislature’s approval for ObamaCare in 2009 by lying to Stupak and “stealing” the votes of the legislature with false promises.
Today Obama called the Supreme Court “unelected,” and warned them against striking down the health law. This constitutes an attempt to control the Judiciary.
Evidently, what we now have is Obama: Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, Rolled Into One.
The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves.
The Solution:
Read
Pray
Vote
In the spirit of defending our nation’s religious freedoms, I’ve been participating in some online discussions on the subjects of Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services HHS Mandate, often erroneously labeled the “Contraceptive Mandate,” and on the Fortnight for Freedom prayer effort organized by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which began on June 21, 2012.
Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.
