The above is the title of an address that US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave concerning Religious Freedom and the Right to Conscience. He’s right and there is no better example of it in the LGBT movement by militants attacking both at every level of Government. They’ve introduced new wording, phrasing, and new definitions of what used to be current and well established words. Even my own local School District, SAU73 comprised of Gilford and Gilmanton, has been trying to subvert basic Rights of we Normals. As I have already posted up on Superintendent Kirk Beitler’s leading on Policy JBAB, Guidance C, that tried to do a legal and political usurping of Powers that it (as a political subdivision of the State of NH) didn’t possess to be able to grant a new kind of Right (which doesn’t exist) that places a Legal Obligation upon others to use ONLY the District’s approved coerced speech code (violating a number of clauses in both the US and NH Constitution, including Religious and Right of Conscience – more on this later).
Here are his remarks – reformatted and emphasis mine.
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While we wait for our Democratic colleagues to let this legislation move forward, the Senate’s used the time to confirm more of President Trump’s impressive nominees for the federal courts. …
But more broadly, I want to take a moment to help clarify why I and millions of other Americans care so much about having federal judges who believe in the radical notion that words matter and that a judge’s job is to follow the law and the Constitution. Take, for one example, the subject of religious freedom.
The liberty of conscience and the freedom to live out our faiths has been a foundational principle from the Republic’s earliest days. Many of the first Europeans who arrived in the New World came here fleeing religious persecution. James Madison wrote that religion “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”
Samuel Adams said in the summer of 1776 that America would be “the last asylum” for “freedom of thought and the right of private judgment.”
But are we becoming the “post-asylum”?
Let me contrast the understanding of the Founders, with a couple of current events. Last month, New York State convinced a district judge to throw out the Trump administration’s conscience protection rule for health care providers. This straightforward rule ensured health care workers could not be forced to perform or assist with medical procedures that profoundly violate their religious beliefs. But the radical Democrats in New York could not abide this basic protection for people of faith. Instead, they want to force Christians and other people of faith who work in health care to either assist in procedures like abortion, or lose their jobs. So much for freedom of conscience.
The Democrats and socialists do have a religion – that of worship of Big Government which brooks no dissent against their orthodoxy.
New York’s behavior is part of a disturbing trend. Powerful interests on the left want to shrink freedom of religion until it means “freedom to go to church for an hour on Sundays as long as it doesn’t impact the rest of your life.” That shrunken interpretation is nothing like what our Founders intended. And, candidly, I’m not sure how much longer the modern Democratic Party will even believe in that.
Obama certainly did believe exactly that – remember that he popularized the phrase “freedom of worship”. That is a direct repudiation of the “Freedom of Expression” which protects religious beliefs in all areas of life including that in the Public Square. It is that last part that the Left hates the most. After all, look at what has happened in almost every Communist country (that is, if you were sufficiently educated in such – another area in which our education system has failed the last two or three generations of Americans).
A few months ago, a Democrat running for president told CNN that government should take away the tax-exempt status of churches and religious institutions that disagree with left-wing positions. This was not some fringe candidate; it was a guy whom Democrats and the mainstream media had likened to John F. Kennedy. Openly suggesting the federal government should punish churches if liberals don’t like their social views.
That would have been Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. Remember, Democrats are considered to be the most unchurched of all Americans and many are outright belligerent towards those of faith.
That’s appalling. These disturbing signs have not been limited to the courts or the Democratic campaign trail. Absurd anti-religious arguments have appeared right here in the Senate. In the last several years, some of our Democratic colleagues have tried literally to impose religious tests on nominees for federal office. Just take the No Religious Test Clause and the First Amendment and throw them right out the window. Judge Brian Buescher, now a district judge in Nebraska, was attacked by two Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for being a faithful Catholic and a member of the mainstream, worldwide Catholic group the Knights of Columbus.
Those would be Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii and Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA & the recently failed Dem Prez Wannabee candidate) who believe his religious beliefs and membership in the Knights of Columbus rendered him incapable of being a judge.
In written questions, one senator called standard Catholic teachings “extreme positions” and asked if he’d dial down his personal faith practice if confirmed.
And we’re right back to “the freedom to worship in a box” – you rednecks are no longer allowed to live your faith. Instead, you are beholden to our. Welcome to our fiery furnace!
As our colleague Sen. [Ben] Sasse observed at the time, Democrats were transparently implying that “Brian’s religious beliefs, and his affiliation with this Catholic, religious, fraternal organization, might make him unfit for service … [it’s] plainly unconstitutional.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, now a circuit judge on the 7th Circuit, was likewise subjected to a religious test during a confirmation hearing. One Democrat senator literally asked: “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” Another offered this bizarre and ominous remark: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”
Both would be illegal in any normal job interview but that’s where US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA, who also would confiscate every gun in the country if she had the votes) said: “You have a long history of believing that your religious beliefs should prevail….When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,”
Well, if you are a practicing Christian (and Barret is a practicing Catholic), one should live your faith and be true to it. Remember “God, Family, Country” has an order to it. Feinstein made it clear that she is a hater of religion when there is an intersection between religion and government.
So, look—these warning signs on religious freedom are popping up everywhere the modern political left rears its head. Religious freedom in America has never meant, and will never mean, solely the freedom to worship privately. It has never meant, and will never mean, the ability to practice only a subset of faiths acceptable to some subset of politicians.
It means the right to live your life according to the dictates of your faith and conscience—free from government coercion.
If those statements strike anybody in this chamber as remotely controversial, that is exactly why President Trump, Senate Republicans, and millions of Americans are focused on confirming federal judges who will apply our Constitution as it was originally understood.
(H/T: Daily Signal)
