“We are all Catholics now.”

When President Obama took the podium on Friday to announce his “accommodation” of the Catholic Church by changing the nature of his diktat that they provide contraceptives to their employees, he had the air of a benevolent dictator addressing his subjects.

When ObamaCare was being debated by a Congress dominated by Democrat supermajorities that the Republicans lacked the numbers to thwart, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously stated that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Turns out that what was in it was nothing less than the power of a president to force people, in the guise of “health care,” to take virtually any action that it pleases him to compel, even if that action violates that person’s deepest moral convictions.

The leftist establishment “news” media, in service to Obama and his Democrats, would have you believe that the controversy is a renewal of the “culture wars” of the 1990s; whether women should have access to contraceptives or whether the evil misogynist Republicans should be able to ban them.

The proposition that Republicans are trying to ban contraception is so ridiculous that it need not be given the dignity of a substantive response.  But what does require a response is the effort of Obama’s sycophantic “news” media to distract attention from the danger of what he has done.  So, let’s be clear:  The issue that is alarming the American people has nothing whatsoever to do with contraception or any other so-called “cultural” issue.  The issue isn’t even limited to religious freedom, although that precious freedom is a large part of it.

The issue is whether Barack Obama and his Democrats will get away with “fundamentally transforming” America from a representative democracy in which the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, as set forth in our Declaration of Independence, into a leftist autocracy in which Obama and his Democrats have the tyrannical power to impose their will on the people without our consent.

This issue goes to the core of what America is as a country.  The first settlers in the New World were pilgrims who left the comfort of England to brave the harsh and unknown wilds of America in order to have the right to practice their religion freely without interference from the government.  More than half of those pilgrims died for that right, but their descendants went on to populate and found our nation.  And when we ultimately won our independence from that same tyrannical British government from whom the pilgrims fled, the first of the rights stated in our nation’s Constitution was the free exercise of religion.

Barack Obama and his Democrats do not respect that Constitution.  They see it not as our foundational document that restricts the powers of government to those that we the people have ceded to the government.  Rather, they see it as an obstacle to be avoided when possible and otherwise ignored in their quest to impose their own leftist religion on the American people.

America is unique in all of world history in that we came into existence as a nation not as an accident of geography but rather in pursuit of specific ideas and ideals.  We were the first country ever founded based upon the principle that governments have only those powers that we consent for them to have and that governments are always the servants, and not the masters, of the people.  But, for the first time in American history, we have a president and political party that is working aggressively to end America as a representative republic and make us the latest in history’s long line of tyrannical regimes.

And so it is vital that the American people recognize that the election of 2012 is not just another election.  It is a contest to determine whether America will continue to exist as a representative democracy or whether the grand experiment in self-rule initiated by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton will fail on our watch.  If Barack Obama and his Democrats win, the Constitution is effectively a dead letter – and so is America as a representative democracy.

Defeating Barack Obama is the most important, but not exclusive, imperative in this year’s election.  We must also ensure that Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives and win control of the Senate – not because the Republicans have proven that they necessarily will govern with a sincere and humble respect for our Constitution, but because the Democrats have proven conclusively that they won’t.

Look again at the current attempt by Obama and his Democrats to force the Catholic Church to violate one of its most important moral tenets.  When Obama announced his diktat forcing religious institutions to provide contraceptives to women through the insurance they provide their employees, Virginia Republican Senate candidate George Allen denounced the policy as “arrogant and absurd” and a violation of churches’ First Amendment rights.  By contrast, Democrat candidate Tim Kaine (whose Catholicism apparently is secondary to his party’s leftist religion), gushingly embraced Obama’s diktat and stated, “That’s the kind of leadership I hope to bring to the U.S. Senate.”

That’s the kind of leadership we must prevent anyone from bringing to any part of our government.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Catholic (I’m not) or whether you agree with the Catholic Church’s teachings on contraception (I don’t).  What Obama and his Democrats are doing to the Catholic Church must be opposed by everyone who believes in America’s core values.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, pastor Martin Niemöller wrote a poignant warning to those who ignore tyranny in their midst:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Yesterday, former Arkansas Governor (and Baptist pastor) Mike Huckabee responded to Obama’s diktat imposing his will on the Catholic Church by eloquently stating, “In many ways, thanks to President Obama, we are all Catholics now.”

Amen.

The painting above is “The Forgotten Man” by Jon McNaughton.

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