“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” ~ Thoreau
Earlier this week Attorney General said of Obamacare that Catholic priests may need to go to jail rather than violate their religious conscience.
To this, former DNC chair, failed 2009 gubernatorial candidate and current Democratic Party of Virginia standard bearer, Terry McAuliffe said “Let’s make us some money.”
That’s right. In times of crisis, Democrats do what they do best (seriously, that’s documented), send out a fundraising email.
McAuliffe wrote:
Virginia’s Attorney General is openly advocating that people break the law…While Virginia is facing challenges to improve our transportation, education, and economy, Cuccinelli continues to draw from his extreme ideological agenda and attempt to set reproductive rights back 50 years.
50 years? Let’s try 60 years Terry.
On April 23, 1951, students at Robert Russa Moton High School in the town of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, walked out of school to protest the conditions of their education, which they claimed were vastly inferior to those enjoyed by white students at nearby Farmville High School. [Encyclopedia Virginia]
It’s called civil disobedience, Terry.
But let’s move to 50 years. On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was himself arrested some five times for civil disobedience, spoke to some 200,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
A few years before that, King had written in a Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor who worked to overthrow Hitler and who was martyred just days before the end of World War II said:
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
I understand, Terry, that you won’t miss an opportunity to call Ken Cuccinelli an extremist, and that you’ll try your darnedest to use it to raise money. After all, we understand that we’re more excited about your candidacy than most of the people in your own party.
Still, it seems you don’t, or at least didn’t, have a problem with protests since you participated in an abortion rights march in 2004.
But what problem do you have with people standing up for their religious beliefs?
You seek to hold the highest office in Virginia. Virginia where freedom of religion was written into a statute authored by another Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson wrote (and the General Assembly Adopted on January 16, 1786):
We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
So, what you need to remember if you seek to be the Governor of Virginia, is that history is important. It is precisely because of our history, some of it glorious, some of it horrid, that we can determine the path to our future.
And sadly for you, Terry, your path doesn’t lead to the Executive Mansion.
A path, by the way, which leads by the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial.
