Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix has become one of the first Roman Catholic bishops in the nation to openly defy the Obama administration over new rules forcing employers to include access to contraceptives and sterilization procedures in health-insurance coverage.

Although the Catholic Church itself is exempt from the proposed regulations, Olmsted believes the federal government’s decision is an attack on religious liberty. He is encouraging church members to actively oppose it.

Rob DeFrancesco, spokesman for the Phoenix Diocese, said that even though the diocese, its parishes and its schools will likely all be exempt from the rule, the bishop is concerned about “many other organizations,” such as charities and hospitals, that are Catholic in belief but may not fall under the diocese’s administrative umbrella.
“This is an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the church in the United States directly and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty,” Olmsted wrote in the letter, which is expected to be read this weekend at Catholic Masses.Olmsted, who was not available for comment, was among a handful of bishops to release letters late this week expressing opposition to the mandate. The Phoenix bishop went further than some others by saying Catholics should not comply with the law.

Several others made their concerns clear, including the bishop of Pittsburgh, David Zubik, who in a column on the diocese website said the message from the administration to churches was: “To hell with you.”

The rule is scheduled to take effect in 18 months.

The messages from bishops signaled a new front in the battle over government imposition of rules that churches believe affect religious freedom.

Several church leaders have been engaged in the dispute since the rules first were announced last August, but now, numerous bishops are preparing letters to be read at Masses on Sunday encouraging church members to become more active in opposing the rules.

The Roman Catholic Church is the only significant denomination opposed to contraception.

At issue is a proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that would require health-insurance plans to cover certain women’s health services, including contraception, without charging a co-pay or a deductible.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, said last week that the move will provide greater access to the full range of preventive services for women. She said the administration believes it was a compromise between religious values and women’s health.

The U.S. bishops claim the decision impinges on religious freedom protected by the First Amendment.

The church has taught that birth control is “intrinsically wrong” since 1968, around the time the pill came into widespread use.

According to the government, the mandate will include exceptions for certain religious employers, such as churches and church-governing groups.

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops argues that the mandate violates conscience protections for other Catholic organizations and individuals who are covered under the First Amendment. In the past, exemptions were available for almost any organization that claimed following a government mandate would violate its religious beliefs.

It is not a new fight. In the past year, several Catholic charitable organizations in Illinois and Massachusetts have dropped foster care and adoption services because they would be required to consider gay couples as potential parents.

On the other side of the coin, Catholic Healthcare West changed its name to Dignity Healthcare and ended its affiliation with the Catholic Church, mainly because church regulations impeded the company’s growth — especially when seeking mergers with non-Catholic hospital groups that did not want to abide by Catholic regulations.

Bishop: Law is ‘unjust’

According to Catholic News Service, bishops in nine of the nation’s 195 dioceses are preparing letters to be read at Masses on Sunday encouraging churchgoers to lobby against the measure. Several others, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, have written or spoken against the mandate.

Of the group that has gone public so far, Olmsted appears to be the only one who has said specifically that Catholics should defy the law, according to the Catholic news agency.

“Unless the rule is overturned,” Olmsted wrote, “we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences or to drop health coverage for our employees.”

Olmsted added, “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

***

The Catholic Church has taken a consistent stand against the use of outside means of birth control, arguing that sexual activity must remain open to the possibility of children.

According to the Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten, a Lutheran who is director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, most religious groups are not concerned that the government routinely overreaches in church-state relations. He said he could think of no other group that had issues with contraception.

Jan. 25, 2012 

“The Bell is Tolling”

By Most Rev. James D. Conley, S.T.L., Apostolic Administrator

“Any man’s death diminishes me,” wrote John Donne in 1624, “for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

The bell is tolling for religious liberty in America. All of us should listen well.

On Friday, Jan. 20, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that most religious institutions – including Catholic hospitals, schools and social service agencies – would not be exempted from a federal government requirement that employee health plans must provide free contraceptives. This is a critical issue for us that must not be ignored.

The announcement was a death knell for religious liberty in the United States. Many recall that in August, HHS announced the obligation of contraceptive coverage in private insurance plans, and a narrow religious exemption which will cover, in fact, only some churches – and almost no other religious entities.

Many recall the outrage of religious leaders over this plan. Many recall that the Catholic Church, among others, pleaded with the federal government to reconsider. The pleas fell on deaf ears.

Moving forward with the plan, and in a weak attempt to provide concession to religious institutions, HHS announced that nonprofit groups would be given a year to “adapt” before being required to provide contraceptive coverage. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebellius stated that “this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

Let’s be clear. This decision does nothing to respect religious freedom. Without change, Catholic institutions will soon be legally required to provide services which violate a fundamental principle of our religious beliefs. If plans go unchanged, the Catholic Church, acting through our Catholic institutions, will no longer have legal protection for the free exercise of religion.

Secretary Sebellius is wrong; this is not a year to “adapt.” The Catholic Church will not adapt by violating fundamental elements of our faith. Instead of adapting, this is a year to unify, and to fight injustice and flagrant disregard for the institutional protection of our religious practice.

The recent decision by HHS should make clear for all Catholics that under the proposed health care plan, the freedom to practice our religious faith is in jeopardy. Catholic groups who claimed that this health care plan, with its narrow “conscience clauses” and “religious exemptions,” would respect Catholic teaching must face the facts.  Compromising with pro-choice, pro-contraceptive political agendas can have dangerous consequences. The bell tolls for our religious freedom.

Catholics must take the lead in restoring our Constitutional religious freedom. We need to work in all reasonable ways to convince the Department of Health and Human Services to reverse its policy; the Church will continue to lobby for this change. If that fails, which it may, we need to work with Congress to protect basic religious liberty.

There is an answer to this attack on our religious freedom. The “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” now before Congress, is more important than ever before. All Catholics need to support its passage. All Christians should join us by praying for a return to justice and by visiting www.usccb.org/conscience to begin contacting their representatives.

For many Christian denominations, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has just concluded. Unity has never been more important. Certainly, there is disagreement among Christians about the legitimacy of contraception. But there should be no disagreement among Christians about religious freedom. Each of us has an interest in defending liberty. Now is the time. The bell tolls for us all.

Most Rev. James D. Conley, S.T.L., is Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Denver.

Suit by Conservative Sees Bias in Law School Hiring
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 9, 2012

WASHINGTON — Teresa R. Wagner (pictured) is a conservative Republican who wants to teach law. Her politics may have hurt her career. An official of the University of Iowa College of Law, where Ms. Wagner applied for a job in 2006, certainly seemed to think so. “Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role, in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it),” Associate Dean Jonathan C. Carlson wrote in 2007 to the law school’s dean, Carolyn Jones.

Ms. Wagner, who graduated from the law school in 1993 and had taught at the George Mason University School of Law, was not hired. She sued, alleging discrimination because of her political beliefs. Late last month, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that her case should go to trial, saying she had presented enough evidence to suggest that “Dean Jones’s repeated decisions not to hire Wagner were in part motivated by Wagner’s constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of political belief and association.”
Ms. Wagner’s lawyer, Stephen T. Fieweger, said the decision was a victory for an important sort of academic freedom. “It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.”
According to Ms. Wagner’s lawsuit, the law faculty at Iowa in 2007 included a single registered Republican among its 50 or so members. The Republican professor was appointed in 1984. In 2009, The Des Moines Register found that there were two registered Republicans on the faculty.
Ms. Wagner would have added some balance, her lawyer said. “My client is an ideologue,” Mr. Fieweger said. “She does believe in conservative values.” Ms. Wagner has worked for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion and euthanasia, and the Family Research Council, which takes conservative positions on social issues.
Walter Olson, a fellow at the Cato Institute, the libertarian group, and the author of “Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America,” said there was nothing unusual about the number of Republicans on Iowa’s law faculty.
“What would count as freakish would be to find two dozen registered Republicans on a big law faculty,” Mr. Olson said. “Law schools are always setting up committees and task forces to promote diversity on their faculty, which can serve to conceal an absence of diversity in how people actually think.”
A study published in The Georgetown Law Journal in 2005 analyzed 11 years of federal campaign contributions by professors at the top 21 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Almost a third of these law professors contributed to campaigns. Of those who gave $200 or more, the study found, 81 percent gave wholly or mostly to Democrats, while 15 percent gave wholly or mostly to Republicans.
The percentages of professors contributing to Democrats were even more lopsided at some of the most prestigious schools: 91 percent at Harvard, 92 at Yale, 94 at Stanford. At the University of Iowa, it was 78 percent. Political affiliations and contributions are, of course, an imperfect proxy for ideology, and political beliefs may in any event have no effect on scholarship and classroom teaching.
It may be, moreover, that liberals are simply more likely than conservatives to seek positions at law schools. There are plenty of conservative lawyers at firms, in government service and on the bench.
John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University and an author of the Georgetown study, said last week that “it is still the case the legal academy is quite ideologically monochromatic.” But he added that things seem to be changing. “My perception, for what it is worth, is that the younger generation in academics is largely quite open to those of all political views,” he said. “They did not experience the polarizing effects of the 1960s and the Vietnam War.”
A spokesman for the University of Iowa, Tom Moore, would not comment on the lawsuit or the ideological composition of the law school’s faculty. Ms. Jones, who is no longer dean, said she could not comment until she had consulted with her lawyers. In 2009, she told The Des Moines Register that “Teresa didn’t get the job, and I’m sure she’s disappointed, but she didn’t not get the job because of her politics.”
Mr. Olson said he had mixed feelings about the Eighth Circuit’s decision, saying it may have identified an instance of a real problem while allowing it to be aired in the wrong forum. “I have serious misgivings about asking the courts to fix this through lawsuits,” Mr. Olson said. “It threatens to intrude on collegiality, empower some with sharp elbows to sue their way into faculty jobs, invite judges into making subjective calls of their own which may reflect their assumptions and biases, all while costing a lot of money and grief.”
“At the same time,” he added, “there’s a karma factor here. Law faculties at Iowa and elsewhere have been enthusiastic advocates of wider liability for other employers that get sued. They’re not really going to ask for an exemption for themselves, are they?”

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians. 

Cardinal Raymond Burke

Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.”

Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested for their faith he replied, “I can see it happening, yes.”

In his remarks to several U.S. Bishops meeting with him Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI made similarly emphatic warnings about the U.S. The pope told the bishops that “the seriousness of the challenges which the Church in America, under your leadership, is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated.” 

He added: “The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers.”

In the interview published today, Cardinal Burke declared that “it is a war” and “critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law.”  Should they not, he warned, “secularization will in fact predominate and it will destroy us.”

I, Bryan J. Brown, can testify firsthand as to the desire of secularists to destroy those who stand on natural moral law.  My law career was impacted by my refusal to renounce the Higher Laws doctrine (i.e., deny the Kingship of Christ) when ordered to do so by agents of the Indiana judiciary. 

The rest of this LifeSiteNews article is right here ….

In a related story, Pope Benedict XVI recently said the following to the U.S. Bishops:

Speaking to various bishops of the United States Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI responded to concerns expressed by the bishops about “the grave challenges” coming from secular society against the practice of faith.  The pope noted that many in society are now beginning to recognize the damage of crumbling moral foundations and urged the bishops to speak out in defense of Christian morality. 

“The present moment can thus be seen, in positive terms, as a summons to exercise the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry by speaking out, humbly yet insistently, in defense of moral truth, and offering a word of hope, capable of opening hearts and minds to the truth that sets us free,” he said.

I can also testify firsthand to the state of this “prophetic dimension” among the prelates of the United States and the extent that “hope” is extended to those who are, like me, under the heavy hammers of the secular  powers.  The secular elite acts out, the religious elite …..   (My situation would make a fine case study in this topic for any interested journalists.)

The rest of this LifeSiteNews article is right here ….

More on this general theme of a coming (and even here now) persecution of American Christians is found throughout this website, including in this category:  http://www.archangelinstitute.org/category/rrr/secularist-onslaught/

Thanks to LifeSiteNews for these fine articles.  Consider donating to that fine alternative media source right here:  https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/lifesitenews_us/donation.jsp?campaign=34

And so I ask — just how extreme is too extreme in light of our dire circumstances?

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s  aacceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate.

President Ronald Reagan and Senator Barry Goldwater award General Jimmy Doolittle with a fourth star 26 years after his retirement from the U.S. Air Force. (April, 1985)

According to Wikipedia, “ Variants and derivatives of this that are often quoted include:

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.

Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue;

extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.”

All of the above (in red) seem to answer our question of the day.

So which will it be, my fellow Americans – Underreaction in hindsight or the risk of appearing  a bit too alarmist before the hammer falls on us all?

It is time we all kicked it up a few notches.

The name given to the political struggle for the rights and self-government of the Catholic Church, carried out chiefly in Prussia and afterwards in Baden, Hesse, and Bavaria. The contest was waged with great vigour from 1871 to 1877; from 1878 to 1891 it gradually calmed down. On one side stood the government, the Liberals, and the majority of the Conservatives; on the other, the bishops, the priests, and the bulk of the Catholic people.

The word is, in essence, culture war and it is well demonstrated in the latest gantlet thrown down by the apparatchiks in the Obama Administration.  (Read Kathleen Sebelius, former Kansas Governor.)

I speak of the recent announcement that the government of the glorious Father/Motherland, the federal power represented by the war eagle, will require its harem of private insurers to extend contraceptive services to all Americans – and thus require all Americans to pay for those same contraceptive services.

The plan is brilliant, and crassly calculated to blitzkrieg the ideological foes of the ruling elite by dividing and conquering their enemies.

The Bishops, you see, must stand up for the ancient teaching handed down from the early Church on contraception.   At least I think they must.

This is tricky ground.

Most Protestants view chemical sterility as their freedom in Christ and the practice of contraception as merely good stewardship over the family.  Indeed, when I was a student at Fort Wayne Bible College it was said that all pastoral and missions majors were told, in their last year of study, that they had a duty to practice contraception so as to not constitute a burden upon their “sending church” by birthing too many children.

Natural law is not taught in such Bible Colleges.  Neither is the theology of the body.  That explains more than some of the ongoing fracturing of the Church.

Not that Catholics are all that good on either of the above, statistically speaking.

It is no secret that many rank and file Catholics contracept rather than obey the teaching of Humana Vitae.

And so see how brilliant this move to mandate contraception is?  It will divide the Protestants from the Catholics and separate rank and file Catholics from their clergy.  The Catholic Bishops are asked to either stand up now and defend the ancient teachings — maybe all alone — or shrink back from the battle in the interest of a false unity that will only lead to more compromises and less Christian living down the road.

With most pro-life groups focusing on surgical abortion (a dying technology) while ignoring contraception (or even teaching it is acceptable), the Bishops cannot count on much solidarity from that zealous quarter.

Sun Tzu (a great Chinese military strategist of ancient times) advised generals to carefully choose their battlefields.   Evangelical Protestants and Catholic Bishops have been making much progress the past twenty years on a unity born of necessity, a unity mandated by the belief that we just might, someday soon, share the same civil disobedience foxhole.  The time of civil disobedience is fast approaching, and the cultural elites see it coming on the horizon.   Thus they have run ahead to claim the ground upon which the first skirmishes will take place.  They have chosen a battle  over the forced funding of contraception – with the hope, on the part of such coalitions as Democrat leadership, Planned Parenthood, RINOs and other assorted enemies of the Church – that upon this unholy ground the Evangelical/Catholic coalition will fracture and the hope that upon this unholy ground most Catholic Bishops will lose the rank and file.

I fear that their nepharious strategy is sound (that is, will prove effective toward the goal), as nepharious strategies usually are.  (Consider the source.)

And so I must ask:  Are America’s Catholic Bishops prepared to pay the price that all pagan governments have demanded of the Church?  (Or rather abandon Humana Vitae, as the “progressives” have urged for the past 43 years.)

More posts on this subject:

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/christian-civil-disobedience-time-to-think-about-it/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/archbishop-charles-chaput-sees-a-bad-moon-on-the-rise-initial-post/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/how-do-we-preach-jesus-in-this-post-modern-world-creeds-post-29/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/gathering-storm-clouds-on-the-horizon/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/happy-postmodern-mothers-day-the-pill-turns-50/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/thanks-be-to-god-the-catholic-hierarchy-is-not-silent/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/pro-life-is-not-enough-post-1-klusendorf-does-colombo/

This series raises the question of Christian, and more specifically Catholic, persecution in the West.

The ArchAngel Institute has sounded this concern from our launch — and lived it as well.  See the posts gathered under “the whirlwinds” and “refuse, resist and/or rebel”, posts such as this one, as examples of us warning of a coming persecution.  (Actually here now for some, as is developed in this post.)

That said, we cannot raise the alarm as eloquently, academically or authoritatively as Charles Chaput, Catholic Archbishop of Denver Colorado.  The heroic Archbishop addressed the first session of the 15th symposium for the Canon Law Association of Slovakia in August, 2010, prophetically issuing a spiritual call to arms through a speech entitled  Living within the truth: Religious liberty and Catholic mission in the new order of the world  (here). 

According this his diocesan website, the Archbishop“called upon Catholics in America and in Europe to resist the world’s intolerance of Christianity.”   Starting with this post the ArchAngel Institute present this speech broken down into byte-sized excerpts with comments from one who claims to be undergoing persecution in America for his adherence to the Catholic Magisterium in the face of repeated questions about the same from the Indiana authorities.

And so it begins …

August 24, 2010 (Spisske Podhradie, Slovakia)

Living within the truth: Religious liberty and Catholic mission in the new order of the world

Charles Chaput, Catholic Archbishop of Denver Colorado, addressed the first session of the 15th symposium for the Canon Law Association of Slovakia on Tuesday. He called upon Catholics in America and in Europe, to resist the world’s intolerance of Christianity.

Tertullian once famously said that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.  History has proven that to be true.  And Slovakia is the perfect place for us to revisit his words today.  Here, and throughout central and eastern Europe, Catholics suffered through 50 years of Nazi and Soviet murder regimes.  So they know the real cost of Christian witness from bitter experience — and also, unfortunately, the cost of cowardice, collaboration and self-delusion in the face of evil.

I want to begin by suggesting that many Catholics in the United States and Western Europe today simply don’t understand those costs.  Nor do they seem to care.  As a result, many are indifferent to the process in our countries that social scientists like to call “secularization” – but which, in practice, involves repudiating the Christian roots and soul of our civilization.

I, Bryan J. Brown, executive director of the ArchAngel Institute am not indifferent to the process of secularization in the social sciences.

On the contrary — I have been subjected to it, up close and personal.

My defense of the Christian root and soul of our civilization has cost me two careers and more, the first due to the culture of death suing me through the abortion industry, the second the same targeting me through the Democrat Party (in Kansas) and Indiana Board of Law Examiners.

The story of that second shot is directly onpoint with the good Archbishop’s speech.  I could be Exhibit A, in fact.

The Hoosier portion of that story starts here: http://www.archangelinstitute.org/psycho-justice-in-post-modern-america-post-a/

to be continued

Michigan U.S. Congressman John Dingell claims that the nationalization of the health care delivery system — including the mental health authorities like Dr. Elizabeth Bowman and Dr.  Stephen Ross — is needed “to control the people.” Click here for that interview.

(As one already so “controlled”  I can offer an expert opinion on Big Brother’s love.  It ain’t warm and fuzzy.  See the Brown v. Bowman category on this website for details.)

And now another bill on marking us all with national identity cards:  http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/95235-democrats-spark-alarm-with-call-for-national-id-card

As we have reported, persecution can break out in America faster than anyone realizes.  Trust me, I know first hand.  Here is my claim to that title:  http://www.archangelinstitute.org/a-post-modern-heresy-trial-post-2-what-my-inquisitors-most-wanted-to-hear/

Here are warnings of a coming storm:  http://www.archangelinstitute.org/is-matyrdom-coming-to-america/

http://www.archangelinstitute.org/gathering-storm-clouds-on-the-horizon/

It is enough to cause me to rerun the following post from last summer:
I (Bryan) attended a seminar put on by the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington, D.C., a few years ago. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) sent some attorneys over to brief us on the ever growing problem of identity theft and bank fraud. They spoke of biometrics — systems that tied identify directly to the person. Physical descriptions have been so used since the dawn of time. (Cain? Oh, he is the fellow with the pronounced brow ridge over there. Genesis 4:16) Gender (assuming there are only two), height, weight, eye color, etc. In the last century we discovered finger, thumb and hand prints. After that it was iris patterns and facial recognition software.

Most all of this was discussed by the FTC agents. They then spoke of a future system that would guarantee that merchants would never be fooled by identity theft, assuring a much more certain economy. Especially for online trading.

Afterward I sought them out and asked this question: “Given personal computers with fingerprint access, am I correct that all of the technology now exists to solve this problem, it is only the political will to make it happen that is lacking?”

Yes, was the reply.

And, I asked, “is that political will not a concern about a Big Brother State, and especially given the writings found in the last book of the Bible about a mark to buy and sell?”

Yes, they admitted, that is the source of much of the social resistance to biometrics.

I then told my friends that the system would come out of the East, for Asia had no such platform of individual rights, fear of Big Brother and concern about divine revelation via the Bible.

At the risk of thinking stereotypically, I have to share my opinion that this verse just does not mean all that much to the governments of China or India:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name…and his number is Six hundred & sixty-six. (Rev.13:15-18)

Click here for a news report on that I see as a major plank in the the soon coming global biometric plan. It is already begun in China and India. Here is how it will spread: First on paper, and then as implants. The global positioning satellites are flying overhead. The technology is here. As “terror” and identity fraud spreads across the dying West such biometrics will also spread. First as the “census” to get all enrolled, just like before the first coming of Christ, and then as a database tied to the government’s internet to track us all for purposes of social control.

Need some inspiration after all of that? May I suggest a careful reading of this?

*** end of post from last June

LOOKS LIKE CONGRESS MIGHT HAVE A PLAN TO GET US CAUGHT UP WITH THE EAST ON THE TAGGING OF PEOPLE PROCESS.

When the State assumes military powers inside its own borders it is called martial law.

When that State is apostate that martial law can quickly become a persecution of the Christian church.

Click here for a possible foreshadowing. (parental warning: links to profane language in comment section)

Click here for a more nuanced explanation of this seeming call for an internal military force. (It could be that Senator Obama did not intend to sound like a German Chancellor from the 1930′s.)

Even if the above example is not a good one, it remains true that when the Church refuses to obey its Lord, and instead chooses to obey Mammon, then the goose stepping soldiers are at the door.

Some have said, “Its the Economy, Stupid.”

Wrong!

Its the Culture, Pilgrims.

And if the culture goes bad, well then ….

Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

Wise words from one of the Founders of our Republic seem most appropriate in this dire hour …

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Thomas Jefferson

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson