Recent assaults against the First Amendment should spark outrage from all Conservatives.
Since its adoption, Constitutional guarantees of free speech and religious freedom have been the most respected portions of the law. They hold a central role in America’s self image. While there have been disagreements on how to interpret those rights, the disputes have been over how best to fulfill its mandates. Advocates on either side of serious battles over contentious problems such as hate speech and pornography shared common ground in the understanding that this sacred law is essential to the American way of life. When hostility towards particular religions ran rampant, the First Amendment prevented the nation from imploding into sectarian strife.
Over the past three years, President Obama's bureaucracy has attempted to regulate the internet, and impose questionable rules on political programming. Here in New York and in Washington, agency actions against religious institutions have also reached a crisis level.
Shortly after the Democrats swept into power in the Obama election, Speaker Pelosi attempted to reinstate the discredited “fairness doctrine,” which would have allowed the Washington to regulate broadcast editorial content. Organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, along with conservative-leaning talk radio hosts, managed to fend off that attack.
The internet was the next arena for anti-free speech partisans. President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission sought to impose so-called “net neutrality,” a concept which gave it unprecedented authority to regulate the most modern version of the public forum. Once again, First Amendment defenders rebuffed the assault. However, those pursuing the regulation of speech continue to probe different paths to reach their goal. Most recently, the excuse that speech regulation was necessary to curb the unlawful reproduction of copyrighted works was employed. Opponents of this discredited argument successfully convinced legislators that enforcement of current laws can achieve this goal. Undeterred, the White House did an end-run around Congress and signed an international treaty that permits foreign parties to demand the removal of web content.
The growing attacks on free speech have been joined, both on the local and federal levels, by the diminishing of religious liberty guarantees.
In Washington, the Health and Human Services Department now insists that the health care coverage of all institutions, regardless of their religious beliefs, provide abortions, sterilizations and related services for free. Religious organizations with profound opposition to these practices would be forced to either violate their deeply held values, or be held in violation of federal law.
Local level attacks on the First Amendment right of religious liberty also exist. NYC public schools have virtually banned the mention of any religious holiday—as though a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Hanukkah” would invade anyone’s rights. In essence, educational bureaucrats have established the doctrine of secularism on our schools. This state religion—secularism— is a violation of Constitutional prohibitions against established creeds. The NYC Department of Education has gone so far as to attempt to ban religious institutions from even having an equal opportunity with other organizations to use school buildings after hours.
Senator Martin Golden has introduced a measure, S.6087A, to address this practice and bring the city’s public school system back into compliance with the First Amendment. He deserves great credit for doing so.
As Conservatives, we must take the lead in repulsing these unprecedented attacks on our most basic freedoms.
No comments:
Post a Comment