GOVERNMENT ACTION PUTS CHURCHES
UNDER “THE GUN”
BY ROGER KATZ
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- America is first and foremost a Christian Nation. This isn’t hypothesis, or hyperbole, or manifestation of hysteria. It is fact. This fact is the backbone and linchpin of our Constitution. It is the foundation of our natural rights; rights bestowed on man by a loving, Divine Creator. It is a self-evident truth.
In recent years, the would-be destroyers of our Nation have attacked this notion; and, with the intentional or reckless unleashing of a pandemic on our Nation and on other nations by the amoral, irreligious, autocratic, and diabolical, Communist regime of Xi Jinping of China, the would-be destroyers of our Nation have renewed their assault on the Christian Church. They have done so with unusual feral ferocity.
Who are these would-be destroyers of our Constitution; these betrayers of our National heritage, of our natural rights and liberties; these sowers of ill will; these destructive, hateful forces who disingenuously, hypocritically, coldly, callously, calculatedly assert a need, an impulse to tear down the Christian framework of our Nation, ostensibly, as they say, or so they claim, to save it? We know them. They are all around us. They comprise an heterogeneous, amorphous conglomeration of malcontents both here and abroad who seek to remake the world in their own image: Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Neoliberal Billionaire Globalists, and others. They share the same belief system, the same value system: distrust of the common man; a strong, tenacious, insatiable desire to subjugate humanity; and a bias toward and a disturbing penchant for Atheism, Agnosticism, Satanism, and concomitant amorality, immorality, or pseudo-morality albeit disguised as seemingly benign secularism, moral relativism, and nontheistic humanism.
A Modern Civil War
America is in the midst of a Civil War. This war isn’t fought with guns or bombs, at least for the moment. But it’s war, nonetheless. We see this war waged in the attempt to control the mind, the thoughts of Americans. The despoilers of our Nation have sought to drive a wedge between Americans and their sacred rights and liberties. If successful, our Nation will cease to exist, for the sovereignty of the American people exists and thrives only in the unfettered exercise of their God-given rights and liberties. For only in the exercise of those rights and liberties may the power of Government be restrained and constrained.
These would-be annihilators of our Nation use calamity to drive a wedge between the citizenry and their fundamental rights and liberties. They are adept at seducing many Americans to surrender their rights and liberties for security. Recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous, oft reiterated, prescient quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
After the attack on the World Trade Center, the assassins of our Bill of Rights said Americans don’t require freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures because Government must protect Americans from terrorists; ergo, Americans came to lose their sovereignty through a slow, inexorable process toward creation of the Surveillance State, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred right embodied in the Fourth Amendment.
After some lunatics went on a shooting binge, in the last couple of decades the assassins of our Bill of Rights said Americans ought not exercise their unalienable God-given right to keep and bear arms because Government must promote public safety and ensure public order; ergo, we see the rapid evolution toward restricting ownership and possession of firearms, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred right embodied in the Second Amendment.
And now, with the Chinese Communist Coronavirus unleashed upon us, the assassins of our Bill of Rights have said Government must constrain the free exercise of religion, restrain the freedom of speech, preclude the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to curtail the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances; ergo we see the rapid evolution toward controlling the thoughts and actions of the citizenry; the subjugation of the people, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred rights embodied in the First Amendment.
State Governments Prepared To Use Force To Demand Church Closures
Ironically, it isn’t the Federal Government, but the Governors of a few States who seek to curtail the free exercise of religion.
With all the bluster of the Radical Left that calls President Trump an autocrat, the actions of Radical Left Governors make plain who the autocrats really are.
Radical Left New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, California Governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have closed churches claiming, as a rationale, the need to promote public health due to the Chinese Coronavirus.
Unsurprisingly, a website that calls itself, the “Friendly Atheist,” says, that State Governors can do this:
“ ‘Policies don’t violate religious freedom laws if they’re created in order to save people’s lives,’ said Michael Moreland, director of the Ellen H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University.” ‘So long as those restrictions are neutral and applicable to everybody, religious institutions have to abide by them,’ he said. . . . So, yes, governors can and should shut down church gatherings in the same way they’re shutting down public schools and restaurants. Treat them fairly. Treat them equally. There’s nothing illegal going on no matter how many pastors whine about religious discrimination.”
Let’s parse a couple of these comments. First, the “Friendly Atheist” draws a false dilemma, claiming that either Churches remain closed or people fall sick and die. That’s untrue. Churches are cognizant of the threat. They have been implementing proper protocols to preclude the spread of the Chinese Coronavirus. Second, the remark of the legal expert, Ellen McCullen is vague and ambiguous. She asserts, “So long as those restrictions are neutral and applicable to everybody, religious institutions have to abide by them.”
Is Ellen McCullen saying that, so long as State Governors force every religion to close its doors, not just Christian denominations, then Church closure orders are lawful? Or is McCullen saying that, as long as those restrictions apply to all political, social, and business organizations and establishments—truly, literally everyone, and every establishment, throughout a State, apart from hospitals, pharmacies, and food establishments—then Church closure orders are lawful? If the former statement is what McCullen means, then the Church closure actions are not “content-neutral,” and are therefore unconstitutional. If the latter statement is what McCullen means, then the Government ordered Church closure actions are likely still unconstitutional. Why? It comes down to what constitutes an “essential service,” terminology that State Governments themselves have concocted. No one would deny that severely ill people need the care of health care providers that, in many cases only hospitals can effectively provide. And no one can honestly deny that many people require prescription medicines to remain well. And no one can deny that everybody requires food sustenance to survive. What about Churches?
Is attendance at Church an essential service? Well, under both the test created by State Governors that like to draw distinction between essential and non-essential services, houses of worship do fall into the category of essential services, as spiritual need is arguably just as essential to well-being and survival as are food, medicine, and medical care. Moreover, the free exercise of religion isn’t a mere privilege, nor is it a minor right. It is a fundamental right. That right and the right of self-defense and personal autonomy are the most sacred of rights.
These State Governors are simply wrong. Churches must remain open in our free Republic.
Curiously, it is the U.S. President, not the State Governors who recognize the importance of our sacred rights and liberties. As just reported in the website,
U.S. News, for one:
“President Donald Trump on Friday said he has deemed churches and other houses of worship ‘essential’ and called on governors to allow them to reopen this weekend despite the threat of the coronavirus.”
“ ‘Today I’m identifying houses of worship — churches, synagogues and mosques — as essential places that provide essential services,’ Trump said during a hastily arranged press conference Friday. He said if governors don't abide by his request, he will ‘override’ them, though it’s unclear what authority he has to do so.”
Who is the autocrat? Who is the tyrant? It isn’t Donald Trump. The real autocrats and tyrants are those State Governors who usurp the sovereignty of the American people by daring to deny to them their fundamental right to worship the Divine Creator: the one Being who gave man free will, and who bestowed on man fundamental, unalienable, immutable rights.
There are those of us who adore the Divine Creator.
But for those who would deny the Divine Creator, there is no limit to their capacity for evil. They use a catastrophe as an excuse to destroy rights and liberties they never created yet have the effrontery to strike down. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste:” Rahm’s Rule—the arrogant “first principle” of the deniers of the
Divine Creator.
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