March 18, 2010
By Janice Shaw Crouse
What we're seeing in Washington, D.C. is not "politics as usual" with the arm twisting and "horse-trading" that is typical in getting a bill passed; instead, it is ideological warfare. What Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are doing is not legislating; it is an act of tyranny -- overturning all the rules and principles of government in a representative democracy. Attempting to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House under the ironically named "Slaughter Rule" (to circumvent the objections of the Stupak coalition to taxpayer funding of abortion) is an exercise in raw power akin to the many acts of judicial tyranny the American public has endured over the last forty years from judges who have little regard for the Constitution.
Apparently Obama, Reid, and Pelosi aren't worried about losing control of Congress in 2010 or even the presidency in 2012, because their higher goal is to irrevocably institutionalize their ideology. Once government control of health care is established, their leftist principles will be implemented by an unelected bureaucracy that rules without accountability to the general public, whether or not the Democratic Party is the majority in Congress or holds the presidency.
Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have learned nothing from history; they are as blind to their own tyranny as were King George and the British Parliament. They show no comprehension of the moral outrage that will ignite in this country if they ram through ObamaCare, a bill that requires taxpayer funding for abortion, usurps an individual's right to choose her own personal health care options, and saddles the nation with a growing flood of debt which will drown our children and grandchildren.
Last Friday morning, you could see workers beginning to set up barricades around the Capitol in preparation for the demonstrations they expect in response to the Democrats' autocratic actions. They mistakenly think that the Tea Party protests are temporary flareups that mere barricades can contain, but their legislative and executive tyranny is unleashing emotions that have the potential to rival the antislavery movement of the Civil War era and the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. Having abandoned those transcendent moral principles upon which this nation was founded for a false ideology of their own imagining, these people have no understanding of the righteous fury that will build in this nation when her citizens see their government sanction morally reprehensible acts.
Leaders across the nation --- nearly half a million strong --- have already signed the Manhattan Declaration declaring that moral principles take precedence over laws that ignore the value of human life and individual freedom. These deeply-held religious beliefs are inviolable, non-negotiable, and protected under the U.S. Constitution. Thousands of America's Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christian
We have, in good faith, expressed our objections and righteous indignation over and over again, only to be repeatedly rebuffed and ignored. Poll after poll demonstrates that U.S. citizens are strongly opposed to ObamaCare and its impact on our nation. Yet the Obama/Reid/Pelosi axis is determined to ignore the will of the people that they were elected to represent and to dictatorially impose on the nation their ideas of what's best. They have lived so long in the rarefied air of elitism that they think that the "masses" will simply accept their "superior wisdom." These unprecedented assaults on basic American principles compel Manhattan Declaration signers to forcefully mount a defense of human life, marriage, and religious freedom.
Manhattan Declaration-signers have said that civil disobedience is necessary when faced with gravely unjust laws requiring submission to other laws that violate our principled moral beliefs about abortion, marriage, and religious freedom. As the Manhattan Declaration states, "We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."
