Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President Bush and a Washington Post columnist, penned a column back on January 30th that I missed -- "Obama plays his Catholic allies for fools." It's clear Gerson understood immediately the implications of Obama's "in your face" executive order putting a fist in the face of religious conscience. Gerson in my mind has always been a restrained person, something of a "moderate" Republican, and a self-identified Protestant. Yet he wrote:
Both radicalism and maliciousness are at work in Obama’s decision — an edict delivered with a sneer. It is the most transparently anti-Catholic maneuver by the federal government since the Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875 — a measure designed to diminish public tolerance of Romanism, then regarded as foreign, authoritarian and illiberal. Modern liberalism has progressed to the point of adopting the attitudes and methods of 19th-century Republican nativists. . . .
And,
Obama is claiming the executive authority to determine which missions of believers are religious and which are not — and then to aggressively regulate institutions the government declares to be secular. It is a view of religious liberty so narrow and privatized that it barely covers the space between a believer’s ears.
Obama’s decision also reflects a certain view of liberalism. Classical liberalism was concerned with the freedom to hold and practice beliefs at odds with a public consensus. Modern liberalism uses the power of the state to impose liberal values on institutions it regards as backward. It is the difference between pluralism and anti-clericalism.
The administration’s ultimate motivation is uncertain. Has it adopted a radical secularism out of conviction, or is it cynically appealing to radical secularists? In either case, the war on religion is now formally declared. [emphases mine]
Me: We are confronted with a serious and dangerous threat from our own President and his supporters. Freedom in the United States is now under seige from a militant executive branch and its Democrat congressional allies intent on "reforming" (read: "deforming and obliterating") basic freedoms we have taken for granted all our lives. These are serious developments indeed.