The era of persecution has begun

Alan Keyes

... it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. (James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments)

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. (Shakespeare's "Macbeth")

In March, 2009 I posted an article on my blog calling attention to Obama's "moves to make medical workers 'Slaves in Conscience.'" Such persecution of conscience was unavoidable once Obama's commitment to evil principle was armed with the powers of the presidency of the United States. What I wrote in that article is worth rereading now that many Roman Catholics and other Christian people are finally being roused to recognize and act against it:

Catholics and other professing Christians should take note. Except they repent of it, those who voted for Barack Obama surely face grim judgment from the Supreme judge of the World for their enlistment in the electoral army of this paragon of evil. But even before such judgment in the next life, in this life we will all have to suffer the grim consequences of his abandonment of respect for the unalienable rights to life and liberty.

Too bad that, in 2008 and before, so many of these lately roused Christians lost sight of the example of America's founding generation. It would have instructed them to "take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties," reacting against Obama's proven commitment to evil principle before "usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise." Of course such precautionary discernment requires the ability to think and act in terms of principle (i.e., the first beginnings of action). With his characteristically practical wisdom, Christ admonishes us to understand that evil comes "out of the heart" (Matthew 15:19). It originates (as the Creator observes in Genesis 6:5 and 8:21) in the intentions of the heart, which are made manifest in the characteristic thoughts and ideas that reflect the workings of the mind.

With respect to the fundamental issues of moral right, Barack Obama's rejection of the most fundamental "laws of nature and of nature's God" has been clear throughout his career, especially in his adamantine commitment to the murder of human posterity, before and after birth. This is why it was a moral atrocity for a university claiming to educate in the tradition of Catholic Christianity to honor Obama after his election. This is why it is morally irrational for professing Christians to support creation of a health-care delivery system dominated by an administration of government scrupulously cleansed of every acknowledgement of the existence and authority of the Creator.

Whatever the outcome of the political tempest being stirred by this latest episode of Obama's entirely predictable disregard for the rights of conscience, this is only the beginning of the era of persecution. Its onset is made inevitable by the ascendancy of an elitist faction determined to overturn the God-acknowledging premise of constitutional self-government in the United States. Where the substance of right is endowed by the Creator, there can be no right that in substance contradicts His provision of justice for all. Up to now, however, the elitist faction has successfully moved to sever the concept of civil and political rights from that founding principle. They have redefined "rights" to include exercises of freedom that violate or have no regard for right. So in the name of "abortion rights" (the freedom to murder our helpless nascent offspring) government may deny security for the unalienable right to life of our posterity; may discard and violate the conscientious liberty of medical and other workers; may trample upon the free exercise of religion; may abuse the powers of legislation and law enforcement to force people, as individuals and in their rightful associations with one another, to take actions that we can, by God and America's own founding principles, clearly and rationally demonstrate to be against both human and all natural justice. As I have said before:

This is the essence of that slavery, which the Obama faction now means to impose. ... Because some people wish to do and benefit from evil, others must become its tools and instruments, against their will. Because some wish to escape responsibility for the nascent life invoked by their cries of sexual ecstasy, others must accept complicity in the murders that carry out their will. At the very least the people who embrace this foul cult of human child sacrifice should have to do the dirty work themselves. But when has evil been content to wallow in its own excrement? The very pride that impels it to defy the boundaries of decent conscience rouses its resentment against those who, by standing apart from its rituals, announce their condemnation of its crimes. As it was with slavery, so it is now. Evil does not accept a house divided, but will "press forward" until "It will become all one thing, or all the other."

Abraham Lincoln said it, and he was right. He spoke of the crisis of slavery that brought on the Civil War. Now we have come to a similar crisis, one that will determine whether American government will be a union of conscientious souls determined to do right, or become instead a league of wicked intentions determined by force and tyranny to impose the ruling passion of the day though all and every God-established right be ruined in the process.

Originally published February 13, 2012, at WorldNetDaily