COMMENTARY – “In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.” – Abraham Lincoln, memorandum dated September 30, 1862
I think it correct to surmise Lincoln credited everyone as entitled to believe what they choose regarding their respective ideologies or theology. And he believed correctly, as the fundamental foundation of our constitutional Republic is freedom of speech and religion.
Our forefathers held this belief as the common bond that would hold our nation together and strengthen it against the enemy of time. They also had the insight to foresee our longevity would be contingent upon the understanding, appreciation and practical application of future generations against those who would attempt to deny the source of its inspiration, redefine its purpose and subsequently pervert its intent.
The Constitution is an unwavering absolute in its definition and application unless changed through a deliberately slow ratification process that provides the litmus test by which the majority is assured it dictates such change. This process was designed in this manner to protect the majority against a minority forcing its tyrannical and/or immoral will upon it.
Nowhere is this testing more evident than the progressive assault against Christianity over the last 50 years. A large voting block of our nation claims to believe in and adhere to Christian values while at the same time seeking to silence those who testify openly about the Source of these values in the public square. That would be God. By bringing God into the dialogue we are defamed as hostile witnesses trying to force all by false testimony to embrace and worship the Originator of these values. The truth is, to believe one can have one without the other is not only foolish, it is ignorant. But who is forcing who?
It was the ungodly that moved legislatively to have prayer banned from public schools. It was progressives who sought the legalization of divorce and abortion and now seek homosexual marriage. It is progressives that seek to mandate health care that aborts babies, provides contraception and nutrition on their terms and our dime. It is progressives that want to save polar bears at the expense of the rest of us. It is not the right moving further to the right. It is the left moving further to the left. This is madness.
President Obama refers to our Constitution as a charter of negative liberties, telling us what the state and federal government cannot force on its citizens but leaves out what it must do for them. For one who claims to know Constitutional Law he sure seems to have missed the main point as to why it was written the way it was. Progressives like Obama claim the Constitution and Christianity are hostile witnesses against them. At least on that point they are correct.