Guest Editorial
BY LAWRENCE SELLIN | JUNE 26, 2013
Obama’s war on the First Amendment
The fundamental transformation about which Barack Obama spoke during the 2008 campaign represents nothing less than a total rejection of all the values and traditions upon which the United States was founded, in particular, the first and perhaps the most sacred of our constitutional amendments:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam. It is a clear violation of the First Amendment right of free speech to use federal law to specifically protect Muslims from criticism.
But the Constitution and the rule of law are of no concern to Obama.
The assault by Killian on freedom of speech is consistent with the Obama’s long-term policy to protect and promote Islam by eroding the First Amendment, specifically, and the Constitution, in general. During its 2011 session, the United Nations Human Rights Council with the full support of the Obama Administration adopted Resolution 16/18, which called upon Western states to pass laws that would criminalize “defamation of religion” – i.e., criticism of Islam.
At the same time, the Obama Administration is engaged in a systematic attack on Christianity in the U.S. military.
An official Army training session conducted last year featured a presentation listing Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as religious extremist groups alongside Al Qaeda and Hamas.
In compliance with the anti-Christian, anti-family stance of the Obama Administration, an email written by a lieutenant colonel at Fort Campbell identified the Family Research Council and American Family Association, two prominent Christian ministries, as “domestic hate groups.”
In a truly stunning attack on the free speech and religious freedom, the Obama administration has released a statement confirming that any soldier who professes Christianity can now be court-martialed and may face imprisonment and a dishonorable discharge from the military, including chaplains.
The attempt by Obama to destroy all First Amendment rights even extends to what one thinks or reads. A high-ranking non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Band said he is facing retribution and punishment from the military for reading books written by conservative authors.
None of those are actions initiated by a few rogue members of the military, but are orders originating from Obama acting as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and enthusiastically endorsed by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Secretary of the Army John McHugh, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and the military chain of command.
Obama is intentionally using the military as a cultural test bed in his campaign against the First Amendment. Because the military operates under its own legal structure, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, Obama can more easily introduce policies that are destructive to the First Amendment as a springboard to an eventual broader implementation of free speech restrictions, suppression of traditional Judeo-Christian values and the fostering of Islamic law on American society as a whole.
In parallel, Obama is using government agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security not to protect liberty, but to intimidate and silence any opposition to his radical agenda.
The ultimate aim of Obama and his supporters is to transform the U.S. into a one-party state, where the rights of the American people are determined not by the Constitution or the rule of law, but by the whims of politically-motivated bureaucrats subservient to a totalitarian ideology. He is transforming the country into something that the Founding Fathers never intended it to be.
Obama is in the process of achieving that objective because the federal government is no longer a servant of the American people, but a willing enforcer of the Administration’s tyrannical program.
With a few exceptions, members of Congress no longer represent the people, but serve only themselves and their political parties. They are facilitators of the Obama agenda because to oppose him would threaten their lavish lifestyles and expose their complicity in the corrupt political status quo. That explains why Congress conducts hearings on scandals like Fast & Furious and Benghazi, but never holds any high officials accountable for criminal or treasonous activities. It is political theater meant to provide the illusion of honesty and responsibility.
The federal government has become a threat to the survival of our republic. Only an immediate, nation-wide, bottom-up, public resistance to Obama’s radical policies by patriotic Americans will preserve liberty.
It is that simple.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership“. He receives email at [email protected].
