#Fortnight4Freedom vs #Obamacare

Happy belated John Fisher  feast day. Fisher was another martyr to big government over-reach under Henry VIII. When Fisher first refused to comply with government edicts, King Henry tried to tax John into submission:

Fisher was condemned to forfeiture of all his personal estate and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. Subsequently a pardon was granted him on payment of a fine of 300 pounds.

 When Fisher still proved recalcitrant, big government decided to euthanize him, 16th C style. However, Henry VIII was a piker compared to his 21st C counterparts:

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed on Tuesday...Around 29 per cent — 130,000 [per year] — are of patients who were on the LCP [euphemism for euthanasia].

Unfortunately, the US Catholic Bishops lawsuit wasn't rendered moot this week since Chief Roberts couldn't decide what the definition of "is" is (callback to Bill Clinton), or decided he ruled against a mandate being a tax before he ruled for a mandate being a tax (callback John Kerry).

Even more unfortunately, the  HHS mandate isn't the only religious freedom issue under threat from this administration.  Rabbi Meir Soloveichik related, in a May 24, 2012 Religious Freedom Conference for Christian and Jewish clergy, the historic observations of the Declaration of Independence signer, Dr. Benjamin Rush, visiting a Jewish wedding in Philadelphia. Soloveichik expanded Rush's observation of the hoopa/canopy as a physical representation of the meaning of religious liberty in America. The hoopa is open on all sides allowing free, public expression of one's religion.

Conversely, the current administration seems bent on redefining the US Constitution's 1st Amendment away from "freedom of religion" into the more limited "freedom of worship", or putting walls on Dr. Rush's hoopa & turning it into a catacomb:

“Freedom of Religion” is rooted in the US Constitution with the phrase ‘free exercise of religion’.  ‘Freedom of Worship’ is far more limited.

At the forefront of  gelding this original right is former House Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, who wants to quarantine religion to an hour per week & scrub the public square clean for secularists the rest of the time:

“You know what, I do my religion on Sunday in church, and I try to go other days of the week. I don’t do it at this press conference,” she said.

The above article pointed out Rep Pelosi's hypocrisy, since she freely cites a liberation-theology-socialist interpretation of her religion whenever it suits her partisan legislative agenda.


To come full circle, it appears Dr. Rush was prescient not just with promoting religious freedom in his day, but with opposing socialized medicine in the future:

Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.