The Freedom Cliff

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teamaltman.com

Joseph Klein

With all attention focused on the so-called fiscal cliff, President Obama is moving America ever closer towards tumbling over the freedom cliff. As a writer for Salon Magazine put it, “liberals let Obama get away with unconstitutional actions.” Here are just a few examples.

Freedom of Speech – With the producer of the video “Innocence of Muslims” locked away in jail for a year on pretextual charges of probation violations, the Obama administration continues to keep the president’s promise to the Muslim world to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” The First Amendment be damned.

The Obama administration’s trampling of the video producer’s First Amendment right of free expression is part of a larger pattern. In 2011, Obama’s State Department worked behind the scenes with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to pass United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, a tweaked version of the anti-blasphemy UN resolutions that the OIC has been pushing for years.  Terms like “denigration,” “derogatory stereotyping,” “advocacy of religious hatred,” and “discrimination” replaced “defamation of religions” in the resolution signed off by the U.S, but the end result is the same.  It criminalizes speech which incites a violent response from those whose religious beliefs and icons have, in their eyes, been denigrated.

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout American Muslim and the founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, noted the duplicity behind the change of wording that brought the Obama administration over to the OIC’s side:

Anyone who believes that Resolution 16’18 is some kind of a breakthrough is sadly being duped by the most obvious Islamist double discourse. The shift from “defamation” to “incitement” does nothing at all to change the basic paradigm where Islamist nations remain in the offense, continuing to put Western, free nations on the defense.

By the way, Dr. Jasser himself has been accused of Islamophobia by the Obama administration’s close allies at the Center For American Progress.

Expect the Obama Justice Department to go after individuals whose “hate” speech the prosecutors claim is discriminatorily targeted at Muslims’ religious sensibilities to the point that it incites their violent response.

Freedom of Religion – Back in 2008, Barack Obama mocked those whom he said “cling” to religion (he also included guns in his rant). As president, Obama has elevated the right to free contraceptives over freedom of religion, even though only the latter is protected by the Constitution.

While indulging Muslims’ feelings, the Obama administration is forcing Catholic charities, hospitals, and colleges as well as private employers to violate their core religious beliefs or face massive fines. The Obamacare mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requires employers, on pain of substantial financial penalties, to provide and pay for an employee health plan that includes no co-pay coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization. It is a direct affront to the fundamental right to religious liberty of conscientiously objecting employers.

Right To Keep and Bear Arms – Freed from having to worry about re-election, President Obama is preparing for a major fight to cut back on the Second Amendment’s protection of individuals’ right to keep and bear arms. During an appearance on “Meet The Press” this past Sunday, Obama said that he would put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013. “Something fundamental in America has to change,” the president said.

If Obama does not get his way in Congress for more gun control laws to his liking, expect the Obama administration to use an upcoming United Nations conference on the adoption of a global arms trade treaty as a back door means to enact further regulation of small arms and ammunition.

Due Process – Obama made a big issue during his first presidential campaign about President George W. Bush’s alleged unconstitutional use of torture. It turns out that Obama had another idea in mind – his own personal kill lists of American citizens. This goes beyond the president’s exercise of his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief to target specific individuals engaged in armed combat with the United States, whom it is not feasible to capture, even if they are American citizens. For example, we need not lose any sleep over Obama’s decision to take out Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who went to Yemen, joined with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and used his base in Yemen to plan and help organize terrorist attacks against American civilians. However, Obama trampled on the Fifth Amendment’s protection of individuals against being deprived of life without due process of law when he arrogated to himself unlimited, unaccountable power to draw up secret kill lists of American citizens for summary execution.

Separation of Powers – Under the guise of executive orders, President Obama has put into effect his own version of legislation that he could not get passed through Congress. Call it executive legislating, something the Founding Fathers sought to prevent through separation of powers and checks and balances.

When Obama was unable to push through the Dream Act, for example, he decided to simply issue his own directive to give what amounts to amnesty to young illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications.

We have a president who does not like the Constitution which he is sworn to behold.  In his words, the Constitution is a “document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture.” It reflects, according to Obama, “the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

Five days before his election in 2008, Obama proclaimed that “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” On Sunday, he said that “Something fundamental in America has to change.”

Obama appears poised to whittle away as much as possible the Constitution that he considers fundamentally flawed and replace it with his own notion of a fundamentally transformed America. He is approaching the edge of the freedom cliff. Unless we are vigilant, we will find in the deep chasm at the bottom of the cliff the freedoms we have long taken for granted.