On CNN's Sunday show "State of the Union," host Candy Crowley asked Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) how much damage President Obama may have done to his relationship with Catholic voters by forcing Catholic organizations to violate Catholic beliefs in complying with ObamaCare.
At issue is the administration's rule that hospitals, universities and other Cahtolic-affiliated institutions provide health insurance to employees that includes free birth control and even "morning after" pills. The governor said the outraged backlash against the rule was unreasonable. He founded his defense on the fact that the Italian government imposes the same requirement in a country loaded with Catholics (and containing the Vatican). If it's good enough for the Italians, why shouldn't it be good enough here?
I don't know if O'Malley's assertion about Italy is correct, I do know that he gave a clear illustration of what Obama and his allies intend for America; to transform it into a European socialist nation.
What escapes O'Malley is the reason Caholics and non-Catholics strenuously object to government directly interfering in a religion's rights and, broader, to mandate employers and consumers purchase a product built to the government's specifications: namely, we are not Europe. And most of us don't want to be. We are supposed to be a free America, governed by the U.S. Constitution, not by a centralized, dictatorial government, complete with czars. But O'Malley clearly revealed his membership in the European Wanna-Be Club.
Which brings me to the Thief-in-Chief. The present occupant of the White House consistently demonstrates zero respect for the rights of private citizens, employers or states, not respect for the right to private property and not respect for the Constitution. But at least he's consistent.
His philosophical disposition and his European intent leads him to steal from citizens with impunity. In the GM-bailout, now heralded as a grand success, he circumvented federal bankruptcy law, tossed aside the legal rights of GM's shareholders, stole their stock and gifted it to the unions. He subsequently engineered the theft of franchises from
A huge number of GM dealers, many of which were profitable businesses providing good jobs and supporting local communities.
The president's position was simple: None of those people have rights. Anyone who can't see the danger in that is a fool who deserves all the pain that's coming to him when the president gets around to telling him he has no rights either.
In the past week, Obama has announced new confiscatory and dictatorial plans that will reveal to more people that they have no rights he is bound to respect. His College Affordability Plan threatens price controls not just on public but also private universities. His new enforcement weapon is centralized federal control of nearly all college loans. Thus, he can tell any institution that won't work from his price list (or, for that matter, curriculum) that it won't be allowed to enroll students getting federally provided or backed loans.
This mimics the chief scheme within ObamaCare: being able to impose price (and wage) controls by virtue of a centralization of all payments for health care. If you own (supposedly) your own business or even if you are a religion, you will issue only the health insurance Obama dictates.
If you're the Catholic church and you find aspects of that insurance morally reprehensible, too bad. If you donate to Catholic Charities, your money will pay for its employees' health insurance, which pays for options-turned-mandates that you find morally reprehensible.
If you own stock in any company, the GM case demonstrated that your shares can be stolen from you at the president's direction at any time. If you operate a university, you will do as the president says. No business owner, employer, church or donor has any rights to do otherwise.
These are but a few of Obama's schemes. Others are fait acompli, still other pending. They all have the same purpose: the elimination of indivicual rights.
This is the evil of his striving for another four years in office. Maybe it isn't seen as evil in Italy, as Gov. O'Malley asserted Sunday. Maybe elsewhere in Europe it's accepted. But here, in America, individuals who understand that what has set America apart from the world is a system in which the rights of individuals outrank the government, it is evil.
Whoever winds up as the alternative to King Obama needs to clearly see it, reveal it and describe it at that, as evil. Nothing less. President Bush courageously pointed to the Axis of Evil threatening our world. Our presidential candidate needs to point to the evil threatening us here at home. It's enthroned in the White House.