This is not actually about “religious liberty”, that is one facet of what is happening in this country. You have to see the bigger picture. We no longer live in a free country, we now live in a fascist country.
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Once upon a time, not very long ago, we lived in a country ruled by law under the Constitution of the United States. The people were free, they knew a government that abides by the Constitution could never take away their God-given freedoms recognized in the Bill of the Rights.
In that free country we were told that “dissent was patriotic”, that the minority viewpoint was protected and anyone was allowed to think what they like, even if it was unpopular. We had the freedoms of speech, religion and association among many others.
We had a government constrained, more or less, by the Constitution. We had a President who could not make law on his own, that was what Congress was for, we had a Supreme Court that could throw out illegal actions of the other branches. The Constitution spelled out the delegated powers of the federal government, and also told us what the government could not do.
Today we no longer have any of this. We have a government that feels unconstrained by the basic law of the country, the Constitution, and can do what it likes. The border is left wide open for foreign invasion while Americans are told to quit complaining about being forced to pay for them, guns are distributed to drug lords while it seeks to disarm Americans. Congress has become a footnote, failing to do even its most basic duties for 6-7 years in a row, such as passing an annual budget.
Today we live in a country where those with “unpopular” viewpoints are hunted down by media outlets and lawyers and forced into hiding by the lynch-mobs they incite. The freedom of religion has become the freedom from religion, unpopular opinions are treated as an offense against humanity.
Once we had a vibrant democracy to elect our government representatives, now we have a government that uses its power to shut down opposition voices. Criminals in the government that are caught suppressing political speech are rewarded and whistle-blowers, once protected, are fired and treated as criminals.
The people who once demanded tolerance and equality are now using the power of government, courts and their media to shut down their opponents and run them out of business. The laws no longer apply equally, some have been given special rights while others are losing real rights.
Imagine a country where the new laws are different for different people, laws that apply to you may not apply to your neighbor. This was once a concept that people found revolting, segregation and Jim Crow laws, but today it has become accepted orthodoxy.
A country where a Christian bakery owner can be prosecuted in criminal court and thrown in jail, fined, forced to do things that violates her beliefs while a Muslim bakery owner knows he will not be prosecuted for the exact same thing.
A country where a pizzeria can be forced to close because a media-incited lynch mob without it ever having done anything wrong. Where even media outlets will applaud death threats against its owner, while if the pizzeria next door actively discriminated it would be left alone if the owner were one of the “protected classes”.
The United States has slipped decidedly toward fascism, where the media hunts down dissent – from certain classes and groups – and makes them targets for the brownshirts. The United States of today looks a lot like the Germany of the 1930’s.
The children of today may never understand what a “free country” looked like.
Today we live in a country where those with “unpopular” viewpoints are hunted down by media outlets and lawyers and forced into hiding by the lynch-mobs they incite. The freedom of religion has become the freedom from religion, unpopular opinions are treated as an offense against humanity.