Our privacy has been invaded by big government - big business tracking and databasing of our medical records, employment records, education records, driving records, financial records....etc. Now they want to monitor our religion.
Breaching the "Wall
of Separation" between Church and State
In the aftermath of the
Jonestown massacre in 1978 came a congressional investigation of religious
"sects," resulting in the establishment of the principle that there is a
legitimate federal interest in the classification of and monitoring of
religious organizations.
Government has clearly stated its role and
interest in legislating on religious matters in hearings associated with the
"Freedom From Religious Persecution Act of 1997," and the passing into law of
the "International Religious Freedom Act of 1998". This new law suggests that
religious persecution is somehow a greater evil than other forms of human
rights violations and set's the U.S. into the position of becoming the world
policeman in matters of religious persecution in countries around the world.
Primary promoters of Religious Monitoring include
Freedom House, a
Washington based organization which claims its purpose is to monitor civil
rights abuses and promote "the cause of liberty." It was founded in 1943 by
Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt. Willkie is best known for his book "One
World", a call for world government promoting the concept of the United
Nations.
The Trustee Board of Freedom House is dominated by members of
the elitist Council on Foreign
Relations, including the Chairman Betty Bao Lord, Secretary Kenneth
Adelman, Chairmen Emeriti Leo Cherne and Max M. Kampelman, and Trustees
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne Kirkpatrick
and Samuel P. Huntington. Wendell Willkie II is also a
Trustee.
Surprisingly, there has been increasing support of a number of
highly respected conservative Congressmen, nationally known Christian leaders
and TV evangelists who would normally be expected to resist any growth of
government, especially where intrusion into religious freedom is involved.
Preparing the
way...
The enforcement of acceptable religious standards has
arrived in the United States.
The federal
government's slaughter of the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas should have
been a "wake-up" call for Americans to see that this government is unfit for
the job of monitoring and "protecting" religious minorities. Such an act of
religious persecution is unprecedented in the United States this century, but
the officials responsible have yet to be "sanctioned" and held accountable.
After the tragedy in Oklahoma City, Americans watched in disbelief as
Democrats and liberal pundits attempted to portray the maniac bombers with
conservative and religious Americans - especially those who fight for the
unborn child.
Writing in The Washington Post, Michael Lind made
that connection between the bombers and pro-lifers. He wrote, "The story of
Oklahoma City and the militias should not make us forget that the main form of
political terrorism in the United States is perpetuated by right wing opponents
of abortion."
HR1685,
Freedom from Religious Persecution Act
The Freedom From Religious
Persecution Act of 1997, sponsored by Virginia's Rep. Frank Wolf and Sen. Arlen
Specter of Pennsylvania, would have created a new Office of Religious
Persecution Monitoring in the White House. The director, subordinate only to
the president, would be charged with reporting on abuses against religious
minorities. Serious abuses would trigger automatic economic sanctions.
Those fighting for privacy rights and religious freedom, knew that if this bill
was passed we would have a massive new bureaucracy set up to monitor religions
and track individuals. This bill would have created a Cabinet level agency
whose mandate would be to provide surveillance over religious groups. Nothing
in the language of this bill limits the new agency to foreign countries or
territories.
Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the globalist Hudson
Institute in Washington, the principle promoter of the bill and probably its
author, appeared on the Alan Keyes talk show lauding the bill and pleading for
support among conservative Christians because Democrats were opposing it. Mr.
Horowitz knows that the internationalist Democrats could not be dragged away
from voting for HR1685 because it produces a massive new bureaucracy, with
enormous powers.
HR2431,
International Religious Freedom Act of 1998
The International
Religious Freedom Act of 1998 was signed into law [Public Law No.: 105-292] by
President Clinton on Oct. 27, 1998.
A noticeable difference in this law
compared to HR1685 is that it moved the Office of Religious Persecution
Monitoring (ORPM) from the White House to the State Department, giving the
Secretary of State new powers of overseeing religious discrimination and in
reporting its
findings. It exists today at the State Department as the
Office of
International Religious Freedom and works in close cooperation with the
independent United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Its director is
empowered with sweeping authority to monitor religious groups around the world
to decide if they are suffering persecution and to apply economic sanctions
against the offending nation, entity or individual. This unprecedented power
has led some to refer to the ORPM Director as "the Czar of Religious
Monitoring."
The ORPM Director will have unrestricted authority to shut
down all trade, air traffic, loans and financial transactions beginning with
selectively targeted individuals to a complete embargo of designated countries.
While these dictatorial powers appear to be directed at persecuting
governments, they equally affect U.S. persons who wish to send money and food
to relatives and businessmen who have investments in targeted countries. Buyers
are deprived of necessary goods and sellers are deprived of their livelihood,
all without due process of law.
Who's Next?
HR2431appears to more specifically deliniate these activities to foreign
countries. However, it also premits the President to waive any sanctions for
governments when it serves U.S. national interests.
A logical question
every Christian should ask is, "Who will be next?" What is to prevent "The
Office" from deciding that "Extremist Christians" are persecuting pro-abortion
pantheists, or "gay" Unitarians, or some sect of its own invention. If "The
Office" has a right to classify one religion as acceptable or not, why not all
religions? The bill does not define what it considers to be a "religion," so it
is apparently free to make up its own definition. This alone creates a serious
concern for Christians.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." - First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
This is precisely what Congress has done.
This law does not
increase freedom. Rather, it expands the dictatorial power of the Executive
Branch. The bill provides for a Cabinet level equivalent agency whose mandate
is to provide surveillance over religious groups. The President, through
appointees, would instantly enjoy enormous powers to monitor and judge
religious groups at his discretion, hitherto forbidden by the
First Amendment to the
Constitution.
The 9/11
Connection
Following the
events of
September 11, 2001, the United States has been waging a war on
international terrorism that has brought many of the religious monitoring
activites within the borders of the U.S.
With strong bipartisan support
President Bush created the
Department of Homeland
Security dedicated to protecting America from terrorism and transforming
the FBI into an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.
The Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was launched to consolidate
terrorist watch lists and provide continual operational support for Federal,
state, and local screeners and law enforcement. The TSC says it will not
independently collect any information on U.S. citizens - it only
receives information provided by the TTIC and the FBI. That information
can then be presumably shared by The Department of Homeland Security
Information Network that is connected to all 50 states and more than 50 major
urban areas.
While many of its activities are appropriate for a government protecting our borders, there are some aspects of what the government can now do that should send chills down your spine.
FEMA Plan To
Use Pastors as Pacifiers in Preparation For Martial Law
A nationwide
FEMA program is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become
secret police enforcers for the New World
Order who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation
for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced
relocation.
FEMA is preparing these Clergy Response Teams to help implement
FEMA and Homeland Security directives in anticipation of any of these
eventualities.
The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their
congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was
used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach
them to "obey the government" when martial law is declared. It was stressed
that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time
in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that
"this is for their own good."
The FEMA program falls under the umbrella of the
NVOAD program which is
training volunteers in a "Peer to Peer" program in a neighborhood setting.
Pastors were told that the would be backed up by law enforcement in controlling
uncooperative individuals and that they would even lead SWAT teams in
attempting to quell resistance similar to what they did in house-by-house
searchs following the hurricane disaster in New Orleans.
Alex Jones'
2001 documentary film
9/11: The Road to
Tyranny featured footage from a FEMA symposium given to firefighters and
other emergency personnel in Kansas City in which it was stated that the
founding fathers, Christians and homeschoolers were terrorists and should be
treated with the utmost suspicion and brutality in times of national emergency.
The USA
Patriot Act
On the surface, the
USA Patriot Act may seem reasonable, however, it also gives
intelligence and law enforcement officials new tools to track all American
citizens and deny their right of privacy. For example, it permits the FBI to
compel production of business records, medical records, educational records,
library records, and your Internet surfing habits from your ISP without a
showing of "probable cause". The law also includes privisions that
prohibit, under penalty of law, to tell anybody that you have been asked for
that information.
It allows "sneak-and-peek" searches to be conducted
without giving notice of the search or the issuance of a warrant. And, it's NOT
limited only to terrorist investigations. This change in the law applies to all
government searches for material that "constitutes evidence of a criminal
offense in violation of the laws of the United States" and is not limited to
investigations of terrorist activity. The expansion of this extraordinary
authority to all searches constitutes a radical departure from Fourth Amendment
standards and could result in routine surreptitious entries by law enforcement
agents.
It permits the FBI to spy on religious services, internet
chatrooms, political demonstrations, and other public meetings of any kind
without having any evidence that a crime has been or may be
committed.
It authorizes electronic surveillance of Internet traffic
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without establishing
probable cause that the target of the action is involved in terrorism,
espionage or another crime.
And, it expands the definition of domestic
terrorism in a manner that opponents believe would allow it to be used against
peaceful, political protesters.
For more information you might want to
take a look at:
The Patriot Act II: Terrorizing The American
People
and
Current Threats to Freedom of Speech, Religion, and
Assembly
