Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Persecuting Christians, attacking free speech

My parents immigrated to the United States in 1951, after surviving the tyranny of Nazi Germany and Soviet communism.

It never would have occurred to them that any American, such as Aaron and Melissa Klein of Oregon, would have their freedom to speak, their right to live their lives according to their religious beliefs and their ability to practice their chosen profession taken away by an unapologetic, self-righteous government bureaucrat in basic disregard of the most fundamental tenets of the First Amendment.

But that is exactly what has happened to the Kleins, who committed what is these days the socially unacceptable faux pas of refusing to bake a wedding cake for Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer. Instead of going to one of the dozens of other bakers who would have baked them a cake, this lesbian couple filed a claim for “emotional damages” against the Kleins with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI).

BOLI is run by Commissioner Brad Avakian, a generous financial supporter of Basic Rights Oregon, the largest homosexual rights group in Oregon. This means he has an inherent conflict of interest in the matter.

In fact, emails obtained through a public records request show Avakian and other employees at BOLI worked behind the scenes with the gay lobbying group to organize the persecution of the Kleins through the administrative hearing process. The Kleins lost their bakery business because of a boycott and the burden of defending themselves in the administrative process that lacked the due process protections of a court, where Avakian himself was the final judge, jury and executioner.

On July 2, just days before we celebrated the Declaration of Independence and the fight for our liberties, Avakian issued a final resolution of the complaint. He ordered the Kleins to pay Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer $135,000 for “emotional” damages.

Apparently, not getting the cake they wanted caused them “acute loss of confidence,” “doubt,” “excessive sleep,” “shock,” “uncertainty,” “high blood pressure,” “impaired digestion,” and a host of other symptoms. Of course, they didn’t lose their jobs, their profession, or their ability to make a living as the Kleins did.

But Avakian didn’t stop there. He found it unacceptable that the Kleins defended themselves in the media and -- horrors -- on their Facebook page! Apparently, talking about how they try to live their lives in accordance with their religious beliefs was too much.

By “repeatedly appearing in public to make statements” about the complaint, the Kleins are “liable for any resultant emotional suffering experienced by” the lesbian couple. Therefore, Avakian ordered the Kleins to “cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing, or displaying” any communication about their beliefs about sexual orientation and public accommodations. He overruled the hearing officer’s recommendation to dismiss this part of the claim.

America was founded on the basis of religious freedom and free speech. Freedom from persecution like that instigated by Avakian drew many to America, from the pilgrims to the Huguenots. Those principles were embedded in our First Amendment and ingrained in American culture -- until now.

The issue here is not same-sex marriage, a fiercely debated social issue, or whether you approve of it. The issue is that all Americans have the right not only to live their life according to their religious principles without the government dictating what social mores are acceptable, but also the right to speak freely -- particularly when they are being hounded by the government.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that “freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.” With this unfair, unjust, and unwarranted judgment and gag order against the Kleins by an unprincipled government official, that pillar has just been destroyed in Oregon.

 - Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department attorney.
Originally appeared in Providence Journal

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Dem Congressman: ‘We’ve Proved That Communism Works’

Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.”
Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security.
“Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” he said. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the Americas, which is Juarez. Right?”
“And two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico,” Garcia continued. “And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.”
“But that isn’t what we should be doing on the border,” he continued. “The kind of money we’ve poured into it, and we’re having diminishing returns.”
The video was uploaded to YouTube by the America Rising PAC, a Republican PAC founded in 2013 and dedicated to opposition research. It’s also the same group that originally uploaded Garcia’s earwax snafu.
Via: Daily Caller

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Thursday, March 20, 2014

A New Obama Doctrine? With his presidency in a tailspin, Carter radically changed course. Will Obama do the same?

By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed — and he was running for reelection.

Carter had come into office in 1977 promising a new American stance abroad predicated on human rights. He bragged of an end to our supposedly inordinate fear of Soviet-inspired Communism. He entertained the hope of not losing a single American soldier in combat during his tenure. And he rejected the realpolitik of the Nixon-Kissinger years.

The State Department would end the excessive influence of the bellicose National Security Council. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would put a kinder, gentler face on American diplomacy. We championed Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe over more moderate black reformers. We broke with the Shah of Iran, who fled his country in January 1979. We for a while praised the Ayatollah Khomeini and sought ways to reach out to him. Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, called Khomeini “some kind of saint.” Young met secretly with PLO representatives in Kuwait. In an interview, he falsely alleged of his own country that “We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons.”

The same formula was used in Nicaragua, as we welcomed the end of the despised Somoza regime and looked to Marxist rebels to provide long-delayed social justice for the region. Carter spurned South Korea, as if North Korean threats were not all that serious, or perhaps were even understandable, given U.S. Cold War machinations. Carter wanted to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea as a way of easing tensions on the 38th Parallel. He was clearly uncomfortable with Israel. He often distanced himself from Europe.

For a while, there was calm. Stunned potential aggressors only eyed one another to see who might be the first to test this strange new break with nearly four decades of bipartisan American foreign policy. But then, in late 1979, things started going downhill fast — as if the gamblers thought it was time to cash in their chips for fear that Carter might not win another four years in office.

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