Pluralism in the toilet?

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Yet another example of how the rights and security of the majority must yield to the demands of a small minority to have their feelings about their identity affirmed.

Perhaps, as Fr. Neuhaus feared, America’s experiment in democratic pluralism is failing.

Raising the Bar on public input

The public comment period will end 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, thirty days after President Obama formally announced his intention to rescind the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations in the Federal Register. A source within the HHS has told CatholicAnew.com that a handful of comments received after the cutoff may be considered.

via Last Chance to Ask Obama Administration to Retain Conscience Protections for Pro-Life Doctors | Catholic Exchange.

The requirements for sending comments ensure that pretty much only legal scholars can provide input.  So when only a few thousand (and that’s optimistic) comments are received, opposition to the measure can be dismissed as a fringe position.  Then it will be open season on health care providers who refuse on the basis of conscience to perform abortions.  Perhaps they think that after a few of us are made examples of, most will cave.  And what a display of pragmatism-over-ideology this will be in addressing the chronic shortage of health care providers!

This is Obama’s idea of putting aside partisan differences and being the voice of the people rather than of special interests?  But I guess this is what the USA gets for electing a President on the basis of feel-good slogans, or for its blind acceptance of the two-party approach to politics where the only choices are Bad and Worse.

Mainstream extremists

If you’re an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very well might be a member of a domestic paramilitary group.

That’s according to “The Modern Militia Movement,” a report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a government collective that identifies the warning signs of potential domestic terrorists for law enforcement communities…

“It’s certainly an attempt to stifle political thought, especially in Missouri. It definitely makes me pause, if nothing else. Maybe Missouri is just a test bed for squelching political thought.”

via ‘Fusion Centers’ Expand Criteria to Identify Militia Members – First 100 Days of Presidency – Politics FOXNews.com.

I remember in the wake of the Branch Davidian massacre, Attorney General Janet Reno saying that marks of a “cult” included attending Bible studies or believing in the Second Coming of Christ.  And, implicitly, if you are a “cultist” or a “white separatist” like the Weaver family, you might just find federal SWAT teams kicking down your door on the suspicion that you might act on your extremist beliefs and hurt someone.  Your spouse and children dead in a hail of government gunfire?  Too bad.  You should have been more of a conformist.  That was the real if unstated lesson of those debacles.

If this Missouri report is indeed a trial balloon to see how the public reacts to civil rights abuses based on calling someone an extremist or a militia member, then this balloon needs to be popped.

Also, I would like to see if all those people who have been calling Bush “Hitler” and “fascist” for the past eight years will be as quick to object to this.  Will the news be filled with ominous threats of an impending police state?

Update, 3/28: balloon popped. Report has been retracted and questions are being asked about who is responsible.  Good.

Some thanks

He says he was shocked when a job-placement worker told him that some employers consider a military record almost like having “a felony.”

“People just frown upon us nowadays, thinking we’re all flying-off-the-handle crazy guys,” says Pearson, who has a bachelor’s degree in business management. “They don’t even give us a chance.”

via Jobless rate at 11.2% for veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan – USATODAY.com.

Years of calling military members things like “baby killer” had to have some effect.  Troops don’t set policy; they follow orders.  But in the unhinged, irresponsible rhetoric of the far left, we don’t separate military service from the policies of George W. Bush.  That’s how college campuses ban ROTC or military recruiters, people make movies portraying soldiers as mindless killers or sociopaths, and service members are treated as pariahs when they return home from risking their lives.

Yet more evidence that less people believe in pluralism or respect those they disagree with.