Today marks our Independence Day, which is celebrated nowadays by odes to freedom and to our individual rights. It is not, perhaps, the day to note that the family and not the individual is the building block of society, save only to note it in passing. It is, however, a day to note that there are three rights which ultimately surpass all the others in importance: the right to life, without which no other rights can be guaranteed; the right to freedom of religion, or at the least freedom of conscience which might be said to include freedom of religion, without which no other rights can have any meaning; and the right to private property, without which no other right can be defended.
About this last right, I will say little. There aren't as many overt assaults on it as on the other two, save in the form of high taxes and the occasional frivolous use of eminent domain. But the former two are most certainly under attack today: in the form of abortion, of assisted suicide in some states, in the form of the Obama administration's odious HHS mandate.
Indeed, the Obama administration seems to be interested in doing little more these days than seeing how many and which of our rights they can get away with violating, even in some small way. The HHS mandate, for example, brazenly strikes at the rights to life (by funding certain types of contraceptive-induced abortions), and also of the liberty of conscience. It does so under the guise of providing healthcare--or, I should say, it at first did so under this guise, but that pretense has been dropped.
Meanwhile in Texas, the fight is one to protect some of the lives destroyed by abortion--both those murdered in the womb (and this, even during late term, after the first 20 weeks), and those whose lives are wrecked by the guilt and sorrow of the "procedure." When this fundamental right to life is attacked, others rights follow, as we see in the demands of those who support keeping abortions common that those of us who call abortion homicide and murder be forced to pay for--and in some cases, cooperate even more directly in--this atrocity. Here I suppose is a more indirect assault on the right to own property, in the sense that the Obama administration has basically told believing Catholics and other people of good faith that they must choose between their consciences, and owning "businesses" (including charities, educational institutions, etc) which employ more than 50 people.
As a society it is most important for us to defend this right to life, though in our own lives preserving the right of conscience is even more important. The right to life must be guaranteed, as for that matter must be the rights to conscience and to property ownership. But if the choice becomes necessary between these three, 'tis better to forfeit property and even lie than to forfeit conscience. As St Dominic Savio puts it, "Death before sin!" should be our cry, though in a free society that should not be a dilemma we face.
May God bless America, our country--but may He preserve out liberties, our rights, from the tyranny--hard or soft--of those who seek to crush them or to strip us of them.
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