In line with what I said yesterday, if the Right to Life is the First Right, Freedom of Religion is the First Freedom.
Freedom of Religion is not merely "freedom of worship" as the Obama Administration has been portraying it during the last four years, inside and outside of the United States. Freedom of Religion is more than that: it is Freedom of Conscience, the inherent, inalienable right each of us have to follow our properly informed and formed consciences, and to act according to them without government interference. Moreover, it implies the right of free association among the likely-minded to bring to bear upon the social and political landscape what our conscience tell us is true, the diktats of the government not withstanding. In fact, this right is best exercised when there is no such "diktakt" pretending to define the content, scope, limit, and application of one's conscience, rightly formed. Yet, this is what the Obama Administration has been doing during the last four years. This I find intolerable and beyond the pale. I will challenge all encroachments and will work to stop them.
The recent triumph of President Obama bodes ill to the free exercise of religious conscience in our country. Today, I want to renew my vow to defend the First Freedom against the illegal encroachments of the state, and to hold accountable those in cultural and media elites who are but to happy to encroach into our most cherised freedom, so help me God.