Standing up for Hillary?

There’s a move afoot to punish U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Rodham
Clinton for campaigning in St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in
Rochester, New York.

Some say the event last Sunday was an obvious violation of election
rules for non-profit organizations and campaign laws.

They point out that a ticket labeled “Hillary Rally” was necessary
for attendance and that Democratic Party political operatives were
permitted to stand on church property handing out campaign signs, while
regular church members without rally tickets were denied access.

This may surprise some of you out there, but I think it’s a huge
mistake to expect or even want the Federal Elections Commission or the
Internal Revenue Service to punish Hillary Clinton or the church for
what should be First Amendment-protected speech.

Now, I don’t think I need to go into my bona fides as a
Hillary-basher. I think she’s a skunk. I think she’s a phony. I think
she’s a liar. Yes, I even think Hillary is a personification of true
evil in the world. So don’t mistake this column as some kind of veiled
endorsement of the first lady of high crimes and misdemeanors. She makes
me sick. Just looking at the woman is enough to make me retch.

And don’t think I condone the role of the church in helping to spread
the word of a false prophet like Hillary.

I am also aware of the fact that Hillary would be the first person in
line volunteering to execute Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson for such
mixing of politics and religion. But, the truth is, America should be
encouraging churches and synagogues to engage in the political process.
The American Revolution itself was fostered in the pulpits and pews of
colonial churches.

It gets confusing because certain politicians and movements in the
United States have created a misperception that the First Amendment
contains some hidden provision requiring “the separation of church and
state.” Funny, I’ve been searching for that clause for years and just
can’t seem to find it. It must be like that provision that creates the
right of a woman to abort her unborn baby.

True, the First Amendment contains a provision against the imposition
of an official state church, but nowhere does it even hint that churches
should be excluded from participation in the political process. Over the
years, this non-existent, make-believe clause in the Constitution has
evolved into campaign law and non-profit regulations that prohibit the
mixing of church and politics.

This is wrong. It’s a mistake. And it must be rectified. It must be
fixed not by fighting fire with fire — not by accusing the accusers of
phony crimes. It must be corrected by pointing out their hypocrisy,
their lies and their misuse of the government to promote only one side
in the political debate.

That is what has happened. Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson
have free rein to use non-profit, tax-exempt churches to promote their
political agendas and campaigns, but Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
don’t.

Instead of accepting the phony premise that churches can’t play in
politics, we should be telling government to get out of their way. We should
cite the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and freedom of
religion as foundations for church involvement in the political process.

Furthermore, we should expose the campaign laws that are abridging
the rights of Americans to engage freely in politics. We should expose
the IRS regulations that put handcuffs on some non-profits but not
others. There can be no political litmus test for First
Amendment-protected speech.

That means, in my opinion, an end to government funding of election
campaigns. It means an end to restrictions on lobbying and campaigning
by non-profit entities — especially churches.

People who believe in the Constitution, limited government and
personal freedom must never be tempted to use the fascistic,
heavy-handed, coercive arm of Big Government to fight their political
battles. That’s what we do if we call on government to go after Hillary
Clinton. If we lived in a fair world, of course, we’d all play by the
same rules.

We don’t live in a fair world. We live in a fallen world.

If we want to shed some light and spread some salt in that fallen
world, we had better figure out how to maximize the role of the church
in the political and cultural arenas.

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