[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
By Tyler O’Neil
The Daily Signal
ATLANTA—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the Left’s attacks on religious freedom and parental rights represent an attempt to impose its pseudo-religious “orthodoxy” on society.
“They have an orthodoxy on the Left that they want to impose on society, it’s basically their religion,” DeSantis, a leading Republican candidate for president in 2024, said at The Gathering, an event at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead hosted by radio host Erick Erickson. “It’s not a faith in God, per se, it’s a faith in the leftist ideology.”
DeSantis, who often polls second behind former President Donald Trump in the GOP primary, had responded to Erickson’s question about how parents demanding a say in their kids’ own education “became the enemy.”
“Whatever your rights are, they think they should yield if there’s a conflict between them pursuing an agenda and you being a parent,” the governor said.
He warned that the Left treats religious liberty the same way.
DeSantis mentioned the case of Coach Joe Kennedy, who lost his job because he prayed on the football field. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld his religious freedom and restored him to his position, but the governor said the case never should have made it there in the first place.
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“The fact that that’s even getting to the Supreme Court tells you that we’re not strong on religious liberty,” he said.
“Your right to practice your faith, and not just Christians but also as Jews and others, they think that it stops the minute it impinges on their agenda,” he warned. “That’s how you can have a case like 303 Creative v. Elenis, a Supreme Court case focused on free speech. In that case, the court defended the free speech rights of a web designer who wanted to make websites to celebrate weddings but would have been forced by Colorado law to make websites for same-sex “weddings,” as well. The court ruled that the state law involved compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.
“Do you think for a minute that if there was conservative compelled speech that those three justices would have dissented? No way,” DeSantis said.
He warned that the Left treats rights like religious freedom “less as a matter of God-given right and more something that the elites are allowing you to do and are tolerating” until it conflicts with their agenda.
“The family and faith are the building blocks of society and those are the two areas that they’re really waging an assault against right now,” DeSantis said.
He also condemned the weaponization of the FBI, Department of Justice, and other agencies, noting that the Richmond FBI office targeted certain traditional Roman Catholics.
“The Founders would have predicted that this would happen,” DeSantis said. He noted that the Founders created a system of checks and balances to prevent one branch of government from obtaining unchecked power. He said the growth of the administrative state has allowed these agencies to weaponize law enforcement against conservatives.
“All Republican presidents in our lifetime have accepted the canard that the FBI and DOJ are ‘independent,’” DeSantis said. “They are not independent agencies. They are executive branch agencies that report to the president of the United States.”
He noted that the administrative state has been imposing its will on the people, and said, “It’s time we the people impose our will on it for a change.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Today’s ruling elites champion policies every previous generation of Americans would have regarded as outright evil. At the top of that list would be the supremely radioactive issue – illuminated by the hit summer film “Sound of Freedom” – of the widespread trafficking and sexual slavery of children, as well as the shocking prevalence of pedophiles in the United States of America. Indeed, the U.S. is the largest market for child sexual abuse in the world.
According to Tim Ballard, who has led many missions rescuing sex-trafficked children around the world, the Biden administration actually ENABLES AND PROMOTES the trafficking and sexual slavery of children with its horrendous border policies, its push for early sexualization of children, championing children’s “right to consent” on everything including mutilating transgender surgeries, and so on.
“Pedophiles are sitting back right now,” says Ballard, “and going, ‘We’ve been pushing this agenda for decades, and now we don’t have to push any more, because the left is taking care of it for us’ – IN AMERICA!”
Ballard’s concerns are confirmed by Tara Lee Rodas, a Health and Human Services whistleblower who recently testified before Congress that under Joe Biden, “THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME THE MIDDLEMAN IN A LARGE-SCALE, MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR CHILD TRAFFICKING OPERATION.”
But that’s just the beginning. The whole, secret criminal mega-enterprise of child sex trafficking and the global elites’ affinity for pedophilia is exposed as never before in the August issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, in a groundbreaking issue titled “THE NEW AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE: How the Biden regime enables and promotes child sex trafficking in the U.S.A.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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