Your Pink FLamingo

For several years I have enjoyed the friendship and the correspondence on the Active Rain blogsite of Jon Zolsky, a successful real estate broker in Daytona Beach who happens to be an immigrant, now an American citizen, who came from the former Soviet Union, having lived above the Arctic Circle in Siberia.

As Jon relates his experiences and life in the Soviet Union in eloquent simplicity he provides a contrast between the Russian society he grew up in with the American society which he has grown to love.  It has been a source of inspiration and intellectual pleasure to realize that Jon, as an adult immigrant to the United States, understands the freedoms of America (both the promise and the history of these freedoms) better than my friends and neighbors who have lived under the protection of the American Constitution all of their lives.

In his current post, Jon describes an early experience after his arrival in America of being in a large residential complex in the Bronx and seeing many lighted Menorahs displayed in the windows of Jewish residents.  He was struck by the realization that such displays would not be permitted in his Russian homeland and would target the residents to violence, discrimination and even death.  And he saw in this simple observation more proof (no longer needed at this point, I suspect) of the greatness of America with true liberty and freedoms that he had not enjoyed in his previous culture.  The title of is post, by the way, is “I Am an American”

As I commented on Jon's post I described the current controversy in the news where the Obama Administration is, in my view, striking at well established religious freedoms in this country using their Obamacare regulations to force Catholic charities and hospitals to provide insurance funding for employees (who are of many faiths) for abortion and birth control and to provide those services in their hospitals despite long standing opposition to those services in the teaching of the Church.   But I decided to create this separate post to express my point of view and to introduce my readers in Active Rain and in my outside blogs to Jon Zolsky, a wonderful American who happens not to have been born here.

Many Americans of all faiths (or no faith in some cases) are seeing in the Administration's move against the Catholic Church a threat to all of us and a failure of our American system of religious freedoms.  Around the nation there is outrage and the beginnings of protests against the secular agenda of the current Administration. 

The foundation of the American experience and a major reason for the initial immigration from Europe and other places in the 15th and 16th centuries to what was then a group of English colonies was religious freedom.  

I fear that we are losing that freedom as well as others as the current administration seeks to extend their secular control over more segments of our population.  The current policy of the health care regulation system to force religious organizations to fund abortions and birth control services which are clearly against the beliefs of the Church sponsors of the hospitals or charities is an abomination against the Church and the Constitutional freedoms that we used to enjoy as Americans - unique in all the world.

The President who would foment class warfare for his own political advantage could use religious persecutions next to further his secular agenda.  The institutions of religion and education have been under attack here for years.  

I fear for the future of my country - now more than ever in my lifetime.  If this this President is willing to put forward these policies against the Churches now in an election year, can there be any limit on what he would do if he maintains power for another four years. 

I will watch with interest the building opposition to the President and the impact on our election process in November.