Religious liberty is America’s “first freedom.” The founders knew well how having a national religion could erode true faith and tear a country apart. At the same time, they knew that a self-governing people, as they envisioned America, must agree on basic moral beliefs, and understand that our human rights derive not from any government in any form but from God. Government, they knew, can be and often is the most imminent threat to human rights, including the right to freely practice or choose not to practice any faith.
America’s first freedom is under sustained and coordinated assault, according to former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in her bombshell new book, For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind. Like those old thriller movies in which the mysterious calls from the killer were coming from inside the house, the attack on religious freedom isn’t coming from any outside entity or country. It’s coming from inside America.
Gabbard grew up in Hawaii in an eclectic home, by most Americans’ thinking. Her parents read to her and her siblings from both the Bible and the Rig Veda, the 5,000-year-old set of Hindu beliefs. This upbringing shaped her worldview and also taught her tolerance of people with different beliefs than her own and sharpened her eyes to recognize insidious attacks on religion. Her father was subjected to such attacks when he ran for office in her native Hawaii.
It’s without any glee that Gabbard calls out the party she once proudly belonged to—the Democrats—as a party that has abandoned religious tolerance and become a party that seeks to undermine people of faith, and especially Christians, at every turn. Wokeness has turned the Democrats into a party that, for all intents and purposes, is organized around destroying religion in America.
And Gabbard brings the receipts.
She calls out the Obama-Biden administration for its shameless attempt to force a group of Catholic nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, to provide contraception to employees in violation of its members’ core beliefs. She calls out then-Senator Kamala Harris, now vice president, for her shameless attempt to keep Brian Buescher off the federal court because he was a member of the Catholic charity Knights of Columbus. The Constitution expressly forbids religious tests on Americans seeking public office, but Harris, with the blessing of her fellow Democrats, subjected Buescher to just such a test. To this day, no Democrats besides Gabbard, and certainly no one in the anti-religious media, has called Harris out for her brazen attack on the nation’s first and most vital freedom.
Gabbard’s exposure of the Democrats’ relentless assault on faith in America is eye-opening and even shocking. While it has been in the headlines piecemeal for years, only Gabbard has brought it all together in one place and held it up for her former party and the entire country to look at. Understand that while a majority of Americans believe in God, the Democratic Party is on a mission to erase and eradicate faith, and especially Christianity, from public life, according to Gabbard. And by supporting the Democrats, even people of faith end up undermining religious freedom.
Gabbard could no longer, in good conscience, do what Harris did—belong to a party that encourages attacking a Catholic American at the behest of anti-Christian forces within the Democratic Party. So she left.
Harris was, of course, promoted. The Democrats literally reward anti-Christian behavior.
Gabbard’s sensational book could not be more timely. She is a thoughtful leader and a skilled writer, a patriot who has put her life on the line for America, and a courageous warrior in the battle of ideas as America finds itself embroiled in a cold culture war.
Since leaving the Democrats, Gabbard has become one of the most important voices in the nation. For Love of Country may be the most important book of 2024. If you read one political book this election year, make it this one.
The Biden administration, Gabbard writes, is launching more attacks on faith than any previous administration. Given four more years and the argument through reelection that the voters have given it a mandate, it can and will do incalculable damage to America’s first freedom and, along with it, to America itself.
Steve Gruber is the host of America’s Voice Live, which airs daily on Real America’s Voice TV.