Bobby Jindal’s Christian Caliphate of New Orleans

Donald A. Collins | 15 February 2015
Church and State

As Americans get more concerned about the threat of lone wolf or worse Jihadists acting in various places like Copenhagen and Paris, do most Americans understand the irony of our failure to see the similarities in the behavior of the pro-lifers or as someone has said, “pro-slavers” in the anti family planning behavior of these anti-birth control extremists?? Likely not.

Historically, the chief Muslim and religious ruler in a theocratic kingdom (e.g. a country ruled by religious leadership such as Iran) would be regarded as the successor of Muhammad and thus the deputy of god. And he would thus rule over a Caliphate, which is the kind of territorial rule sought by ISIS.

Our Founding Fathers did their best to break the bonds of theocratic influence which Jefferson, Franklin and other Americans saw as so inhibiting of true freedom in Europe when they carefully crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We were not organized as some outrageously argue today as “a Christian nation”.

As a former member of the National Board of Planned Parenthood, I follow closely its humane and transparent efforts to bring appropriate medical services to American women. A small percentage of these services involve provision for abortion, although access particularly for younger, less affluent women find this aspect of PPFA’s work vital.

Thus I was particularly drawn to an article about the failure of PPFA’s affiliate chapter in New Orleans to be able to construct and gain an approval to open a full service PPFA clinic from the City of New Orleans. We know that after Hurricane Katrina the impact on the poorest sections of that city were enduring, thus the story in the Sunday, February 15, 2015 Washington Post by Tyler Bridges, “Planned Parenthood blocked by Jindal’s efforts in New Orleans” was a shocking example of Roe v Wade’s continuing erosion by the forces of repression against women.

Bridges begins by telling us

Planned Parenthood began construction here last year on a clinic that would perform abortions and provide other medical services for women. “High-Quality, Affordable Health Care for New Orleans,” a sign promised. “Seeing Patients Early 2015.”

That sign is now crumpled on the ground behind a chain-link fence at the project’s abandoned construction site, victim of efforts by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and other abortion opponents to block the clinic.

The push against the project began last year, when the Catholic archbishop of New Orleans wrote a public letter threatening to blacklist contractors on the clinic from any of the church’s numerous real estate projects. That led to several subcontractors walking away from the project, delaying work on the facility. An inspector for the State Licensing Board for Contractors also began making weekly visits, which one of the major contractors said was unprecedented.

Then last month Jindal’s administration denied Planned Parenthood an operating license, stating that the group failed to show the need for the clinic. Work has stopped at the site on a busy thoroughfare west of downtown, at least for now, while Planned Parenthood vows to appeal.

So why my article’s title? Because Bobby Jindal, who is running for President of the United States, is acting exactly like the chief Muslim and religious ruler in a theocratic kingdom! And his principal aid and abetment colleagues are religious extremists who would do anything to get their religious positions forced upon all American voters, who if they acquiesce, will be lead like lambs to the slaughter of religious liberty.

In another related irony, even more important irony, when 70% of Americans see the utter illegality of President Obama’s Executive Orders on immigration, which allows illegal aliens to enter and stay in an America which has millions of us citizens unemployed, underemployed or simply not looking for work, a larger question may be the utter breakdown of our Constitution and the Rule of Law which certainly will take us to anarchy en route to the kind of dictatorship that a Christian Caliphate envisions.

The Post piece continues: “The clinic decision comes as Jindal prepares to launch a campaign for the White House in 2016, with a special emphasis on courting the Republican Party’s influential evangelical wing. Jindal, who was raised Hindu but converted to Catholicism, has staked out conservative positions on social issues ranging from same-sex marriage to prayer in the schools in an effort to become the preferred candidate of the Christian right.”

So now it is obvious and one can really see how the progression and the improper use of secular power could easily New Orleans forward into proper Christian Caliphate status. And yet it citizens still call their city “The Big Easy”!!

Readers may recall the warnings of conservative icon Barry Goldwater in the 1970’s about cow towing to people such as Falwell and Robertson. Jindal is their acolyte and this major US party seems unaware of its trend toward caliphatism!

Yes, Bobby Jindal mirrors a lot of theocratic ideas about what governance means. The Post notes:

“Two weeks ago, Jindal hosted a day of prayer attended by several thousand believers on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and spoke at an adjoining ­antiabortion rally.

“It’s one more plank that he’s building his candidacy on,” said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is writing a biography of the governor. “The others include no tolerance for illegal immigrants, no new taxes, shrink the size of government and no gay marriage.”

For social conservatives, Cross added, “abortion is a signal issue.”

Jindal, who declined to comment last week, said in a statement earlier this year: “It matters how we treat the unborn and the elderly. Every life is sacred and we should have the courage to ­defend it.”

Jindal had a 100-percent voting record during three years as member of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to National Right to Life, an antiabortion group. He has also signed into law a series of measures that have tightened restrictions on abortions in Louisiana since he became governor in 2008.

Americans United for Life says Louisiana has been the most antiabortion state during Jindal’s tenure.

“He’s not just been pro-life behind closed doors,” said Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life. “He’s also been proudly pro-life across our state.”

Don’t fail to read this entire article. This perversion of secular law represents the first time a State Government has joined in a total freedom overreach. And if the issue arrives at the highest court in the land, 6 or the 9 Justices on the US Supreme Court are Catholic.

It is time for proper separation of church and state, but also a time to begin rational dialogues on issues which are being used, such as the immigration issue, to ignore solutions which should be reached by our long established republic, the abrogation of which will mean its demise, the grandest best experiment ever established in human history. Think about it, Americans, and realize what dangerous ground we are on. Look around the world and see how happy you would be with the governance or the absence of governance in so many other countries

No Caliphate of any kind works for freedom, comity and social progress.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.

From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013

By Donald A. Collins
Publisher: Church and State Press (July 30, 2014)
ASIN: B00MA40TVE
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Back in 1991, the NGO Don Collins founded in 1976, International Services Assistance Fund (ISAF), co-produced a TV quality 22-minute film called “Whose Choice?” which Ted Turner arranged to broadcast on September 21, 1992 in prime time on his then independent Turner Broadcast System (TBS). Other outlets such as PBS and several of its affiliates Collins and his colleagues contacted then refused to run it because of its forthright treatment of the abortion issue, arguing for all women’s right to choose not to have a baby. ISAF has made a new edition of that DVD. The purpose for reissuing this 3rd version of “Whose Choice?” was simply to show the historical urgency that attended those times, still blocked and attacked over 40 years after the Roe v Wade decision in 1973. This video is available for public viewing for the first time.

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