“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?” –Thomas Jefferson (1781)

Conservative commentators and media outlets devote enormous print space and airtime to topical political news, but often fail to reference the more substantive implications of political disputes. Consequently, too many grassroots conservatives, whose opinions are informed by those outlets, are also predisposed to focus on the topical, without connecting to its substantive context.

In the absence of a broad fundamental understanding of the threat to Liberty posed by the Democrat Party, that Party has made significant advances in the last five years.

For example, conflicts resulting from the insidious “tolerance and diversity agenda” promoted by Barack Hussein Obama and his Leftist NeoCom cadres are often the subject of political commentary.

Indeed, these conflicts certainly warrant the attention and ire of grassroots conservatives across the nation. However, conservative leaders too often fail to connect these conflicts with the real issue – the battle between Liberty and oppression.

There is an endless stream of news related to Obama’s tolerance and diversity propaganda, and the rest of his web of schemes, which are strategically designed to undermine Liberty by advancing his Party’s statist economic and cultural policies.

While I primarily depend on the Web’s reliable news and policy analytic resources in order to formulate my own commentary, I try to catch Bret Baier’s nightly “Special Report” on FNC as a good touchstone for what the conservative TV media are broadly reporting each day. Occasionally I direct a few choice words at my flat screen, especially when Beltway Republicans completely fail to link sensational topics to any substantive context.

Case in point: One notable news story this week involves two of Obama’s key intolerance and diversity agenda items, homosexuals in the military and his rigid prohibition of religious expression in the military. These two collided, resulting in disciplinary action against a 19-year Air Force veteran, Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, who was relieved of duty and reassigned by his lesbian commanding officer.

Why? Because Monk refused to compromise his Christian view on homosexuals.

According to the Sergeant’s Liberty Institute attorney, Hiram Sasser, Monk received a letter from his commander asking if “he could agree that a verbal statement expressing religious or moral opposition to same-sex marriage was discrimination. Monk answered he did not agree that it was discrimination.”

“Are we going to have a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy for Christians so we don’t get harassed for our beliefs?” asked Sasser. “Here’s a guy who wants to have his religious liberty and serve in the military. He shouldn’t have to believe in gay marriage in order to serve.”

Monk says of his motivation for pursuing this complaint, “Christians … are being robbed of our dignity and respect. We can’t be who we are. This [complaint] isn’t just about me, this is for all airmen.”

Indeed, the military, and the Air Force in particular, has suffered a significant decline in morale as a result of the Obama regime’s tolerance agenda.

Because Air Force and other Service Branch commanders, and civilian DoD administration appointees, are under the direct command of the President as their Commander in Chief and boss, the tolerance diktats from the current CINC are not vetted by the legislative and judicial branches prior to implementation – any more than the landslide of oppressive regulations he has ordered in civilian agencies are subject to oversight.

Yes, in 2010, after a crushing defeat by Tea Party candidates, the House Majority Democrats overturned the former proscription on open homosexuals in the military as one of their final legislative acts prior to handing control to the incoming Republican majority. But the plethora of ensuing tolerance rules and regulations had the intended effect of undermining military families and eroding the faith fabric that has held our military and Republic together since the first CINC, George Washington.

In 1776, after having the new Declaration of Independence read to his troops, Washington ordered that chaplains for every regiment affirm that “every officer and man, endeavour so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier, defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.”

Washington’s order in support of faith is wholly antithetical to the Socialist objectives of the current freeloading “community organizer” occupying the White House. And undermining “Rights and Liberties,” as referenced in Washington’s order, is the real objective behind the persecution of this Master Sergeant and the other daily examples of similar violations of Obama’s tolerance agenda.

Yes, all conservatives should be outraged by headlines exposing this CINC’s mission of religious oppression and homosexual normalization in the military, but we should never get so focused on the topical nature of such news that the substantive context is obscured – we should not fail to see the proverbial forest for the trees.

So, how is the Left’s overarching agenda served by promoting intolerant “tolerance?”

Stated succinctly, Obama’s overarching motive is to tear apart the fabric that binds his adversaries – faith and the family – the fundamental individual and societal building blocks of Liberty, and the primary obstacles to tyranny.

Obama’s Socialist cadres, like those before them, seek to undermine the foundational tenets of Essential Liberty – faith and family – in order to replace republican Rule of Law with dictatorial rule of men.

The former is predicated on the principle that Liberty for all mankind is “endowed by their Creator,” while the latter asserts that government is the giver of all things. The basis for Obama’s Socialist agenda is the contention that the rights of men are subject to the rule of men.

Our Founders were forthright in their faith, as have been generations of Patriots since. Faith is the foundational context for Liberty, and “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” that the rights of man are “unalienable,” an irrevocable gift assured through the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

The Left rejects that endowment of Liberty and the individual rights and responsibilities it embodies. Consequently, the root of all political debate about Liberty and tyranny – or, in political parlance, between Right and Left – is the contest to assert who endows Liberty – our Creator, or man.

So when conservatives rightly protest religious oppression and the socialist political policies leading to cultural devolution that undermines the family, such protest should never neglect to convey the context for our objection – that the Left’s purpose is, ultimately, to undermine the endowment of American Liberty.

Over the last five years, Obama’s “tolerance agenda” combined with other Leftist agendas to accelerate government dependency and divide Americans into special interest constituencies based on class and race have served only one goal – to undermine Liberty.

But I am reminded by Jefferson, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”