Pro-life strike (abortion boycott) mission: To purify our prayers and other pro-life efforts, and to make a concrete difference, we refuse to fund the abortion industry. We boycott corporate abortion funding, and hold back abortion taxes. We pray for life; we will not pay for death!
As a follow-up to the aforementioned phone call to Congressman Obey's office, here is the text of a message just transmitted to his official web site:
Tues. March 16
Dear Mr. Obey:
As a follow-up of our March 3 phone messages to Matt Rudig, your staff person in Superior, this message is our due notice to you that we may hold you responsible for any legal ramifications of a health care mandate that passes with your support. Whether it is done under the guise of some parliamentary trick or whether it is done openly: if you support any measure that results in federal health care mandates, you may be held legally responsible for its consequences to us.
To be specific, as we hope it was made clear on March 3, we will not obey any mandate to purchase health insurance, nor to take part in a health care program or any such similar measure. All the measures proposed have amounted to tax-funded murder of the innocents and tyranny for citizens. Even if abortion mandates were not included, government health care mandates are simply unjust and tyrannical. We will not obey any such tyrannical measure. If a fine is therefore imposed, we will not pay the fine. If further legal ramifications follow, we will hold you personally responsible. The respondent in any lawsuit will be Mr. David Obey, not Congressman Obey.
We hope this is quite clear. Do as you please, but beware the consequences. This message serves as legal notice.
Heretofore, my tax resistance strategy has been within the confines of civil law. As outlined on the manifesto page, Jerry DePyper has taken the "reduced income" approach, reducing or eliminating income tax liability by reducing or eliminating my income. But as I consider the looming "health care" tyranny being pushed by Democrats even as I write, I have come to realize that the time has come to take the next step.
Since tax-funded abortion is baked into all viable versions of recent U.S. "health care" legislation proposals, it necessarily becomes grist for the pro-life strike mill.
With federally mandated coverage, legal and passive resistance now seems to be inadequate.
So today I called the local office of my congressman, David Obey (pronounced Oh-bee). After a few busy signals, I got through and talked personally with a staffer named Matt Rudig. My message was that I would refuse to obey any health care mandates, and would hold Democratic Congressman Obey responsible for any legal ramifications, if he supports it with his vote. Mr. Rudig sounded a bit surprised at the message, a declaration of intent instead of a docile plea or an outraged demand, but he took my name and address, and promised to relay the message to Obey. Well, then: Jerry DePyper is now officially on record as being a potential outlaw, and an actual law-breaker if any of these tyrannical measures pass.
I do not take lightly the decision to disobey my government. Think of St. Thomas More, who obeyed his king for as long as he could, without disobeying God. But in the end, when forced to choose his first loyalty, More declared, "I die the King's good servant, but God's first." St. Thomas, pray for us.
Tomorrow, June 22, is the liturgical feast day of Saints Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. Both were beheaded in 1535 by order of King Henry VIII over the controversy of his divorce and of authority in the governance of the Church.
As noted on our "Links" page and elsewhere, ProLifeStrike.org is closely associated with The World St. Thomas More Society, which claims these two martyrs as patron saints. This patronage is significant, especially in the case of St. Thomas More.
More was a lawyer, and chancellor to King Henry. He was, so to speak, the King's right hand man as well as a close friend. As such, he was doubly committed to loyal obedience to Henry and to the authority of the Crown. More's natural disposition was to hold the King in high honor, and to obey him as a loyal subject. This spirit of obedience was reflected as well in his devotion to Christ's Kingship, and to divinely established authority in the Church.
Obedience to these various levels of proper authority is a single virtue; there ought never be a conflict. But when it came down to a painful decision, when More could no longer obey both King and God, his choice was clear. His last words were, "I die the King's good servant, but God's first."
The significance for us is this: We pro-lifers have a natural inclination to obey proper authority, and it rends our hearts to make the painful decision to disobey. As discussed in our "Manifesto", in the final analysis pro-life tax resistance is not unlawful. Abortion is always a crime, and to fund it is to breech God's Law. The decision to resist paying taxes that subsidize the criminal abortion industry is prompted, not by an outlaw attitude, but by a love of Law, and by an earnest effort to obey true Law.
St. Thomas, pray for us, that we may cultivate a strong love for true Law, and that we may courageously obey God's Law first.
