I’ve made the point a many times here that Obama’s health care bill was mostly an assault on the remaining Christian holdouts in American society. It may have started as an “honest” attempt to move the country closer to state run health care, but it became an excuse to take aim at Christians. As is always the case with the Left, economics is subordinate to culture.

If you look at the controversial bits of that bill, they all revolve around making Christians do things that are against their faith. Making Churches offer health coverage to homosexuals couples or making Catholics buy rubbers for their employees has nothing to do with health and everything to do with the culture war. If you force people to act in contradiction of their faith, they will eventually lose their faith.

At least that has been the thinking for 2000 years. Now we see the ChiComs doing the same thing with their Muslims.

Chinese authorities have ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in a village in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes, and promote them in “eye-catching displays,” in an attempt to undermine Islam’s hold on local residents, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. Establishments that failed to comply were threatened with closure and their owners with prosecution.

Facing widespread discontent over its repressive rule in the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang, and mounting violence in the past two years, China has launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns to weaken the hold of Islam in the western region. Government employees and children have been barred from attending mosques or observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In many places, women have been barred from wearing face-covering veils, and men discouraged from growing long beards.

American Progressives can only dream of such heavy handed tactics, but they are not deterred. The next round of “health care reform” will probably mandate homosexual marriage for Catholics. That sounds ridiculous, but consider that two guys getting married was a punchline just twenty years ago. There are men alive today who recall when being on welfare was shameful.

In the weird theocracy of empire America, yesterday’s absurdities are today’s conventional wisdom. Today’s commonly held truth is tomorrow’s heresy. In 1982, everyone knew that you could not become president if you led a private life of perversion. In 1992 everyone knew that you would not run for president, much less win, if you were a black guy raised overseas and were named after the dictator of Iraq.

Having government minders in churches making sure no one says anything unapproved may sound crazy today, but how far fetched is it really? The mayor of Houston demanded the right to pre-approve all church sermons not so long ago. The Supreme Court just heard a case where one side was demanding that large chunks of Christianity be ruled a thought crime.

This will not end well.