Fascism is alive and well at The Heritage Foundation

I recently stumbled across this gem on the website of the self-professed "think tank", The Heritage Foundation.   On a page that purports to lay out the principles of the founding of America, they have this to say about liberty:

"...while the right to liberty means that all Americans are free to hold whatever opinions they choose, those who hold minority views must abide by the lawful will of the majority, just as the majority must respect the rights of the minority." - In response to the question "What does the Declaration of Independence mean by Liberty?" at http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/basics#the-american-founding

Am I to understand that LIBERTY - the basic idea being that I am free from oppression - exists at the will of 51% of my fellow citizens?!  And furthermore, am I supposed to believe that the founders of this country risked their lives and good fortunes to establish a nation that would allow a fundamental, god-given right to be voted away by referendum!?

This assertion is not "conservative".  In fact it is much closer to the breakdown in epistemology that occurred in early 1930s Germany than anything that occurred in 1770's Colonial America.

To help educate all of the PhDs  at The Heritage Foundation who do not recognize that they are sounding more like Hitler than Jefferson, I offer this:  an American may be "free to hold whatever opinions" he chooses -- but he is certainly not free to abrogate the rights of others based on his opinion.   You have taken a document that holds the first self-evident truth to be that "all men are created equal", and tried to argue that it applies only to the majority.  This is an entirely UN-American concept.

Jefferson did not write that "all men are created equal" because he believed that men were likely to respect each other's rights.  He wrote it because he knew that people like the alleged "thinkers" at The Heritage Foundation would challenge the rights of those with different opinions.