The Lord of Social Justice
For a year there was anger among liberals about the failure of the Democrat led legislative and executive branches to pass health care legislation. President Obama had made the issue a central component of his platform. The only argument the Democratic candidates had during the run-up to the 2008 elections was whether there would be a “public option” component in the reform. Barrack Obama won, so why was it taking so long?
And then there was the insanity spewing forth from the right. The legislation is going to ensure a quick demise of granny. The country is going to turn overnight into a communist dictatorship. Abortions are going to be government subsidized in an orgy of fetus killing once the bill passes. The climate was, and remains, toxic. Take for interest the beliefs of the Republicans. Sixty seven percent believe Obama is a socialist (I’m still waiting for the public option from the socialist). Fifty seven percent believe he is a Muslim (I guess they forgot the whole Reverend Wright “scandal”), sixty one percent believe Obama wants to take away American’s guns (just ask the gun shop owners who are raking in the dough from the delusional masses), thirty eight percent believe Obama is doing many of the things Hitler did (as a matter of fact, however, so do I. Surely Hitler had to eat, sleep and pee standing up). Welcome to the wing-nut world of Tea Party politics.
Of course, lost in the vitriol was the things the Health Care bill actually does. It prevents insurance companies from dropping people with pre-existing conditions, prevents insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on the insured, and will insure 31 million people that don’t currently have health insurance. These are not run by the government, merely regulated by the government. Regulation. Something the government has done very little of recently (see economic meltdown).
Anti-abortion activists are up in arms about the bill even though President Obama signed an executive order preventing the government from subsidizing abortions in the new bill and ensuring the current language does not change. Despite this, anti-abortion Democrat Stupak was demonized for signing the bill (even though he was central in ensuring Obama signed the executive order). No one on the right has ever given recognition to the fact that 31 million people, many near the edge of poverty, will now get health care. This means that a potential mother, faced with the burden of debt incurred by child birth in a hospital will no longer have to decide between an abortion or an expensive hospital procedure. Instead, she will be covered.
So where are the right wingers who sit in Church everyday and pray to a God whose holy book expounds on the ideal of social justice? Do not the 31 million people on the fringes deserve health care? Or do you leave the church thinking, I got mine. No society as fortunate as ours deserves to leave out the least of us. Give that some thought while you celebrate the death and resurrection of the Lord of social justice.
March 27th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Amen! Although don’t you dare ever tell a conservative Christian that Jesus preached social justice, it’s taken as a sacrilegious statement. I can barely listen to the arguments anymore that taxpayer money will be going to jobless moochers when in reality the people receiving the aid would rather be in better financial standing on their own merit. Conservatives make the blatant assumption that anyone who is poor or ethnically different have no dignity. Social programs are filling a need in society, not a “want” that people dream about in their sleep so they can barely scoot by in life. It’s something they want because they need it to survive.