Title: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see
what it
costs when it's free
There is a guy who is a Assistant
District Attorney for LA County with a blog called Patterico. He often
calls the LA Times the LA Dog Trainer, because that is all that he
believes it is good for.
I would like to be able to claim originality, but I can't.
David
“If
you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see
what it costs when it's free.”—P. J.
O’Rourke
In a message dated 11/28/2009 7:14:51 P.M. Pacific Standard
Time, [email protected] writes:
PSSST, I could give you the
name of one site that would top this any day....
Of course, the LA Times had no such qualms with protesters against the
Bush administration..... But now that we have The One in office, civil
disobedience is Verboten.
And we wonder why newspapers have problems? I would cancel the LA Dog
Trainer after this idiotorial.
David
“If
you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free.â€â€”P. J. O’Rourke
Christian leaders' stance on civil disobedience is dangerous
Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders are going too far
when they declare they will break laws on abortion and same-sex
marriage.
November 28, 2009
Philosophers have argued for centuries over whether it is ever
justifiable to break the law in the service of a higher cause. The
question acquired a new complexity with the advent of societies such as
the United States, in which laws were enacted by elected
representatives and not decreed by a monarch or dictator.
Few today would criticize civil rights activists, including the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., for participating in or condoning the violation of laws that
perpetuated white supremacy -- with the understanding that they would
face punishment for their actions. But such civil disobedience is
rightly regarded as the exception that proves that the proper redress
for unjust laws lies in legislation or in court rulings based on the
Constitution.
That cautious approach has been thrown to the wind by Christian
religious leaders who, even as they insist on their right to shape the
nation's laws, are reserving the right to violate them in situations
far removed from King's witness.
Last week, a group of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders released a
“declaration†reminding fellow believers that
"Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted,
but sometimes required." Then, after a specious invocation of King, the
152 signers hurl this anathema at those who would enact laws protecting
abortion or extending the rights of civil (not religious) marriage to
same-sex couples:
"Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with
any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in
abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and
euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule
purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them
as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth,
as we know it, about morality and immorality. . . . We will fully and
ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no
circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."
Strong words, but also irresponsible and dangerous ones. The strange
land described in this statement is one in which a sinister secularist
government is determined to force Christians to betray their principles
about abortion or the belief that "holy matrimony" is "an institution
ordained by God." The idea that same-sex civil marriage will undermine
religious marriage is a canard Californians will remember from the
campaign for Proposition 8,
as is the declaration's complaint that Christian leaders are being
prevented from expressing their "religious and moral commitments to the
sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union
of husband and wife."
This sweeping claim is supported by anecdotes of the sort radio
talk-show hosts purvey. For example, the declaration says that "a
Methodist institution was stripped of its tax-exempt status when it
declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it
owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual
unions." (In 2007, New Jersey did strip a Methodist camp of its tax
privileges under a state recreation program because it no longer was
open to all.) For other examples, it must search beyond the United
States: "In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have
been prosecuted for preaching biblical norms against the practice of
homosexuality."
The impression left is that the legal environment in which churches
must operate is reminiscent of the Roman Empire that threw Christians
to the lions. Never mind that advocates of same-sex civil marriage and
legal abortion have made significant concessions
to believers or that religious groups have recourse to courts, which
have aggressively protected the free exercise of religion guaranteed by
the 1st Amendment. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, exempting believers in some cases from having to
comply with applicable laws.
This apocalyptic argument for lawbreaking is disingenuous, but it is
also dangerous. Did the Roman Catholic bishops who signed the manifesto
consider how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might
embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they
stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't
like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those
laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare
reform? They need to be reminded that this is a nation of laws, not of
men -- even holy men.
