At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’ teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’”
Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the taxman.
The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one’s own field. That is for the gleaners — “the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:10). Like Ruth in the field of Boaz. As far as I can tell, that charitable transaction involved no mediation by the IRS.
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But no matter. Let’s assume that Obama has biblical authority for hiking the marginal tax rate exactly 4.6 points for couples making more than $250,000 (depending, of course, on the prevailing shekel-to-dollar exchange rate). Let’s stipulate that Obama’s prayer-breakfast invocation of religion as vindicating his politics was not, God forbid, crass, hypocritical, self-serving electioneering, but a sincere expression of a social-gospel Christianity that sees good works as central to the very concept of religiosity.
Fine. But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health-and-human-services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates.
Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to religious institutions.
Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health-care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.
Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious.
And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus (b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted state control of American health care, under which the aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to be guaranteed free-of-charge.
The more I think about this wretched policy, the angrier I get. It's repulsive and disgusting beyond compare. The worst of it is that, in effect, it punishes religious organizations for showing kindness and mercy to people of different faiths. The willingness to reach beyond the cloister or the chapel and bring help to all people is one of the noblest and best things about religious practice. But this damnable policy effectively penalizes religious people for following God's command to love and serve everybody. It's the most low, vile disgusting social policy I can think of.
A nation that turns away the charity of the faithful in exchange for the charity of the state will reap as it sows.
We have chosen the charity of the bureaucrat over that of the inspired. Do not be surprised when the nature of the former takes over the giving of "alms" and he expects you to play by his rules.
And the sad thing is. If Gingrich were to get the nomination, I have no doubt a large number of National Review 'Editors' we pull the lever for Obama. They can claim
they wouldn't, but they know as well as I, that once they got in the booth, they would.
It needs to be emphasized that Families and Churches are the primary bulwark against the State. Through these two institutions, values are passed down from generation to generation—values that individuals deem are worth passing down—and therefore the State must do away with them.
Leviathan with tolerate no rivals.
This is why it is wrong to view social issues as "distractions" or "side-issues." The preservation of Families and Churches is absolutely vital to keeping the State at bay.
And because abortion, marriage, contraception, sex, and other social issues speak to the health of Families and Churches, they are also central to the fight to restore us to our Constitutional roots.
Are all you people crazy? It is as simple as this. ... Everyone should be able to have the same coverage ie. breast exam, pap smear and yes birth control. If you don't want it, then don't use it. This is not political, nor was it meant to be an assault on anyone's religious beliefs. It is about fairness. You are all crazy!
And what about therapuetic euthanasia (the kind that is slowly but steadily becoming an accepted form of medical care in some European nations)? According to your logic, only "crazy people" would demand a religious exemption from being forced to subsidize such a medical "procedure". The Church has taught for centuries that both abortion and contraception are twin evils. The Church's teachings on this certainly predate the US Constitution (by some 15 centuries). As a matter of fact almost all Protestant confessions taught the same thing until recent decades (the 1930s).
If HHS and Obama get away with this, there will be no moral justification remaining for religious organizations to prevent the State from forcing any immoral medical procedures upon private religious organizations. Euthanasia and state ordered sterilization (which were quite common in some states up to 1973) are currently being considered again amongst our intelligentsia and elite. Only people with religious scruples stand in the way of this false utopis.
You can have your birth control. Just don't try to force a religious institution to pay for it. That's like saying an Islamic school HAS TO serve bacon in the cafeteria because everyone has a right to bacon.
You're right...that's why we should require people to donate to Catholic hospitals...it's not about religion, it's about caring for the poor and fairness.
We also need to require people to give to Scientology drug addiction programs...it's not about religion, it's about helping addicts get clean.
Oh, no, that would violate that pesky Church and State thing...
Amazing how that prevents the Church from telling the State what to do, but not the other way around.
Neither the government nor anyone else forces people to work for religious organizations. Free choice still reigns here.
Moreover, with Planned Parenthood in the game there really is no problem re the availability of contraception products and services - even abortions - you want it you get it.
So this is a red herring - and one is left to wonder why would the so-called smartest guy to ever sit in the Oval Office pick a fight with religious institutions which deliver more than half of the non-governmental social services in the USA - and which via their religious schools relieve the public school system of the cost of educating their children, even though the government taxes the parents to support public education.
The dirty little secret in the USA is that mayors live in mortal fear that religious institutions will say "we quit - now the mayor can pay to educate our kids and deliver social services to all of the needy". The cities and towns in the worst financial shape have the most to fear - which rounds the circle, as the voters in those municipalities and states in the worst financial shape have a long history of keeping Democrat pols in office.
Neither the government nor anyone else forces people to work for religious organizations. Free choice still reigns here.
Moreover, with Planned Parenthood in the game there really is no problem re the availability of contraception products and services - even abortions - you want it you get it.
So this is a red herring - and one is left to wonder why would the so-called smartest guy to ever sit in the Oval Office picks a fight with institutions which deliver more than half of the non-governmental social services in the USA - and which via their religious schools relieve the public school system of the cost of educating their children, even though the government taxes the parents to support public education.
The dirty little secret in the USA is that mayors live in mortal fear that religious institutions will say "we quit - now the mayor can pay to educate our kids and deliver social services". The cities and towns in the worst financial shape have the most to fear - which rounds the circle as the voters in those municipalities and states in the worst financial shape have a long history of keeping Democrat pols in office.
I'll be a little more charitable to you than you obviously are to others and assume that you're speaking more from ignorance than from outright stupidity. This has *nothing* to do with what coverage the employee will use and *everything* to do with a religious institution being forced to pay for practices that its doctrine deems immoral. I'm sure that your inability to recognize the clear constitutional implications (hint: look at the very first amendment) has more to do with your ignorance of the Constitution than your inability to grasp logic, but I could be wrong.
One other friendly tip: drop the inane invocation of "fairness". That term, more than almost any other, illustrates childishness and lack of any deep thought.
Crazy? What is really crazy is that we are forcing companies and churches to do something that goes against their morals. you obviously don't have any so you can't understand the value of fighting for them. I'm already to a point that I want to move my business and it's 3000+ jobs out of the country because of Obamacare etc., and the enormous tax burden these socialist 'rights' inflict. Why do you think all these other companies are leaving? get a clue!!!!
It is as simple as this: what gives the federal government the power to order non governmental entities to purchase anything? If you want coverage that your employer doesn't want to pay for, get it yourself, or get another employer. This is surely political, and surely anti-religious. After all, religion is merely the opiate for the masses, and, thus, competes with the Obamessiah for the souls of his subjects.
Dicentra,
This is why small government is so important. Our country was built of people from different nations and of different religions. They came together when they had to solve local problems, they got to know one another as individuals, and they recognized one another's strengths that contributed to the strength of the whole. Today's enormous federal government undermines this process and weakens our society. Its top-down programs leave no room for communities to draw on their own resources and come up with local solutions to problems or build institutions that serve them. People don't need to come together. They stay isolated in their little victim groups or credentialed groups and treat others as strange species in a vast zoo.
Exactly!
I came to the same conclusion a couple years ago: In order to usher in socialism, it's essential that the family be destroyed so that you have as many people as possible dependent on the state instead of a family breadwinner, and when you do go to work, it's for society, not to get riches and comforts for your family.
The easiest ways to destroy the family are to give people money to have kids without a breadwinner and to destroy religion since it sanctions procreation outside of the family.
Furthermore, if there are no breadwinners, the state has to take over parenting functions and can thus indoctrinate kids to the tenants that they wish and encourage a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) worship of the state instead of God.
It's all very obvious what the government, the media, the ACLU and academia are conspiring to do if you just stop and think about it for a moment.
This is Charles Krauthammer at his very best. He has nailed it. Obama's mandate effectively proves F.A. Hayek's identification of the fatal flaw of socialism: that “It [socialism] presupposes a much more complete agreement on the relative importance of the different ends than actually exists, and in consequence, the planning authority [read: H.H.S] must impose upon the people that detailed code of values that is lacking.”
Krauthammer drives a philosophical and journalistic stake into the heart of socialism's monster, but like the mythical Dracula, it only sleeps, and fitfully at that.
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