The Republicans keep telling me that it is wrong to use government funds for something which many Americans believe is morally wrong. But they certainly don’t apply that logic to our national security decisions. Federal dollars have been spent doing innumerable things that I find morally repugnant. I don’t expect our national security decisions to pass some universal test where no American has any moral or ethical objections. Why should the provision of health care be any different?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I keep saying the same thing. “I don’t want to pay for bombs and bombers.” “I don’t want to pay for their Viagra.” “I don’t want to pay for another execution.” Too much convenient morality.
I also don’t understand why it isn’t clear to Americans that basic health care is (or at least ought to be) like basic education. Available to all. If you want something above the basic/standard education, you pay for it.
There are tons of things that the government does that goes against my moral standards, war, torture, and executions being the most obvious. The Republicans are the most rabid promoters of all of the above. This has nothing to do with “pro-life”. But there’s also the drugwar, subsidizing the death of family farms, allowing an obscene wealth gap, and probably hundreds more.
The real question is, why does this one issue get so much deference? It’s one the so-called Left will have to figure out if it wants any chance to be heard outside its own blogs.
the answer is:
Because we don’t support alternative media.
And the mainstream media will never support our point of view.
It’s really that simple.
If you want to change that, throw some money at Booman, and ConsortiumNews.com.
Amen. There are MANY things the government does that different groups of Americans believe is morally wrong — from waging war (and all the associated programs, such as torture and Gitmo, etc.) to subsidizing certain industries to capital punishment to promoting misinformation programs like abstinence only in public schools (and international AIDS-prevention programs).
Churches generally have not gotten behind a movement to hold national security to moral standards. There are notable and even large exceptions, like the Quakers.
And why is it that churches are so exercised over abortion but not over torture? Plain and simple, it’s the sex, the naughty, the community control at the local level. If abortion had nothing to do with women and sex, the churches would ignore it. Look at what other issues they’ve ignored–most notably in the US, slavery; at the time of the Civil War, some Methodist bishops were among the larger slaveowners.
Yeah. There are a few “pro-life” people (not in office that I know of) of the Quaker kind who oppose war, torture, judicial killing, and other life-attacking actions as strongly as they do abortion. Them I can respectfully, if strongly, disagree with on abortion.
With the vast majority, though, it comes down to one simple reflex: protecting patriarchy. It’s no coincidence that the guy in Rome is called “papa” and only “fathers” can do the rituals. Same with the protestant side, though less neatly. It was probably also no coincidence that all of the “disciples” were males. They, too, simply adopted a long line of patriarchal context that no longer serves a purpose.
Silly BooMan. Everyone knows that the US military (God Bless them all) and the CIA, etc. have never done anything that could possibly be construed as immoral. Only Big Guvmint entitlement programs that let people on welfare buy Big Screen TV’s and Cadillacs with their food stamps are immoral.