For this European, living among us Yanks, it must seem like Bizarro World ...
So something as helpful as a national health care program, which you'd think would be probably a national priority, is instead refashioned as a terrifying communist plot - and the lives of Senators and Congressional leaders are actually threatened over its implementation. Glenn Beck actually says "the war is just beginning," on his show in response to it. Talk about doomsday rhetoric.
But why? What do they actually fear? It's seems pretty evident: that poor people across the nation are going to get sick and stick the rest of us with the bill.
Screw that, says America, toss 'em out on the street instead. Don't give us any of your bleeding heart liberal compassion about our fellow citizens. It's sink or swim here, and it always was, and it always will be, and just why should it be any other way?
No one helped me, I'm helping no one.
Yet in much of our soaring political rhetoric, we claim to be honoring "higher values" given to us by God, values like charity, good will, and loving others.
Yet Hateful Rhetoric is allowed to shape National Debates.
Bizarre, indeed.
Link to intro quote: The American paradox of Christianity and capitalism
by Cahir O'Doherty, Manhattan Diary -- Jan 10, 2011
-------------
How did it come to this?
Outsiders. Socialists. Liberal Virus. Progressive Cancer. Commie Pinkos. Environmental Conspiracy ...
Since when did "Helping People", providing a Social Safety Net to the Least Among Us, become the avowed enemy, the Topic to be destroyed, by laser focus of so many Conservative merchants of Hate?
Since when did this simple concept, of providing a Helping Hand
get transformed into this -- that of the Greedy Entitlement Hand ?
Good Question. WHAT are they SO Afraid of? Isn't there enough of "Prosperity" to go around?
Apparently not. So much for Reagan's "Morning in America" speech. Perhaps he should have called it "Get Yours, while the getting's good" in America. Because THAT is exactly what happened.
Lesson learned from the 80's ... Check!
To understand [and eventually change] this wide-spread Conservative Angst -- we need to first understand some of the roots of their gut-wrenching Fear.
Here is a prime example. This concept became a basic tenant for Conservatives, "a given" -- very soon after it was penned (if all the 'cut and paste' Google hits are any guide.)
Found: Cure for the liberal virus
WorldNetDaily -- Exclusive Commentary
Pat Boone -- Aug 29, 2009
I then asked the obvious question. "Do we know how cancer starts, where the black filthy cells come from?"
And, as I remember it, he said the medical research world feels there's some virus that infects otherwise healthy cells, and chemically distorts or corrupts their DNA. Those cells go on living in the organ, and reproducing – but now controlled by a different blueprint. They have become outlaws, renegades and as they grow they disrupt the functions of the organ, contaminate and ruin it; and they can eventually spread through the body, using the bloodstream, and cause death.
There's something fearfully like that going on in our body politic. A deadly virus has been loosed throughout our system, and wherever it takes root, it changes the functions and the structure that gave us the grandest, strongest, freest system of government the world has ever known.
I call it liberalism.
[...]
Why? Because, unlike conservatism, which by definition seeks to conserve, to preserve the very structure our Founding Fathers provided in which individual liberty could flourish, liberalism seeks to take everybody under a controlling, supposedly benevolent government, and provide not individual liberty, but a society in which all needs are met somehow – at the cost of personal independence.
Wow. Can anyone spell hyperbole. Paranoid much Pat?
What makes them think that America's Government is the "exclusive property" of Conservatives? There were a fair number of "Liberal Thinkers" among the Founding Fathers, as I recall.
They designed our Government to be self-correcting. To be Nourishing. To provide for the General Welfare. In short to give the People a Voice. To give the People a hand. A foundation of Opportunity.
Well it didn't take long for that disturbing Conservative Image -- Equating Liberals with Cancer -- for itself to "morph" into another even more disturbing expression of Conservative hate speech: (Hate and Fear, tend to grow uncontrolled too. perhaps even a more virulent "virus", eh?)
Beck's "shocking" and "disturbing" documentary caps month of suggesting progressives are prone to violence
mediamatters, Jan 22, 2010
Glenn Beck:
"To the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter." Telling his audience that they "are going to learn so much on Friday," Beck compared himself to "Israeli Nazi hunters" and commented "I'm going to find these big progressives and to the day I die I'm going to be a progressive hunter." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, 1/20/2010]
WOW. Now I'm worried. How does he get away with this, unchallenged? We should feel targeted.
A Question Glenn: Why Do you Hate America? ... do not Progressives, have a God-given right, through our Constitution, to express our views? To try and help those in need. You know, 'Love our fellow man'?
Well Glenn has a different philosophy it seems, regarding the concept of "helping others" -- one decidedly lacking in Charity:
Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead
By KATE ZERNIKE, NYTimes -- October 19, 2010
The participants in Aspen dined under the stars at the top of the gondola run on Aspen Mountain, and listened to Glenn Beck of Fox News in a session titled, "Is America on the Road to Serfdom?" (The title refers to a classic of Austrian economic thought that informs libertarian ideology, popularized by Mr. Beck on his show.)
That's a Road of Misery, I suspect YOU won't be on Mr. Beck, given your hidden connections with the Richest of the Conservative Rich ...
EXCLUSIVE: What Beck Told Koch Industries Secret Conference
by Joe Strupp, mediamatters.org -- October 21, 2010
Several participants in a secret conference sponsored by Koch Industries spoke to Media Matters about Glenn Beck's speech at the event. According to these participants, Beck's talk focused on the "free market," "less government interference," and "the collapse of the Constitution."
[...] Weigand added about Beck's presentation: "It was about more elasticity in the marketplace and letting people sink or swim on their own. Just looking at a smaller government, less interference and knowing that government can't fix everything."
That's a rather "small view" of American Exceptionalism, isn't it? Guess that means "Were all on our own" -- just like Reagan wanted, right?
Another Question Glenn: Do you really think that is what Jesus would do? ... let People sink or swim ... let people simply drown ... while we could easily throw them a life line?
Funny, I remember quite a few stories of an entirely different tenor, back in the day, when I was pursuing the timeless truths of Christian faith, Glenn.
Didn't Christ, actually help rescue Peter, when he began to sink? ... or so the story goes.
Just asking Glenn. How do you reconcile that little life-lesson, with the Political Pablum you've been selling to America? ... selling to the highest bidders, no less.
WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? ... you do reference that standard don't you Mr Beck, as a prime directive in your life, don't you, sir? Your moments of sanity, in an otherwise crowded landscape.
What Would Jesus Think Glenn, of your Multi-million Dollar "Puppet Show," very much focused on teaching others to Hate. It's OK -- you got their back, right. Capitalism will save the day. ... for the lucky chosen few, that is, right?
Let me remind you, Glenn. Perhaps, you never even learned these Christian tenants, in the first place, given your very-dramatic life story:
The "Christian Right" is neither Christian nor right, says Jesus
democraticwings.com -- June 1, 2004
Jesus told his followers to pray in private:
Jesus kept religion separate from dealings of the state:
Jesus did not look well upon the accumulation of wealth:
Jesus did not look well upon those who get ahead at the expense of others:
Jesus said don’t be so quick to judge the lifestyles of others:
Jesus said not to resort to war, but rather to keep the peace:
Jesus said we are judged by how we treat the least among us:
Jesus said to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves:
Wow. that's some list. Try to reconcile that, with your Fear and Hate rhetoric, Right-wingers -- I dare you.
Life presents to us all -- Choices. Sometimes you just have to choose which side your on.
The one of Love and Charity. Or the one of Hate and Greed.
On the Sink or Swim team. Or standing with those willing to give Others a Hand Up, when the desperate needs present themselves?
WWJD ?
Perhaps this modern-day statesmen put it best, in his all too serious indictment of the contradictory nature of "Christian rhetoric" -- one that focuses on Fear and Hate, at the expense of Charity for those in need:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Stephen Colbert:
Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition -- and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
Hateful, selfish Rhetoric when not immediately rejected, but allowed to fester, allowed to grow ... is a Cancerous Problem, itself.
That top 2% really doesn't NEED any more of the Nation's Resources, YET they continue to rake them in, unabated, unexamined, uncontrolled ...
It's like "A deadly virus has been loosed throughout our system" [to quote Mr. Boone]
I call it unbridled Greed.
We live in Bizarro World indeed, and clinging to the pretense of a "Christian Nation" -- doesn't even begin to describe it.
We live in a very Hypocritical World -- would be the much more accurate Clinical Diagnosis ...
If the truth be told.