As Congress considers more cuts to services for the poor, be these unemployment payments, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Payments, Medicaid reimbursement rates - what ever they may be, and to the rest of the social safety net, including Medicare and Social Security .....
I would like to remind them of one of the most important moral statements ever made by a politician.
They were offered by Hubert Horatio Humphrey, and they should be taught to every American, most assuredly to every American who ever seeks public office:
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
We have increasingly been failing that moral test.
I will not support any politician who agrees to further hurt the least among us so that the wealthy and privileged can continue to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and the power that flows from it.
It would be nice were our President to speak out forcefully on this issue.
Perhaps he can make clear his commitment to Christianity in the famous words from Matthew Chapter 25, that what we do for the these the least we do to Jesus who is God Incarnate to those who call themselves Christian, and we do to them we also due to him.
I do not consider myself a Christian, but I consider those words a moral imperative. Or if you will my extension of the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant, that we should
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
Universal means applied to me, to those close to me, equally as to those who hate and despite me and seek my destruction.
The moral test of a nation - Humphrey put it well.
What judgment will there be upon us as a society?