Got some of those liberal parasites in your bronchial tube?
Tell me: what limits exist on “the general welfare,” in your view? Do you think the authors painstakingly attached listed, enumerated powers to the federal government in the rest of the document, but then eviscerated those limits and assigned unfettered plenary legislative authority to Congress with that line?
Or were you sick with bronchitis that day at Constitution school?
I’d be surprised that you regard the teachings of the Church as anything other than something to ignore.
He has realized he has no morals. It’s quite liberating, I hear. He has gone full Trumptard. Sad, really.
I like the part about not living in a theocracy being used as an excuse to ignore his chosen instruction set on being a decent person.
You and Thomas Sowell apparently can’t distinguish between an individual and the state. Excuse me for saying so, but I find that to be a rather important distinction.
When I participate in discussions of public policy and try, with what little influence I can bring, to move it in some direction, I don’t wall off my Jesus freak self from the discussion. I bring all that I am to the table; I don’t see why it should be otherwise. It would be my hope that everyone else does the same. Including you.
To me, accordingly, Sowell’s and your argument looks like:
Because unless everyone decides to make me Dictator of the U.S.A., my set of preferences is just one set out of over 200,000,000 adult citizens’ preferences. L’état, ce n’est pas moi; that my opinions about public policy have their origins, in no small part, in my 47 years as a Christian, doesn’t mean we have a theocracy. I have no idea how either you or Sowell get there from here.
^ This. I have no children. Arguing for my own self-interest, I would want my taxes lowered. Why am I paying for something I don’t get any benefit from?
Except I’m not a sociopath, so I see a benefit in sick children not dying because their parents don’t have enough money to pay for them to live.
That you believe in an excluded middle?
Yes.
Seriously, this is bullshit. The notion that government cannot reflect Christian morals in the least, this side of theocracy, is a massive excluded middle, and as such, is total bullshit. We’re in that excluded middle. Take the Ten Commandments: how is it that we have laws against killing and stealing and false testimony, and yet have no laws against graven images?
Looks like we have implemented religious beliefs - yours and mine - piecemeal. So, what now? Must we repeal the laws against murder and robbery?
The usual response is that those laws also serve a secular purpose. And CHIP doesn’t? It’s got a clear secular purpose: healthy kids have a better chance of learning in school and growing up to be healthy adults than sick kids do, so they’re more likely than sick kids to turn into contributing members of society.
And if anything, it’s the more secular types who are more likely to favor a program such as CHIP, and the more stridently religious types who are more likely to oppose it. That would indicate that any religious justifications for a program like CHIP come on top of justifications that most secular types find convincing.
But no comment on your a la carte method of demanding that Church teachings guide social policy?
The law should be moral, just, and right, and if it isn’t those things, then it should be changed.
Ah, but how do we tell what’s moral, just, and right? Well, in a democracy, we go with what the majority believe to be moral, just, and right. Maybe we’ll get it wrong by going with the majority (whatever “getting it wrong” means), but that’s the way we do it.
OK, so how do the people decide what’s moral, just, and right? Every person will have a different answer to that. Some people will answer based on their own vaguely-defined hunches. Some will answer based on general principles like the Golden Rule. Some will answer based on “how we’ve always done it”. And yes, some will answer based on the teachings of whatever religion they follow. And that does not mean theocracy.
You can have different religions coming to the same conclusion for different reasons. You can have a religion officially teaching one position, but a significant number of practitioners of that religion disagreeing. You can have people disagreeing with each other (whether because of what their religion(s) say, or despite it), and the larger group just outvoting the smaller. All of these can happen in our system.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
This evasion ignores the concept of the holistic nature of the Church’s teachings (at least my Church; I have no idea if your version of being a Christian celebrates picking and choosing whatever’s convenient, although I of course have, based on your public participation here, some strong suspicions).
My opinions about public policy are not myopic. I don’t focus on one tiny good and insist we elevate it above all else. This is one of many liberal curses: the belief that Helping People is all any program needs in order to gain support.
I am convinced that this is a foolish way to manage public policy. And of course at some level so are you; you just suppress that feeling when it’s inconvenient.
Huh. Sounds familiar, eh?
Desired results guide social policy. Your church’s teachings guide your behaviour. So I’m told. Not seeing it myself.
Not specific Church teachings but the moral principles at their core.
Can you cite Scripture that describes the poor as “worthless human garbage that can be crushed on my way to the top”?
Ok, I agree with this plan. We will follow our rules of representative democracy, and elect legislators and an executive to express our will of what’s legal, moral and right.
And they have.
Oh… wait. I bet I hear a hasty change coming now, don’t I? Not so much a fan of the process when it yields results you don’t like?
Or was this post intended to express support for the Congressional decision after all?
No, but since I don’t say such a thing, why should I?
I can cite Scripture that leads me to believe it’s not government, but individual charity, that confers grace. And that IS what I believe.
And of course, I don’t regard Scripture alone as an authority, because I am not a Protestant.
To the contrary, I deny that my Church’s teachings guide my social policy proposals. Who told you I claimed they did?
I would never want to be accused of promoting theocracy, or intermingling church and state!
So, who told you my church’s teachings guide my social policy desired outcome?
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/where-the-productivity-went/?_r=0
I don’t like to use the word “evil” myself, but a bankrupt ideology has a lot to answer for.
No, it’s just asking you why you act like an ass. You don’t have to do that, you choose to. If your excuse is that the mean OP made you do it, and you had no agency, no choice in the matter, then who is the precious little triggered snowflake?
The OP did not call you evil. He said that the party that is threatening to take healthcare away from children of the lowest amongst us in order to partially pay for a tax-cut for those who are the greatest beneficiaries of our civilization is Evil. That you choose to associate with that party, that you choose to defend their actions, is all on you. You could choose to condemn those members of your party who are being described, you can choose to dissociate yourself from that party. You instead chose to mock the concern of loss of healthcare for children, and defend the action.
That makes you an ass.
It is not advocating for theocracy, it is calling out hypocrisy.
Lemme use an example. You say that you are a follower of the teaching of Malcolm Reynolds. That’s all well and good, I don’t need to be a follower myself to understand where you are coming from. But then you shoot and unarmed man in the back, and I say, doesn’t the bible of Reynolds, ep.1 sc7, l5 say “If I ever shoot you, you will be awake, you will be facing me, and you will be armed”, that doesn’t mean that I think we should all be space smugglers (as awesome as that would be), it means that you are not living up to the code that you claim to follow.
Claiming to follow a religion is the ultimate in virtue signalling, it says that there is a code of ethics and conduct that you subscribe to, and that you can be counted upon to follow. If you claim to follow a religion, but shit on it’s teachings, then you are a hypocrite.
And this is where you are wrong. There is enough resources in society to provide for everyone’s needs. There are not, however, enough resources to provide for everyone’s wants. And when the wealthy’s want for a tax cut overrides children’s need to see a doctor, then you are not creating a prosperous society, you are creating a society where the whims of the powerful are fulfilled at the expense of the oppressed. That’s great for those on top, and you may even be one of those at the top, for now. But to claim that it is in society’s best interest to increase the wealth gap is indefensible.
I am saying that if you claim to follow the teachings of christ, then you should actually follow the teachings of christ. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite and a liar who hides behind his claimed beliefs.
If you don’t think that the teachings of christ lay out a framework for you to follow, if you don’t think “what would jesus post” before you post, then you are not a christian, you are just a secularist who is cynically using religion to try to cover up his own shittiness.
No, just asking you to practice what you preach. I know, too much, isn’t it? Don’t make a claim to follow a religion that you shit on.
Actually, it does surprise me that you regard the teachings of christ as holistic. That would imply that you are not free to ignore what he said about how to treat others. You pick and choose the bits that you like, and ignore the parts that are inconvenient in an especially self-serving manner.
I, for one, am quite willing to concede to Bricker his point that his policy decisions are not guided by thoughts of morality.
I’m not a fan of a process that uses gerrymandering and the electoral college to effectively disenfranchise people, so we now have rule by minority of the electorate. I would like to see congressional representation allowed to rise so that each representative in the house represents roughly the same number of people, and some limit be placed on gerymandering. I would like to see the electoral college abolished, as it clearly doesn’t serve its stated purpose.
IOW, you would put ‘conferring grace’ above ensuring that sick kids are taken care of, in the public sphere. (At least until individual charity takes care of them all.) Who’s the theocrat now?