Apparently conservatives have neither heart OR brain.
Everyone else in this thread seems to be able to comprehend why I talked about my friend in the context of Mo Brook’s asinine words. But lemme try to help you understand. Do you really think my friend is one of the bad, irresponsible people who need to pony up more for healthcare?
If her new employer drops her like a hot potato tomorrow–and they very well could-- then she loses her health coverage. Without Obamacare, she’d have a hard time finding an affordable insurer, which conservatives are totally fine with because they believe people like my friend must have done something to deserve their situations. Their favorite slogan is “We all make choices”. But they are idiots. No one chooses cancer or any other disease. No one chooses to be in a car accident, or chooses to be born with birth defects.
I wish conservatives would be more honest and stop calling themselves “pro life”. Anyone who weeps over dead fetuses but doesn’t weep over America’s profit-driven, immoral healthcare system is a giant hypocrite. My friend is much more valuable than a fetus, thankyouverymuch. She’s also more important than bathroom laws and walls. Conservatives are literally killing this country. I’ve never felt so much venom for them than I do right now.
It’s all about prosperity gospel - if you’re wealthy it’s because God wants you to be rich and you must be doing something right/a good person because you have money. The flip side is that if you’re poor it’s because you’re a bad person/not living right and God doesn’t want you to have money and/or is punishing you.
If you’re healthy it’s because you’re a good person and your health is a sign of God’s blessing. On the flip side, if you’re sick you’re a bad person and God is punishing you. Woe to you if you’re born with a birth defect - you’re a bad person from birth.
It ties into statements like “everything happens for a reason” and “God doesn’t send you more than you can handle”. It flies in the face of reason and objective observation.
This argument is precisely bass ackwards. Obviously, the people trying to “have it both ways” are those who invoke religion when convenient and ignore it when inconvenient (e.g. the Religious Right who continue to support the Republican Party despite grossly un-Christian behavior of both its institutions and its candidates). The people who raise objections (e.g. Happy Lendervedder in the post to which you are responding) are quite correct to call them out on it.
This is the point where conservatives and progressives differ sharply. If they find themselves on third, conservatives generally think they hit a triple and progressives generally think they were born there or got lucky.
I am intensely aware of how lucky I am to be where I am. I can point only to a couple of “unlucky” aspects of my life, but otherwise I have been utterly privileged.
I just want to point out that Jesus did not blame the poor for being poor, nor did he blame the sick for being sick. He fed the hungry, and he healed the sick. Even if you were a “sinner,” he would hang out with you and make things better, as it is the sick who need a doctor.
This sort of thing is exactly what I mean when it comes to how people who defend this sort of thing are bad Christians. They aren’t arguing that this is bad policy. They are fundamentally denying what Jesus said. This type of thinking where those who are worse off did something to deserve it is completely at odds with what Jesus taught. And the idea that you get to not help them because it’s their fault is not Christian.
That’s the problem. It’s precisely this sort of thing that led me to believe that being a conservative (in the U.S. at least) was at odds with my Christianity, and why I became liberal. It’s one thing if you are conservative due to abortion or homosexuality. That at least makes sense. But the rest of it is just entirely against the core teachings of the Bible.
Jesus never said to only help the poor and sick who were deserving. He never saw a sick person and said “you brought this on yourself.” That is, frankly, anathema.
What is obvious to anyone with two brain cells is that it’s anathema to everything in the Bible, not just the New Testament. I don’t think the take-home message of Job is “Don’t make poor choices” or “I’ll take care of mine and you take care of yours.” The message is “shitty things happen for no reason, so don’t judge.”
Hell, you can be a selfish bastard like myself and see the stupidity of conservative politics. I want the government to do something about healthcare for the reason I want government involved in law enforcement and national defense. Frankly, the idea that I’m sharing the road with people who aren’t healthy is scary. Unhealthy people fall asleep behind the wheel. They self-medicate and become intoxicated behind the wheel. They lose the ability to handle stress and bug out over minor problems, like me driving right at the speed limit when they are behind me. Even if it were true that if bad health is often the result of bad choices, this doesn’t mean that society should be off the hook for dealing with it. Unhealthy people are a drag on all of us, not just themselves.