Single-payer health insurance as a moral obligation

Two of my "progressive Christian" acquaintances have recently made the claim that Americans have a moral obligation to ensure that all persons have health insurance. To them I have posed the following questions, but they have either declined or proven unable to answer.

(1) Whence this moral obligation? How does one come to such a conclusion?

(2) How extensive is the obligation? Must everyone have full coverage for all medical, dental, and pharmaceutical needs, or will lesser levels of coverage satisfy our putative moral obligation? If the latter, are not free market solutions the most efficacious? I wholeheartedly agree with you that this is a complex problem requiring a complex solution. History teaches that markets produce better solutions to complex problems than governments.

(3) What principled limitation exists on our putative moral obligation? Moral obligations are universal. For example, my moral obligation not to take innocent human life extends both to Americans and to non-Americans. On your reasoning, why are we not also morally obligated to provide health care to the billions of uninsured and impoverished in nations other than our own?

(4) How are we to discharge our moral obligation without infringing upon personal autonomy? Some people simply don't want to spend the money for health insurance, and others (particularly the young and healthy) don't need to.

I am trying to avoid the conclusion that these questions have no intelligible answers and that my acquaintances are trying to foreclose debate by calling names. The conclusion becomes more difficult to resist the longer they fail to answer these simple questions.

Wealth and poverty, two sides, same coin

The most recent edition of Harvard Magazine (Mrs. Discipulus is an alumna) contains a silly screed inveighing against income disparity. That's predictable enough. Contemporary liberals adhere to the ridiculous notion that your financial success is a net loss to someone who is less successful, even if that person is better off as a result. So the corporate shareholders who succeed in business and create jobs for working-class families are, in the twisted lib worldview, harming those very same working-class families for whom they are creating jobs and, therefore, wealth.

The HM author introduces a new term to summarize this concept: "relative deprivation." I quote directly: "The idea is that, even when we have enough money to cover basic needs, it may harm us psychologically to see that other people have more."

To articulate such nonsense is to refute it. However, liberal fascination with inequality (and attendant, maleable concepts such as "poverty") flows out of a much deeper metaphysical misunderstanding about the world in which we live. For whatever reason, contemporary liberals have it stuck in their heads that human conditions like poverty and wealth, sickness and health, pleasure and pain, are the really important things in life. This is a narrow, dogmatic view of life.

Mature, reasoning people recognize that the really important things in life are basic human goods, such as knowledge and beauty, and the great virtues, such as love and charity. The human conditions are merely the occasions -- opportunities, if you will -- to practice the great virtues and to enjoy the basic goods.

For this reason, mature, reasoning persons have the capacity to be truly joyful in wealth or poverty, sickness or health, pain or ecstatic pleasure. Liberals lack this capacity. Instead, they look around at the greatest, most just nation in the history of the world and complain that biology has left the genders unequal. They live in the most prosperous time in history, in the most prosperous nation on earth, but they are obsessed with the psychological harm that a middle-class college professor ostensibly suffers by watching his CEO neighbor drive to work every day in his Benz.

These are useful observations to bear in mind as we listen to "progressive Christians" in the coming months drone on and on about inequality in America. Having grown up the oldest of six children in a ten-foot wide trailer and having worked my way into the upper middle class, I look at inequality in the most prosperous nation in history as an amazing opportunity. So who is narrow-minded? The Harvard Magazine-Sojourners crowd, or me?

Jimmy Carter and the failure of evangelical courage

A prominent evangelical pastor in a large northeastern city recently gave a sermon in which he extolled the post-presidential activities of Jimmy Carter as a model for Christians to emulate. (I was in attendance and was astonished.) This same pastor recently hosted at his church Jim Wallis, Accommodator-in-Chief. That the two events occurred in the same pulpit is not coincidental. Wallis and his organization have intentionally associated themselves with our Elder National Disgrace on numerous occasions (see, e.g., here and here). Indeed, Carter wrote the forward to one of Wallis' recent books. Birds of a feather and all that jazz.

Carter's latest demonstration of fecklessness and irresponsibility -- lending the legitimacy of the high office he once occupied to a terrorist organization -- is perfectly consistent with his behavior over the last couple of decades. And it is consistent with the conceit, self-absoprtion, and delusion of his Accommodator accolytes. Here's an Accommodator today (incredibly) defending Carter's most recent folly on Wallis' blog:

Carter's visit also showed that while Hamas, like most Palestinians, are bitter about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, they are pragmatic enough to accept a two-state solution negotiated by the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, so long as the Palestinian public gets a chance to approve it in a popular referendum. ... Keeping 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza under permanent siege is illegal and immoral. Israel, and indirectly the U.S.'s, refusal to accept the offer by Hamas of a ceasefire is illogical.

The trouble with this assessment is not so much its factual inaccuracy. The real problem is the author's complete disregard for facts. Hamas most emphatically denies that it is willing to accept a two-state solution. That fact is not merely inconsistent with the author's claim, it is exactly the opposite of it.

Facts, those stubborn things, make rather infrequent appearances in Accommodators' reasoning. Misrepresentations and calumnies are frequent guests in "God's Politics."

The increasing influence of the Accommodators (or the appearance thereof, which the mainstream media is more than happy to perpetuate) is no longer merely an irritant. It has become dangerous. If terrorist thugs such as Hamas believe that they have successfully deceived some large portion of American evangelicals they are likely to become even more emboldened. Carter and Wallis abet that mistaken impression, and the bloodshed that results.

We will repeat again the refrain: The Accommodators do not speak for us!

Obama on faith

Two clips of interest here from last night's CNN forum on faith. In the first (only watch the first minute) we see Obama awkwardly answer the question about when life begins. Obama says he cannot "presume to know" when life begins. It may be "when a soul stirs" or "when a cell separates," he simply cannot know. But he does grant that "there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life" and that power has a "moral weight to it."

So regarding the question of abortion, Obama's logic should lead him to err on the side of life. If life does begin when a cell separates, then even early on abortions are the ending of that life and therefore a grievous violation and affront to the "moral weight" that Obama concedes that life carries. This does not even begin to address the late-term procedures that Obama will go to his grave to legally protect.



Now, switching gears. In the video below we are witness to the world's greatest softball question pitched from an Accomadater in chief, Richard Cizik. Cizik at his perch atop the National Association of Evangelicals has been a hero of the liberal left and darling of the MSM.



"Should it be part of God's plan to have me in the White House I look forward to our collaboration." Thus the already massive egos of our friends the Accomodaters quadruples in size.

UPDATE: While we are on the topic, note Obama's promise to Jim Wallis to cut the amount of poverty in half in ten years. Follow the link for background.

Fun for them while it lasts

Liberals love the Accommodators, especially Jim Wallis. Mind you, I don't mean that they have agape love for them. It's more akin to the affection that a starter on the football team has for the cheerleader who is currently making the rounds. And the cheerleader, delighted to be invited to the parties, mistakes opportunism for respect and fails to see that she's never going to get a marriage proposal out of these relationships.

Because libs love the Accommodators, one frequently sees fawning enconia to Accommodators in that great communications bureau of the liberal movement, the mainstream media. All the tributes follow the same pattern. This piece, though not in a traditional MSM source, is illustrative. The author, Melinda Henneberger, discovers an ostensibly new tension in the evangelical movement, brought about by younger, better-educated evangelicals who have rejected the dogmas of their parents, come to their senses, and embraced Christ's true message of collectivism, statism, and redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately for Accommodators, this praise is not borne out of respect. In fact, with praise like this, one could kill a movement.

To see why liberal praise of Accommodators carries the seeds of the Accomodators' destruction, it is important to see why Accommodators are as popular as they are. Their influence (currently at its apogee) derives not from any insight, proposal, or virtue of theirs. No, the Accommodators fascinate the libs because they play against type. Here are evangelicals who are educated, aren't hung up about sex, and don't assume that humans are better than other species. Why can't you conservative evangelicals be more like them?

Henneberger's Accommodators, Aaron and Ginny Routhe, have moved beyond obsolete evangelical dogmas. They are no longer constrained by a belief that humans are uniquely created in the image of God. Ginny: "But pro-life for us is more holistic, more all of life and all of the environment-endangered species, and not just the human species."

They are no longer inhibited by defense of something so trivial as the intrinsic values of human life and conjugal marriage. Peter Ilyan, a "Christian environmental evangelist": "So now when James Dobson says it's only gay marriage and abortion we should care about? One of our jokes is that gay married couples have the fewest abortions of anybody."

Convenient that the quip is at James Dobson's expense, no?

Notwithstanding the current popularity of the Accommodators, the Accommodator anti-type is doomed for two reasons. First, the type itself is grossly caricatured. Accommodators have borrowed their stereotype of conservative evangelicals -- uneducated, prudish, joyless, peculiar, scheming -- from secular liberals, many of whom have never met a conservative evangelical, and all of whom avoid conservatives like the plague, whenever possible. But anyone who actually comes to know a conservative evangelical quickly discerns that the type is terribly unfair. Certainly there exist some joyless, prudish evangelicals. However, they are not anything like a majority.

So, Accommodators do not play well against type. "Give 'Em Hell" Zell Miller played well against type because the type -- the Democrat who cares more about defeating Bush than winning the War in Iraq -- is accurate. Similarly, Alan Keyes plays successfully against type because not very many black men in America are conservative.

By contrast, Accommodators have chosen to combat a type that doesn't fit their opponents very well. So their self-congratulatory calls for a "more well-rounded" and "more holistic" view of political issues rings hollow. When an Accommodator quoted in Henneberg's article asserts that "evangelicals en masse are beginning to realize that the Good News encompasses both" "fundamentalism [and] the Social Gospel," bewilderment sets in. Evangelicals are only now embracing the Social Gospel? Really? So the Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, hundreds of other charitable organizations, and millions of the most generous people on Earth were only pretending to be evangelicals?

Second, the more frequently Accommodators are held up as the anti-type the more rapidly they become a type of their own. Once it becomes conventional wisdom that savvy evangelicals vote for Democrats, the Accommodators will have served their purpose and will no longer be of any use or interest to orthodox libs. Like the cheerleader who has finished making the rounds, the Accommodator will find himself used, abused, and no longer invited to the party. Libs don't buy this stuff about the Gospel. They think it's trite, amusing... and convenient.

While we're on the topic...

of so-called "Progressive Christians," it is appropriate to put that offensive term in its proper light. The Progressive movement is founded on the purpose of using politics to bring about an Eschaton on Earth. Progressives speak of goals such as eradicating poverty, ending war, insuring all persons against health care costs, and enabling all sentient beings to exercise fully their autonomy. As the name of the movement suggests, progressives believe that they are helping mankind move toward an ultimate goal, an evolved state of peaceful self-actualization. For this reason, the Progressive movement is well-suited to the secular worldview, which takes as its presuppositional foundation Darwinian naturalism.

For the same reasons, progressivism is completely antithetical to Christianity. Christians believe that the Eschaton is not a state to be achieved here on Earth, but rather a Person to be desired and pursued, the very Son of God. We also believe that humans do not have it in our power to end poverty, end war, or bring about self-actualization. Indeed, we are not called to do so. Instead, we are called to tend to the poor (whom, Jesus assured us, we would always have with us), preach the Gospel, and lead people to the Good.

A central tenet of Christianity is that man cannot improve upon what God has created. In the orthodox view, God allows us the privilege of helping to redeem what we have corrupted by our own rebellion. To suggest that self-absorbed humans -- much less governments, which are comprised of fallen humans with competing self-absorptions -- have it within our power to effect our own progress is a category mistake.

Furthermore, that suggestion belittles the crucifixion and resurrection of the Eschaton Man. There remains no work to be done, no higher plane to which we must progress, because Christ has done it. Past tense. To suggest that Christ left the job unfinished is to claim that his life, ministry, and death were less than what they truly were.

Conservatism and Christianity, by contrast, fit naturally with each other. Conservative Christians suffer from no internal contradictions in their thinking. We believe that Christ has completed the work of sanctification and that He allows us to participate in His work of redemption in personal relationships with Him and with our fellow man. We have the great privilege of participating in this work by assisting the poor (not taxing the rich), defending the unborn and infirmed, and preserving institutions -- marriage, the public square -- that enable mankind to be fully integrated, to pursue the Good.

The next time an acquaintance identifies herself as a "progressive Christian," ask her toward what she is progressing. You will, I think, find the answer enlightening.

More disingenuous Wallis

I will refrain from commenting on most of the misguided op-ed Jim Wallis wrote in the Boston Globe yesterday. But I feel compelled to dispel one (deliberate) misstatement of his.

Speaking of a crowd he addressed at Boston's Park Street Church, Wallis wrote, "They suspect that Jesus would likely care more about the 30,000 children who die globally each day due to unnecessary poverty and preventable disease than he might worry about gay marriage amendments in Ohio." (How he discerned the thoughts of hundreds of silent audience members is a mystery.) This is yet another of Wallis' incendiary assertions predicated upon a slander.

The presuppositional slander is that those who disagree with Wallis (conservatives) care more about "gay marriage" than they do about children dying of diseases and poverty. I can only speak for me and my family, but I resent Wallis' slander. I believe very much in conjugal marriage and defend it at every turn. Meanwhile, my wife and I are heavily involved with a non-profit religious organization that performs development work and provides disease-prevention services in the developing world. We have given thousands of dollars to it. We have each provided dozens of hours of pro bono consulting services to it. (My wife's services are much more valuable than my own.) And we support numerous other organizations that do very good work for children and adults in other parts of the world and here in the United States.

To suggest that defending conjugal marriage and saving dying children is an either-or proposition is offensive. This is merely the latest of Wallis' detestable remarks. It is consistent with his modus operendi. But to use children? This man has no scruples.

An aside: Those of us who defend conjugal marriage do not oppose gay marriage. Indeed, we support homosexuals who get married. We oppose the creation of a same-sex marriage institution, or any civil union institution that discriminates against non-homosexual, same-sex couples. Add this to the growing list of Wallis' misstatements.

Like lambs to slaughter

At first blush, the writings and sentiments of Brian McLaren appear indistinguishable from those of his graceless co-blogger, Jim Wallis. There is the thoughtless tendency to conflate personal ethics with foreign and domestic policy. One finds the polemical and misleading denunciations of the Iraq War and other fronts of the War on Terror. The stunning hubris is on display -- we Sojourner folks rise above labels, and we defy your silly attempts to confine us in any traditional category because we're doing something BIG! And, of course, the opportunism is patent. For only $21.99 you can buy Mr. McLaren's new book and join the movement that (did he fail to mention?) is REALLY BIG!

Largely absent from McLaren's writings is the calumny element, the unfortunate tendency that Wallis and so many of his disciples demonstrate to substitute defamation for argument. Maybe it's McLaren's years in the ministry. Maybe he simply does not suffer from Wallis' evident inferiority complex. Whatever the reason, McLaren comes across in his writings as... well, likeable.

Really. McLaren seems like the type of guy with whom I would love to grab coffee and discuss the merits of Francis Schaeffer's denunciation of Thomas Aquinas. (In my view, Schaeffer's condemnation of Aquinas was the seed of intellectual discord of which evangelicals are now reaping the toxic fruit, but that's another post.) He seems almost reasonable and eminently affable. One is left with the impression of a pastor who genuinely cares not only for his flock but also for oppressed women in Saudi Arabia and (perhaps) even corporate lobbyists on K Street. Today he even praises President Bush for the administration's beneficial effect upon Africa.

But, like Wonder Bread, McLaren is at most 50% substance. Worse, he slips into Wallisian rhetoric from time to time. One begins to feel uneasy when one reads this in McLaren's review of E.J. Dionne's new book: "Until religious people can demonstrate an ability to bring their faith into politics in a responsible, respectful, civil, unifying, and charitable way, [secular people] have every right to be suspicious." Did he just throw us under the bus? Yes. Yes, he did. One's unease anneals into downright distaste when McLaren accuses conservative Christians of having a "polarizing, combative, and narrow version of Christian faith."

Whatever the extent of McLaren's charms, he is employing them for ill. The substance of McLaren's policy arguments is disgraceful. His proposals would harm everyone: Americans and foreigners; Christians and non-Christians; rich and poor; Sojourners and Haliburton-lovin', faith-hijackin', puppy-killin', war-mongerin' theocrats.

McLaren advocates direct negotiations with Iran, including a request for Iran's assistance to stabilize Iraq. A request for help! Needless to say, McLaren ignores the overwhelming evidence that Iran is actively fomenting unrest in Iraq and that our troops are succeeding in stablizing Iraq despite Iran's nefarious meddling.

Consider this enlightened bit of economic analysis from Pastor McLaren: "We truly reach a new stage in our civic dialogue when more and more of us climb to a political and moral higher ground that acknowledges the twin downsides of both big business and big government." Peurile? Check. Astonishingly arrogant? Got that. Slanderous? Yup. That's the trifecta!

Throughout, McLaren founds his peurile arguments on theonomous syllogisms. In McLaren's view, the verse, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God," is a foundational principle of foreign policy. As I have discussed before, this way of reasoning is juvenile. Evangelicals, Right or Left, ought to avoid it. But it is more than juvenile, it is dangerous. McLaren is dressing up the failed policies of the Left, the policies that injured the common good for long stretches of the Twentieth Century, as something new and exciting. And those lured into his movement by his charms are following along, excited and unaware.

The Wallis-Bryant School of Debate Tactics

During my some dozens of years, the overwhelming majority of my friends and acquaintances have been liberals. That is partly a product of my having grown up in the highly secular northeast and partly a product of my chosen profession -- law. However, my liberal surrounds have seldom proven a handicap to civility. I have seldom had any trouble discussing religious, ideological, or political matters with my liberal friends in a civil manner. And when tempers have flared, we have nearly always been reconciled before the sun set.

The exception to this general rule comes in the form of devotees of Jim Wallis, a group of highly-educated, energetic evangelicals I call the Accomodators. (They call themselves the Sojourners.) Unlike nearly all my other liberal acquaintances, the Accomodators I know have proven incapable of engaging in rational, civil debate. Instead of arguments they communicate slanders. Their concept of debate entails making outlandish assertions predicated upon incediary presuppositions. So, for example, a colleague of mine whose bookshelves are despoiled by Wallis' screed frequently drops verbal hand grenades such as, "Conservatives are disappointed with Chief Justice Roberts because he's not sufficiently activist for conservative causes." When challenged on this point, of course, he failed to name a conservative who actually communicated such disappointment in the Chief's judicial restraint. This same colleague in a discussion immediately after the Iowa caucuses insisted that white Iowans have no history of perpetrating racial violence only because there are so few blacks in the State.

Accomodators are not the only liberals to substitute slanders for arguments. In fact, this is a common debate tactic among our neighbors on the Left. However, in the case of the Accomodators this practice is aggravated by an additional vice. When I have in conversations with my thoughtful liberal friends called attention to their ad hominem, they have usually repented. "I'm sorry, I never realized that's how it might come across," and "It never occurred to me that the conservative position was more nuanced than I had assumed," are common responses.

Not so with the Accomodators. When I have called out Acccomodators for their slanderous presuppositions they have invariably gone on the offensive. "You're misrepresenting what I said," and "How could you question my motives?" are common responses. In this way they behave much like Kobe Bryant after committing a hard foul. "This isn't fair! I can't believe I'm being victimized like this!"

For example, some time ago I suggested to an administrator of a prominent Christian college that Jim Wallis' chosen means of questioning the justness of the Iraq War -- slandering the military as baby-killers, calling supporters of the Bush administration "theocrats" -- was less than thoughtful and unbecoming a Christian leader. The administrator did not respond to my argument. Instead, he attacked me, accusing me of "truncating" the relevance of the gospel (whatever that means) and disparaging my knowledge of just war theory.

Similarly, when I pointed out to my colleague that he had slandered the entire white population of the State of Iowa, he accused me of putting words in his mouth. He had a pure, pure heart, he assured me.

I have a working hypothesis to try to explain my experience with Accomodators. It is this: as they absorb Wallis' arguments, Accomodators also learn his vicious debate tactics. And just as they insulate their policy proposals from criticism by covering them with Christ's mantle -- "Universal health care is a moral issue!" -- they also avoid taking responsibility for their irresponsible rhetoric by convincing themselves they are doing the true work of Christ.

That is my hypothesis. Unfortunately, none of the Accomodators with whom I am acquainted has yet disproven it.

Beneficiaries of evangelical conceit

Two groups of pharisees are prominent within evangelicalism. These two groups seem to be enjoying a disproportionate measure of influence this election cycle. And for better or worse, they have thrown their weight behind Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.

The first group, what I call the Pat Robertson Know-Nothings, have for years embarassed serious, thoughtful evangelicals with their inflated rhetoric and simplistic policy proscriptions. This group thinks that solo scriptura is a mode of constitutional interpretation. These folks will patiently (God bless 'em) spend an hour repeating over and over to their secular friends their reasoning that same-sex marriage is bad because the Bible says so. And San Francisco endures earthquakes because it hosts a gay pride parade.

Huckabee enthrals the Know-Nothings. They love him. And when Huck declames that his health care policy proposals follow from the Golden Rule, the Know-Nothings rush to man the phone banks. This is not to suggest that thoughtful evangelicals cannot or do not support Huck. It is to suggest that Huckabee has cornered the Know-Nothings market.

A second group of evangelical pharisees are the Jim Wallis Accomodaters. What these folks want more than anything is an invitation to the cocktail party. They love being seen with secular Liberals because (they assume) talking about poor people with the academic and cultural elite demonstrates their enlightenment. Unlike their knuckle-dragging cousins, the Theocrats, the Accomodaters care about the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, and puppies. Especially puppies.

I have been unable to locate any poll data on this, but in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, an appreciable number of Accomodaters are backing Obama. This is a perfect fit, of course. Like the Accomodaters, Obama defies commitment to any particular set of convictions. No one knows what he believes. Sure, there's retreat from Iraq, single-payer health care, and ambiguous proposals to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but those positions are de rigueur in the Democratic party these days. What really sets Obama apart is his commitment to Hope. He is unequivocally and without reservation opposed to darkness, despair, and puppy-killing. Unlike the Theocrats. And Hillary. I suppose.