I can’t believe I’m linking approving to Little Green Footballs but honestly, here:
The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions. He who sows to the flesh, we are told, will from the flesh reap corruption. The law of sowing and reaping is a non-repealable law of nature and nature’s God. …
This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.
I’m going with mature, robust Christianity on this one.
Not just Christianity. ROBUST Christianity. Christianity with muscles. Christianity that drives a truck. Christianity that kicks your ass. Christianity that drinks Schlitz. Christianity that fucks your sister. Christianity that roots for the Yankees. Christianity that slaps its cock on the table. Christianity that listens to the Rolling Stones 24 hours a day. Christianity that tells that guy beaten up by the side of the road to quit waiting for some Samaritan, get his ass up and start walking, bloody compound fractures be damned. Christianity like that.
I’m about done with every moment of weakness, every bit of bad fortune that happens to someone who isn’t a closeted Republican caught with a rent boy, being blamed on an insufficiently mean disposition and substandard desire to live better. For serious, these people spend more time figuring out ways to excuse themselves from giving a shit than they do actually giving a shit, and what about that is exactly responsible or, to use their phrasing, Christian? No wonder nobody helps anybody else in this country anymore; with all the time expended avoiding caring, there’s barely enough left for brushing our teeth.
Let’s be very clear about this: At some point in your life you are going to get knocked on your ass harder than you ever thought you could get knocked or your ass could take. You are going to be flat on your back, and your only hope at that point will be that someone is out there who can and will help you. A friend. A family member. A cop. A lawyer. An agency. A goddamn firefighter with a goddamn fire hose. Your only hope will be that your desperate call into the black will be heard by someone, anyone, who can and will fix what is broken.
And at that point, that point when you’re standing next to your life watching it burn to the ground, all this rhetoric we throw around all day every day in this country about responsibility and hard choices and boostraps will ring hollow in your head. All the things you’ve told your own self about misfortune not being random, about enough planning being able to overcome any eventuality, about how you’ve saved and studied and worked and tried so, so hard to stay on the straight and narrow, all that will fall away.
You’ll be left with the echo of your own voice saying, over and over again, “Help me. Please.” And I hope, hope, hope for your sake that the Christianity you’re met with then is less than robust.
A.
Ok. I get that Christianity is often twisted to support the current ideas.
But REALLY !!!!! “The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions”
Chrsitianity teaching American Individualism????
This is so twisted from the start, it defies any logical interpretation.
Welcome to the world of American-born-and-bred Republican Jesus —
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Republican_Jesus
Hey you got a problem with Schlitz?
bring back the lions.
Yeah… that robust christianity with the rich preachers and slick financial gospel, it made us the great nation we are.
Sure it did.
Mark 10:17-31
Jesus tells a rich man that living by the commandments is not enough. He tells the man to liquidate his assets and give it all to the poor. And then he makes one of the most famous statements in the bible:
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Yet, amazingly, there are many, many rich “Christians.”
Peace,
Tim
I’d love to hear how this guy explains the story of the Good Samaritan or the story of the loaves and the fishes or the story of Jesus providing free health care to the lepers or the . . . .
Actually, no, I wouldn’t.
I can totally see some Christians letting houses burn as they stand by.
I have a much more difficult time imagining actual firefighters doing so.
I fail to see how believing that a virgin’s kid getting executed and becoming a zombie creates a culture of responsibility.
But I’m just a heathen.
And don’t forget that old standard, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I guess that’s just notrobust enough for these guys.
I’d love to hear how this guy explains the story of the Good Samaritan or the story of the loaves and the fishes or the story of Jesus providing free health care to the lepers or the . . . .
Actually, no, I wouldn’t.
People who believe in Republican Jesus all have one thing in common: they know very little, if anything, about real Jesus. I doubt if one of them has read so much as a page of the Bible, Old Testament or New.
Schlitz is an integral part of how we plan blogger conferences. I KNEW something was getting in the way of our taking over the world. Switching to Heineken now.
Of course, Jesus jumped into the temple and drove out the moneychangers and merchants.
Wonder if the robust christians see the connection with the modern econo-Jesus (little c intentional)
Who are these Christians?
What is this strange religion?
I’ve heard it said they turn the other cheek.
Ha ha ha.
Throw them to the lions.
Throw them to the lions.
That Iggy Pop speaks the truth.
Liprap: Heineken? Fuck that shit. Pabst Blue Ribbon!
Totally hi-jacking the thread now. Sorry.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skooksie/4501725666/
Hoo boy, are some of these “Christians” going to have some ‘splainin’ to do when they get to the Pearly Gates. What if Jesus actually meant all that stuff about caring for “the least of these”?
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. Christianity doesn’t advocate individual responsibility? Is he reading Andy Schafly’s Bible?
OH.
It was the American Family Assn. Well, they have a history of getting Christianity wrong. I can calm down now.
Well, life requires balance, people. I personally wouldn’t let a house burn–not even the anal retents’ house next door, who keep squawking at the neighborhood kids and mark the yard with flags and spray paint. Nope. However…
The modern, secularist state removes that balance by advocating that everyone is on the State dole. (So hell, why bring up Jesus in the first place if government is salvation??)
Obviously in most emergencies we should help people, but it seems this person, like many these days, had this notion (and I’m really not being unfair here) where the mawkish Lefty interpretation of the Scriptures is apparently something akin to the following:
1) I can do anything I please and… (a) get away with it, or have a warm fuzzy feeling that (b) by God someone’s gonna pony up the money for my boneheaded errors in judgment.
2) Jesus’ rather limited use (to demonstrate Himself and his ministry, and not advocate a host of social programs or dependency of the type we’ve been inculcating for about 6 decades now) of miracles regarding fish, loaves, and improved vision care is to be extrapolated to mean the blue sky’s the limited on socialized medpacks and other budgetary goodies. It’s a hell of a note, but seems to have a big following by people who claim to read the Scriptures in context.
Some much for Lefty history lessons.
Like Lord Keynes liked to mumble (giving further evidence why Britain is now a flop house whose residents confused freedom with free dentures–little good that it did:
“We’re broke, brother. SO..let’s go shopping!”
PS–As to Charlie and his darling little Johnson, I’ll note that of late he’s started to delete past posts (or redact them) to remove the not entirely inaccurate ones about headripping and blood drinking among the beloved “palestinians”.
Bully for historical revisionism.
“Jesus tells a rich man that living by the commandments is not enough. He tells the man to liquidate his assets and give it all to the poor. And then he makes one of the most famous statements in the bible:
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.””
And then, upon hearing the great Jesus’ words, the rich man commissioned a huge needle big enough for a camel to walk through comfortably – using a ridiculously small portion of all his glorious, glorious money.
Do conservatives not raise any secure males?
It’s quite pathetic and revolting to see their utterly creepy neediness and how they think everyone needs to prop up their tv induced version of masculinity on every single issue. It always seems to involve cruelty, oppression and killing.
Also note that the AFA despairs of the “feminized version of Christianity” which is all about compassion and stuff. Icky! Like, way! “Feminized Christianity”?? Now with more vaginas??
That Zoon guy must be unfamiliar with the parable of the Prodigal Son. Also unfamiliar with health care throughout the world, where universal care is CHEAPER and BETTER than what we have here, never mind that we are a wealthy country (did you know, that if we delivered health care with Spanish levels of efficiency, what we spend now, would cover everyone in South, Central, and North America, and except for the Canadians, it would be better health care, and we would have money left over?)
Weak on macroeconomics, too.
Being a Christian means never having to give a crap about anyone but yourself. But, like Jude, what do I know. I’m just a bloody Heathen.
Okie…huh?
Okie,
If it makes you feel better, or even makes a difference, I backtracked to Mr. Johnson’s original link. Seems more than a few of these not-giving-a-crap Christians complained about this AFA guy’s treatment of the houseburning issue.
dr2chase:
I see, so the Prodigal Son must be the part where government bloat is advocated and defended to the hilt–not a lesson in forgiveness. Wow. Leave it to those who once admired the human-interest bone-crack/death pit pointers of Che and Stalin and Mao to make sure we get the ancient texts on compassion right also! OK, sow now after having been preached at…
As to this common shibboleth about socialized medpacks by force being better than a market system, let NOT your heart be troubled. I’m quite sure at some point, sooner than you think, you’ll get your chance to wait 12-24 months or longer for an MRI scan (as in the Euro-Canukistan model) after you’re coughing up blood and mucus, rather than withstand an oppressive, ignoble moment of paying 700 buckaroos and getting offered one in 15 MINUTES after consultation. Cheaper to thumbtwaddle and wait and hope like hell nothing goes downhill? Maybe. To what effect is another issue. Serious cost-controlling always induces rationing. And fear not, you’ll get your wish for rationing here in the states as well. In fact in some areas it’s already setting up shop.
(Sorry, economic reality is never optional, but can merely be smeared from person A to person B at best. Or covered up.)
There are more MRI machines in tiny, redneckish, hicktown Spartanburg SC than there are in all of Toronto, or London, and these other’s People’s Enclaves where living on the permanent dole is now par for the course for much of the adult population.
However, having said all that, bully for NHS and the Euro-Canadian system. Frowsy as it is, and perhaps allowing that spending a few trillion more can get average national life span stats boosted by 6 months (most of societal health is sanitation and hygiene, and once you pass those frontiers the rest is patching up around the seams), the problem in American culture is that the net result of the many cooks in this fire is the ugly steaming pile called the HCR bill, which for cultural and other reasons we find that American cannot duplicate the more streamlined approaches other nations have with populations that are but a FRACTION of ours, and more heterogeneous in genetics. So, at least the Euro-Canadian model sticks to the issue when using rationing to control “costs”, or when HIDING their true costs by subbing out certain kinds of tests, etc., (and then rationing care anyway) and telling people to go to hell regarding certain conditions and medications. Unlike the current HCR bill glop, at least the insult stays on topic in Europe. But nonetheless, insult it is. No more profound assault on human freedom can be made than telling people they have all manner of choice in DVD rentals or choice of hump buddies, but NOT the clinic or price or level of service that fixes the results of, say, TV Butt Syndrome–or VD due promiscuity.
Which brings us to the reason the Democrats decided on this particular methodology of getting rid of private insurers: First, unlike Europe (and even there, things were actually incrementally developed) you can’t just go around saying “behold–the age of private insurance is hereby over.” So, you push them out over time by hamstringing the private insurers with all manner of crap.
Tell insurance carriers of any type they can no longer be risk assessors (which is what insurance is about) and you have them eventually looking for other work when you can no longer scan for certain pre-existing conditions, or, say, are required to take someone’s man-child brat on the policy to age 26, when in ages past these birds needed to split the nest years before, etc. A situation utterly laughable in any other age, hailing back to times when people grew up, left mommy and daddy, and got on with life. But I digress.
Second, the Democrats know that the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center bureaucracy is to inact “health care reform”, as surely they know of the situation in Europe, where putative “conservative” parties–while extant on paper–find themselves in the ludicrous position of promising to secure the State control of people and other blessings of socialism better than the actual Socialists can. Perhaps I should let that little ditty sink in. Not even the Iron Lady, Maggie Thatcher–contra all the scare talk–was able to blow the NHS out of the water or make substantial changes one way or another. The result today being that for an a tiny island in the North Atlantic with a population that is a gnat on the world elephant, the NHS is the world’s most bloated bureaucracy, and planet’s number three employer–both in percentage of population, and in real numbers–after the People’s Army of Red China and the Indian National Railways.
Ya see, once you have the The People hooked on true Opium of the Masses, government care is a hard habit to bust, and requires more than the usual crapped pants and vomiting to get over cold turkey.
Now that about half the American electorate is not paying federal level taxes and is basically on the fed dole, it seems also we’re poised to catch up to in Eurostylin’ to Britain and many other nations in Europe in being the new roi fainéants, the “Do-Nothing Kings”, of unemployment, government grift, and bloat. Problem is, not everybody can be plopped on the mooch, and at some point the well runs dry of people to “stick it” to. But that’s another issue for another day, and doubtless most pols don’t give a rip about that argument anyhow. Just letting you feel relieved that with Obama’s own advisors reminding him that the results of Euro-statist planning is permanent 10% unemployment rates (since that’s the latest bruha from Gallup now that we’ve hit that ignoble mark) and is, unfortunately, the result of aping their alleged humane milkwater socialist methodologies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319446/Britain-branded-jobless-capital-Europe.html
Never being far behind such sumptuousness (and it’s one HELL of a time to be working in government, as YOUR downturn is their UPTURN!) it is likely that in a nation of 330 MILLION + – people, and more than a few illegals glomming onto the system, where a nationalized ANYTHING at this population level has never been tried on the scale to cover all, we’ll certainly have that Euro-largess beat by vast chasms of money and dutiful high-paid workers. The same nation (ours) that sends out tens of thousands of SS checks to inmates and dead people, and pays people 70K a year for putting piece of paper in mailboxes, keep track of 126 billion in “stimulus” money and the various ratholes it might have gotten shunted into, or–to pluck another government failure in cost and intent from the random ether–cannot for the life of it enforce the concept of “Border” and bitches at states for the attempt, is not EXACTLY a paragon of efficiency or trustworthiness when it comes to human health and cost-savings.
With companies being shanghaied into either choosing the IRS fine or mandated to sign on, we see the predicted (and wanted) choice liberals set up to force the issue of drop-outs, make all manner of crappy rules (like the new 1099 form rules) having less to do with “health” than micro-management, you’ll get your wish on a “single payer” monstrosity that is more about control of the populace (which is what “socialized” meds are really about anyhow–not health care) soon enough. With all the regulation in the 2500 plus pages of crap, naturally the failure of this is the jury-rig liberals have been waiting for to declare the “free market” failed to deliver.
So many mythologies to pop with red hot pins. This boil on the Body Politic is certainly no exception, but we have some handy starts.
Get the KY out and open up the back of your hospital gown a little more and bend over. This might get painful:
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=MDFjODUzM2E0ZTdmMGM4NzgyZDE0M2QzNGYwMDI1MGQ=
I was prepared to add another whole commandment here in all this bruha about what secularists think Christians should do in regards to this or that. Something along the lines of “Thou shalf start thinking things through better”, but I think I’ll leave that alone. There is enough Scriptural redaction going on in this forum.
Make that“CAN’t keep track of 162 million” Grief. Cuz they can’t. Transposed the numbers, though. Million, not billion. But the principle is the same…anyhoo…
Very well said.
Oh and that was directed to the author of the original piece, not by any means to the counter factual paranoid screed zoon posted before me.
Zoon, seriously? The real world is calling, pick up the phone.
@T.B. Stevens —
Screed, indeed. That is what steaming heap of groat clusters Zoon just dumped on us.
@Zoon —
You’d be a whole lot more persuasive if you knew (a) any facts, and (b) how to spell. I don’t have the time or the energy to waste the time it would take to read all your ranting, but in just the parts that I skimmed, you (a) assert:
half the American electorate is not paying federal level taxes
Really? Is “half the American electorate” unemployed in your world? Because if you are employed, you pay this little tax called “FICA”, in which the “F” stands for — wait for it — “Federal”;
and (b) use some word (I think it’s intended to be a word, not just some guttural sound) “bruha”. Would this be anything like “brouhaha”? I’m just guessing, so help me out here.
Stupid is as stupid does, I guess. Or to say that in more high-falutin’ language:
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. — John Stuart Mill
get your chance to wait 12-24 months or longer for an MRI scan (as in the Euro-Canukistan model)
You must be fucking joking. I live in Canada, and the last time I needed a scan like that, I got it within minutes of arriving at the hospital. If I need to see a doctor, I cango to a walk-in clinic that the provincial insurance pays for out of my taxes immediately when I need to, and it’s really not all that uncommon for me to get an appointment with my usual primary-care physicianthe same day as I call to make the appointment. I waited about six months to have non-emergency gallbladder surgery, but the surgeon also gave me his card with his personal cellphone number on the back and said that if I started having pain I couldn’t deal with, to call him any time of the day or night and he’d meet me in the hospital and do the surgery as soon as he could.
Canany of you say that? Keep in mind, I make about thirty thousand dollars a year.
Also, why the fuck would we need to be overrun with MRI machines? The whole goddamn country’s only got 38M people in it.
In the real world, the only times you wait hellaciously long times for scans or surgery or that — which, oddly, seem to be the only examples ever picked up by the American media (funny, that, you’d almost think they were pushing an agenda or something) — seems to be the people who live in communities so remote, they don’t have roads going in or out, and, I hate to break it to you, when you live in a community whose primary address is a map designation, you wait a long time foreveryfuckingthing. You wait a month for your mail, because it has to be flown in. Those of us who live in cities (yes, Canada does actually have those) or near to don’t have a problem.
And anybody who tells you otherwise is lying their agendist ass off.
Christofascism is all about hating on the poor, taking what little they have and kicking them in the nuts while you laugh and then kick them in what’s left of their teeth since they have no health care. Christofascism is about getting all you can, elbowing your way into the trough, and after you’ve had your fill, spilling the rest into the mud so no one else can have any. Christofascism is about me, me, me, nothing but fucking me, look at me, ma, made it, ma, top of the world, ma.
Sick fuckers.
Screed, eh? Well, that’s fine. Turnabout is fair play, but I just might have directed it at the wrong group of Lefties. Lefty blog interlocutors–unlike the somewhat more highbrow liberals who truly screed us with volumes of crappola one finds at Barnes and Nobles that make the Manhattan phone book look like a fridge notepad–generally don’t have screeds so much as just quips and bitch sessions. Oh well…
Word to the wise-asses for your edification: Generally, people who toss around the “F”-bomb to the degree seen here have more anger than answers, and don’t merit anyone’s serious attention. I already have a 14-year old. Why pay that much attention to ’em online? But a few notes in any case:
47% of American indeed pay no Federal income taxes. The FICA issue is pittance distraction, albeit yes, I should’ve mentioned the few coins tossed in the coffer from FICA that some guess somehow magically balances out the fact that most people are now on the mooch after all is said and done. Also, the issue of INCOME taxes is THE MOST COMMON stat used to make broad cross-comparisons between groups, classes, regions, and indeed entire nations—exactly as that’s generally the biggest bite from one’s paycheck. The sites that parade this information out for public consumption and titillation and teeth-grinding unusually do not go into state, local, municipal, FICA, property, ad valorem, and other kinds of taxes that are usually minute by comparison. To their credit, these authors rarely feel they need to do so. Why should they? After all, generally speaking, the wealthy also pay proportionally more in those realms as well. Thus for example the property taxes on the yacht is a tad more than that on nanny’s old Ford leaking transmission fluid in the driveway. Likewise, the bites on the estates of the country club are a tad bit more than those of the trailer park residents. So the general pattern in the dissection of “who pays what, and in what proportion”, is usually assumed here.
There now. I guess it makes the elbow boo-boo all the better with bandages and kisses from Mommy. Or from Government. Whatever.
As to the wonders of Euro-Canadian care and the “facts”, I’m guessing this means Goodman’s link above was no even scanned, wherein you’d find a wee bit more on this. The most famous example of a very plain and straight faced admission of this problem is uttered by T.R. Reid, an intelligent, creative, and battle-worn journalist and sympathizer to the notion that government is to take care of everyone, including health issues. He was quoted inNewsweek quoting some other pathetic dweebmeister on the VERY issue of long waits for MRI scans (and yes, on a proportional bases, you DO need to have enough of those machine to fill the need. It’s called capitalism–check it out sometime, eh??? EH, Canuky Boy???) and re-quoted this one medical worker/Canuck’s sage advice that“Yes, we often have to wait 12 months for some scans, but–goddammit–so do the rich!!”
Mr. Reid, no relation to that wooden idiot senator from Nevada who finds himself far more lost than any war, is creative enough as an advocate of government-rationed care to have come up with a quip or response clever in its own right, but alas, he did not. Why not? Why not answer this charge with a counterattack of his own and his many travels to nations the world over regarding such accusations about socialized meds? Because he can’t. And he “goddammit” well knows it, too.
Also, what can be implied here is that Reid, like the Canuck chap he quoted crowing about the wonders of having others undergird your health bills even if it takes months–on other people’s dimes–he does not give a beshatted shit about wait times or often frowsy care as now revealed in numerous stories about Canadian care.
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=7173
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/11/10000-unnecessary-cancer-deaths-in.html
Why not?
Because the technical high-jinx issues of this, ranging from, say, long wait times, women dying in ER halls, having to be flown from one province to another by government-chartered prop planes because they’re about to squeeze out pups but no beds are authorized locally due to paperwork hold-ups, or evenClostridium difficile riddled hospitals in Britain, are NOT about “care” at all. That’s not the point. It never was.
Reid is at least honest enough to admit this in an off-hand way.
It’s about VENGEANCE and control–not “health care”, per se. That’s actually a side issue. No, Virginia, there really is NOT such a thing as Santa, whether embodied in government busybodies or giant obelisks floating around in space a la2001, saying “behold, ye shall have to pay for the lives of others.”
Which is exactly my point. And theirs. Tis NOT about health, but getting even, and churning the bowels of “social justice”.
So, like the accusations or not, you now get to fuss at the people plainly and gleefully admitting what the rest of us long suspected about socialized medpacks and the fact that he who pays the band gets to call the tunes and make the rationing. I.E.–you may now discuss the issue of the plain-faced admitters of the dark side of Euro-Canadian Nanny Lite care.
As to the fine upstanding tales of those under Eurocanadian care who got the needs met the first time around. Bully for you. I’ll remember your happy ending on the state dime the next time I also remember the provincial leaders of Ontario continue to send patients southward to the US for specialized treatments and leech off the supposedly inferior system in the States. Or, for that matter, the fact that under the Socialized MedPack State, SPECIAL people (NOT usually you and me, Jack) get to have preferential treatment more often than not, and actually GET to choose their level of care (what a magical word–“choice”–funny enough it’s popular elsewhere in Lefty Lit!) and jet to the US. I note they’re NOT usually jetting to Europe. Frowsy as it is when Canadian pols trash it, it seems American medical care is just dandy for the efforts of jumping the boarding and leaving the hapless everyman Canucks behind to the local clinic, EH?
Oh yes, and along those same lines, I’ll also note the utterly repugnant hypocrisy of such “leaders”, as they refer to themselves:
http://scaramouchee.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-my-health-its-my-choice.html
As one of the interlocutors asked in snark format: “If America follows suit (and we may yet) where will Canadians go for ‘Premier’ quality treatment?
Also, Interrobang, your mention of 38 million in the Great White North compared to almost 10 times that among of throngs of people in the US, is another reason that socialized medpacks would fail here. You cannot extrapolate from the micro level to the macro that easily. NOBODY has done such on a scale as large as our. (Red China’s “free” health care to its billions does not count, and does even approach the level of “health”, or “care”. For what it’s worth, trust me, you’d be better off with a witch doctor and a swig of Grey Goose for whatever ails you.)
Regarding “bruha”, yes, that is my shortened version of brouhaha, which is excessive for the wear. Say thanks next time.
As to spelling in general, having minor things nipped at by self-appointed grammarians is really repulsive to behold. Nothing like apple-polishers and toad-lickers to get the day going. Make sure you libs inculcate this anal retent prissiness in what few, impudent, designer brats you have when you farm them out to the shitty public schools. Fastest way known to have them get ass-kicked in class or in the gym. But then, any place can teach lessons, no? In any case…
As to the main thrust of this now far-recessed post itself, and all the usualy Lefty redactions about what Scriptures mean, it’s interesting the comments here have vacillated between the wide brush painting of Christians as inordinately evil bastards on the one hand, and yet not obeying the commands of Christ on the other.
I’ll leave the former group to stew in their own hatred of Christianity, since that’s where good Lefties are most comfortable.
But regarding canonical Christianity per se (and this is just a leap, but I’m guessing that Christ Himself is still considered part of the “canonical” teachings, NO?) in addition to the Prodigal Son, there is Christ’s tale of the vineyard laborers—-and …wait for this, it’ll blow yer malted barley and bong resin minds, baby…CONTRACT law.
Check it out. It’s relates to something we have in the West to this very day. It’s called contract law. Dig it. Learn it. Savor it. Experience it. Cogitate on it. Know it. Feel it. Let it course through what few neuron sparks the Left has left these days when they’re reduced to rehashed from brother Marx (Karl, not Groucho):
MATTHEW 20: 1-16 So, YES. Jesus MIGHT let your abode burn down if you do something dumb that causes said burning. I note that with Providential justice later, he allowed all of Jerusalem to get sacked and BURNED by Titus. Ya know, history, and all that jazz.
As to the parable, menionted above, of the rich young man who went away sorrowful, that issue Christ put upon him was an up-or-down declaration of what he would ultimately follow–riches or Him. It was not commentary on social systems per se, but of ultimate loyalty and the test thereof.
And since this is now a quotation festival, with handy input from the utilitarian JSM, who lived in an age when “Conservative” more often meant those who still supported stern traditions, some of which were almost monarchical, rather than today’s “conservatives”–the holdovers of what Milton Friedman called “Classical Liberals”, I should toss in a reminder about life in general, and making contracts (or not, as the case might be with Mr. House-burn-down):
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the results of folly is to fill the world with fools.” Herbert Spencer (another utilitarian)
_____________________________________________
PS–final notes to Mr. Superhealth Advocate above:
(1) If you REALLY suspect, or have been diagnosed with, a gallbladder issue, you need to get the damn thing looked at right away. Things can move out of control rather quickly.
(2) Yes, my personal doctor not only hands out cards, but is more than helpful for follow-ups. Seeing that he’s is extraordinarily busy, it is unlikely he could meet me at the hospital on a short notice, no, but has enough contacts in the local hospitals in the area and associates that I’m quite sure all relevant information would be transmitted quite accurately so they could assist in any emergency. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, docs in this area don’t sit around in the “off” hours swirling cocktails and gabbing it up on the golf course on Wednesdays.
(2)-A Regarding speed of care and the lazy-daze pace of things in Canada, I’ll not also that in this small hamlet, we’re not exactly Edmonton or Toronto. Neither is tiny Spartanburg SC. Yet things happen there quite speedily enough. Including medical care and your Netflix drop-off in the mail. I take it also “Langley”, in BC, is a municipality in Metro Vancouver Canada, no? Too “remote” for a decent backup plan? What to they do their for the mail, I wonder? Slap ponies on the rump? I think not. After all, there WAS this place sorta nearby called “Vancouver”, which one must presume had hospital beds out the yin-yang for all manner of emergencies. Right?
And YET, as one mommy-to-be-very-very-very-very-very soon Debra Cornthwaite found out under the mighty auspices of Canadian care, enter the great paper chase, the redtape trail after hours of labor (HERS as well as the local hospital staff) and YET not a bed was to be found in Langley, nor any other part of British Columbia for Ms. Cornthwaite to deliver the little bunchkins (she carried twins). Under the other noted socialized medpack auspices of “cost savings”, may we presume what is not often assumed is in the actuarial sheets is aviation fuel and CHARTERED pilot time for the twinprop plane finally required to fly the ever agonized woman over the Canadian Rockies (one hopes they teach breathing while encountering considerable air turbulence?) in order to get her to Edmonton ASAP??
(3) Thirty grand a year, eh? Well…what can I say…what manner of blinding splendor will the Socialist state come up with next? Bully for you. *clang* Touché!
..as to the charge of “paranoia”, I think Harvard historian Richard Pipes had it best: “Even the paranoid have enemies.”
In this case, the rather plain recognition that he who pays the band, does indeed get to call the tunes. When the Nanny State begins to decree what you will and will not be doing with your life, they will not be kidding, and what better justification than “health” and the “good of the people”. Those who torment us for our own good torment us the worst, as they do so with the conscience for moral support.
Oh, and I missed this crowing earlier in-between all the cursing and table pounding:
…and it’s really not all that uncommon for me to get an appointment with my usual primary-care physician the same day as I call to make the appointment.
That is STANDARD procedure in Hickville, US of A, Chico… big whoop…
Not merely “uncommon”, but standard.
Zoon is in the right here. I will add this also, which is the only thing missing, as he was gracious enough to quote me earlier: Something that the Europhiles and other assorted malcontent ass-pumps of the Leftosphere fail to acknowledge, but that European and Canadian politicians often DO admit, however reluctantly. Actually, it’s twofold:
A) In private, even Left of center European and Canadian politicians admit that socialized medicine is for the most part of failure, or is at least in dire need of such much needed touching up.
B).. .they readily admit (again, in private) that Euro-Canadian brand healthcare is in part FUNDED by the American taxpayer, and has been for almost 6 decades, since the US military umbrella was the main protection against threat real or perceived, and to that effect it allowed European government to turn inward to domestic goodies and handouts and create the social edifices they have today. Be this good or bad, it’s what happened that allowed lavish spending not only on health issues, but others as well.
When it comes OUR turn to follow suit, it is far from likely the someone will be there to help us out. Who could? So we too will reduce military expenditures to mere small policing action capability in order to fund the glop and handouts.
Thus for example, in Afghanistan, the “good” war, and the one where at least some (American) liberals said was the one more proximate to the goals of stanching terror (though that’s changed lately, and now Team Bush is gone and the only bashing that can be done is the man-child Ocean-Lowerer in office, the Left is back to the mantra that all wars are bad, even if their own kids’ heads get stuck on pikes in their own bedrooms by the Islamic nutcases) we see that, as one pundit had it, “Afghanistan was everything Iraq wasn’t: UN-approved, NATO-backed, EU-compliant. It’d be tough for even the easiest nickel ‘n’ dime military incursion to survive that big an overdose of multilateral hogwash–and the Afghan campaign didn’t. Instead of being an operation to kill one of the planet’s most concentrated populations of jihadist terrorists, it decayed into half-hearted nation-building in which a handful of real allies took the casualties while the rest showed up for the group photo. The 2004 NATO summit was hailed as a landmark success after the Alliance’s 26 members agreed to put up an extra …well…600 (six-hundred!) troops and THREE helicopters for Afghanistan. That averages out at 23.08 troops per country, plus almost a ninth of a helicopter apiece. As it transpired, the three Black Hawks all came from one country—Turkey—and within a year they’d all gone back. Those 600 troops and three helicopters made no practical difference, but the effort expended on that transnational fig leaf certainly contributed to America’s disastrous reframing of its interests in Afghanistan.”
Yay for UN and European compliance measures. Hooray. Yeah for Euro-power! HUAUH!! Glad your dentures are good. Too bad they couldn’t pull more equipment out. They can’t, though, as the reduction in military prowess that America has taken the lion’s share of responsibility for in the last several decades is due to having to redirect “discretionary” funding
Now, of course some will do fist-pumps and say “Hell yeah!” at the prospect of reduced American presence in the world, including more than a few voters who turned out for the Bambi administration back in 2008, while others will lament that America has become–like Britain–the latest former powerhouse now turned soft-core pussyfooter when trouble breaks out in the world. And it will. But reduce we shall. Hope it’s worth it.
(For full disclosure, Zoon is my cousin)
Also, the whole thing about FICA is horsecrap for another reason: Half of it is paid by employers. Keep that in mind when you come across one of those dandy pie charts showing “payroll” (which includes more than FICA, however) being a large portion of total revenue to government. Additionally, for some of us unlucky enough to think there is still gain to be had in working for ourselves and being the ones who actually sign the FRONT of paychecks (more fool us, oy) you have corporate taxes as well.
Not sure just how many of the grifters on the mooch understand this, much less appreciate this little factoid.
Beyond this, you mollusks, we have another conception issue here that might be harder than your neighbor’s thunderweed for you to toke on:
FICA is, for the most part, (even if the idiotic courts say otherwise in order to wiggle off the hook about ultimate expectations of payouts later if things turn sour) a USER FEE set-up, that only has a couple of funding obligations. That is, you and your employer are funding niceties like Medicare, Social Security, etc., or at least trying to if idiot politicians will stop siphoning funds off of SS. That being the case, and seeing the most people who pay in their portion of SS and Medicare will get FAAAAAAAR more out of it than they ever put in, in an average working life, you can be sure this is more than fair, and not the “regressive” tax so many claim it is just because it does not apply to other kinds of income.
Sorry kids, you ARE back to Mooch Mode.
Britain is now a flop house whose residents confused freedom with free dentures–little good that it did
No, it isn’t.
Signed, someone who actually lives there and thanks God every single day for the National Health Service. Where, by the way, dentures and dental treatment are *not* usually free (as my chequebook can attest).
Homework: you should try it, Zoon.
Zoon and his cousin are mean, mendacious people. In the real world which they appear determined to avoid, people of lesser means, even those with full-time jobs because it’s so COOL for employers to force workers to accept shit wages and benefits for their work, those unfortunates in our late great country have a permanent rationing of their health care called I CAN’T FUCKING AFFORD IT. Then, when they suffer sudden injuries or chronic illnesses, they often suffer permanent damages to their finances (foreclosures, bankruptcies, many other ill effects on top of their illnesses).
But all of this, happening so that we can cut taxes and leave giant loopholes open on behalf of corporations shipping their jobs overseas and greedy motherfuckers putting another million into their investments and buying their fifth home, is fine as long as Zoon and his fellow moral defectives can laugh up their sleeves at people making $30K a year.
What the hell is wrong with our culture that it has produced so many greedy, uncaring, lying types? I was particularly impressed by the mendaciousness involved in telling a THIRDHAND anecdote about “rationing of care” in Canada to stand up the inevitable straw man. It’s also so great to gain a Biblical non-quotation which suggests as long as you walk with Jesus, your acts in the world matter not. Go ahead, grind that heel into the face of the worthless hobo laying on the sidewalk- God is fine with that!
Who do you think you’re fooling?