If the Republican Party and the Republican candidates insist on touting themselves as the "moral" party and the defenders of the "religious right" then why do they have such a hypocritical attitude towards Health care reform?
Most Republicans are passionately against making health care available for millions of lower and middle class Americans. They say that the system is fine and strongly oppose government interference and think that those less well off should just simply go without, or work harder in life.
I've even had one Republican supporter tell me that the reason that all of these poor folk can't obtain health care is not because they can't afford it, but rather that they choose not to have it.
However, with health care costs and pharmaceutical prices out of control, the Republican party would rather turn their backs upon millions of underprivileged Americans rather than reform the system to help these families out.
Isn't this extremely contradictory and hypocritical to the Republican claim that they represent the moral and religious right of America? Or at least far more religious and moral than the Democratic party right?
Christianity preaches that we are to help the poor and needy. We are required to give our neighbor anything that he needs without question, and above all, to love thy neighbor as thy self.
SO why then do republicans refuse to acknowledge this huge and financially dangerous problem facing American citizens?
If the Republican party is going to claim to be moral and religious, then they should practice what they claim to be about. They need to be more compassionate towards the poor and less fortunate, or they need to stop their hypocritical rhetoric by claiming that they are moral and representing the righteous.
It would appear as if they are only out to help themselves, and that is not the Christian way.
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It is a common thread among liberals to claim that conservatives are being hypocritical with many of the social policies and programs including healthcare and welfare. This however, is not hypocritical at all, and I’ll outline why.
First of all, I have seen all kinds of quotes and figures thrown around to make it seem like a worse problem than it is. For instance John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have all claimed the ‘45 million uninsured Americans who are without health coverage’. Upon closer investigation it turns out that the real figures are closer to 18 million. ( http://junkyardblog.net/archives/2007/07/q-when-is-45-mi.php )
That is still somewhat of a problem, but nearly the epidemic Democrats have made it out to be.
I’ll skip over some of the logical arguments for now about why it would be an absolutely terrible idea to socialize healthcare and move onto the morality argument. First I want to state that there are many corrupt politicians, and I wouldn’t necessarily believe most of their claims to faith and or morality. Having said that, I do believe that ideologically, Republicans or rather, the conservative right, is far more inline with Christian values. Both parties as a whole have been in a continuous leftward slide for the better part of a century. The republicans today are the hard-core liberals of 40 years ago, so by no means to I consider them to be as “right” as they should be. I digress – now about the morality.
First of all – a clarification. I highly doubt these republicans you are talking about are against helping the poor and unfortunate. If they are, you’re right, and they have to right to be claiming any kind of moral superiority. However, what I believe they are probably against is socialism/communism. Any kind of universal health plan that will force the vast majority of people to change their healthcare, for the benefit of a few less fortunate is at best a socialistic health plan. It isn’t helping people that they are against, they are against forced redistribution of wealth. What is communism or socialism at its heart? If it is forced charity, it is not charity at all. In fact, it is the equivalent of the government stealing from you, and forcibly giving your money to others. In fact I believe that the 8th commandment says you shall not steal. It doesn’t matter if it is for a good purpose; Robin Hood was still a thief. In fact when you look at it the Bible is an anti-socialist document. (Lots to back that up here: http://www.garynorth.com/public/department57.cfm ).
So in the end arguing that God wants us to help the less fortunate, therefore you should impose laws forcing everyone to help the less fortunate, well that is just like saying that we should also impose laws that say everyone has to be a Christian and love God. That’s not right, that isn’t what God wants, and that isn’t practical.
That is why charity should be left to charity organizations – perhaps with some extra government tax breaks or assistance for those charities to help promote them, but a universal healthcare plan would be bad in every way for our country, and I would argue that such a system would even be going against the principles of the Bible and thus in effect be an immoral thing in itself.
It is a classic case of trying to get to a good thing, but in a wrong way. I don’t see how when you are imposing tax, and a undeniably worse healthcare system on the vast majority of Americans to benefit the vast minority, I just don’t see how that could be logically considered, let along logically considered moral. Same thing goes with the welfare system…the whole “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime” thing. But I’ll leave it at that for now. ;)
At least you were right about one thing, that would be hypocritical if they just didn’t like poor people.
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