WHAT ARE YOUR REAL VALUES, POLITICALLY APPLIED?

Those who subscribe to libertarian humanism philosophy believe the only legitimate role of government is to ensure the rule of law, guarantee social order, and provide for the national defense. I’ve heard it over and over. That is THE reason they have long intentionally opposed programs like Medicare, Medicaid for the poor, and more recently Obamacare. It is another reason my conservative friends openly oppose me as being an okay Christian but too liberal.

Hear R- House Budget ChairMAN, Paul Ryan explain this public provision for a popular need, and how he interprets it to violate (1) the liberty of tax payers whose earnings are transferred to others for their health purposes, and (2) it violates the recipient’s spiritual need to earn his/her own sustenance. Walker told one audience that our nation’s school lunch program leaves poor children with “a full stomach—and an empty soul.” Can you imagine the shallow crassness and inhumanity of that statement??? What did Jesus say about feeding the hungry?

Less well understood is the obvious truth that these self-admitted zealots do NOT BELIEVE the government should involve itself in promoting good public health measures. I am NOT talking about subsidized joint replacements, not even birth control! WE are talking basics--things like SANITATION, which became a public health issue calling for the government to step in to protect public health from the time of the so-called Progressive Era, when the single most important issue became that of stopping waterborne epidemics such as cholera and typhoid.

In that light, consider the Republican majority in Georgia, systematically cutting public health benefits addressing Zika, Ebola and other such issues, according to columnist Nicholas Kristof. This explains why Thom Tillis, the NC Senator backed by the Koch Organization, claimed restaurants should be able "to opt out” of those laws requiring employees to wash their hands after using the toilet, “AS LONG AS THEY POST A SIGN THAT SAYS, ‘WE DON’T REQUIRE OUR EMPLOYEES TO WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER LEAVING THE RESTROOM’” (EMPHASIS MINE).  

The market will take care of that, he added. Never mind the unsanitary health practice of so many American males that I observe almost every time I step into a men’s restroom. The sense of all of this is further clarified when we remember how the largely Afro-American population of Flint, MI was forced by a dictatorial –Governor-appointed Operative to take over the local City Management and dictate terms that were poisoning literally thousands of families, until a Medical Researcher gained outside absolute proof and brought the issue to public attention, only to discover worse in Washington, D.C.

This was NOT A CASE OF GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE but a direct result of the prodding of the Mackinac Center assisting in Michigan, of which John Engler  and in 1994, “When Mackinac  Center speaks, we listen, as did Governor Snyder et al. I now understand why Engler spent 20 years leading Michigan Republicans in ignoring repair and upkeep of public highways. It was not that way when I was growing up there, I can tell you that; we were all proud of our Hwy system in those days.

And for a host of you who hoot at the idea of 5^th column conspiracy, consider the FACT that the Mackinac Center was one of the first of what is now a long list of Koch-funded, often Koch-Staffed State level “think and do” tanks that now operate in all fifty states and are affiliated with the STATE POLICYNETWORK (SPN) also a Koch Org, that coordinate efforts ’TO PREVENT STATE GOVERNMENTS FROM RESPONDING TO THE DEMANDS OF THE ‘taker’” (again emphasis mine).

For resourcing see Kelly R. Young to Roy Childs, March 4, 1992, box 5, Roy A. Childs Papers, Hoover Library; Mackinac Center “Accomplishments: 1988-2013,” http://web/archive.org/web/20151013073304/https://www.mackinaw.org/18315.

Also see Center for Media and Democracy, “Exposed: The State Policy Network,” November 2013, www.alecexposed.org/w/images/2/25/SPN_National_Report_FINAL.pdf. …
Page 293/ MacLean/ DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS.

What I am seeing today in America is a downward deviancy that I never I ever expected to live long enough to see, but I am looking at nine decades of up and down on this rollercoaster and the deviation is definitely downward from where I view it today. Because I have committed my life to a political persuasion framed in by the teachings of Jesus, I quiet my soul and I pray:

Lord God, create within me a clean heart and enable me to walk close to the side of Jesus, 

to LOVE as He loved, 
to LIVE as he lived, 
AND TO LIFT as he lifted men, women, boys, and girls everywhere and offered them an abundant life of equal opportunity.  
I am, 

Walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com.