Pirates and Health Care

On Jan. 25, Navy SEALs rescued an American being held hostage by Somali pirates. Like all Americans, I was glad to see that when American lives are threatened by foreign governments, criminals, or terrorists, our military is there to protect us. President Obama said, “This is yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people.”

Virtually all Americans agree that this was the right thing to do, and no one asked what it cost.  

But when American lives are threatened by disease, conservatives oppose spending any taxpayer money to save them.

A 2009 study conducted at Harvard Medical School and published in the American Journal of Public Health found that 45,000 annual deaths were associated with lack of health insurance.

Only a select few people have the mental and physical toughness to be Navy SEALs, but we too can save American lives by supporting policies that give all Americans access to health care.

Martin Luther King's Words of Peace

Excerpts from "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" By the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Commencement Address for Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio, June 1965:

What we are facing today is the fact that through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers - or we will all perish together as fools. …

All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. ...

We must get rid of violence, hatred, and war. Anyone who feels that the problems of mankind can be solved through violence is sleeping through a revolution. …

We must find some alternative to war and bloodshed. …

We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race. ...

All that I've said is that we must work for peace, for racial justice, for economic justice, and for brotherhood the world over. We have inherited a big house, a great world house in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Moslem and Hindu. If we all learn to do this we, in a real sense, will remain awake through a great revolution.

Full text available at:

http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.html

The Bad Samaritans

I’m frustrated by Republican candidates’ pandering for the votes of Christian conservatives. The candidates love to talk about their faith and their values. They love to tell us America was founded on Christian values, but they fail to follow the example Jesus set in His ministry: compassion for the sick.

By threatening to repeal health care reform—without offering another plan to provide coverage for the millions of uninsured Americans—the Republican Party shows an utter lack of compassion.

Some Tea Party Republicans even go so far as to advocate hospitals’ turning away patients who can’t pay. This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught and did.

Review the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). Are you going to vote for someone who acts like the Levite and the priest who walked by while the injured man lay bleeding?