Little-Acorn
Gold Member
One of the sillier attempts to justify Big Government getting bigger, to handle social problems that are best left to the people involved, or at most to local governments' assistance.
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from the Wall Street Journal, "Best of the Web", March 18, 2017
What would Jesus say about big government?
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is having fun implying that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s effort to replace ObamaCare is at odds with Mr. Ryan’s Catholic faith. The column is of a piece with the “Jesus was a socialist” arguments that bounce around the left half of the social media universe.
Without wrestling with any difficult questions of faith or logic, Mr. Kristof simply casts the federal bureaucracy in the role of Jesus. Then the Timesman proceeds to suggest through satire that by seeking to reduce outlays and improve incentives in federal programs, Mr. Ryan is defying the will of his God. Of course if federal agencies were ever actually given the statutory mission to do as Jesus would do, Mr. Kristof would be as horrified as anyone. But this seems to be a political season when people who spend much of the year driving religion out of public life abruptly drag it back in as they attempt to justify big government. It’s not necessarily persuasive.
The ancient book has numerous admonitions to perform charity and various condemnations of greed, but it’s not easy to find a passage in which Jesus says that government is the best vehicle to provide aid, or that anyone should force others to donate.
Even casual readers of the Bible may notice that Jesus doesn’t get along all that well with the political authorities of his time and (spoiler alert!) his relationship with government ends rather badly. Back then, tax collectors were not presumed to be the dedicated public servants that we appreciate so much today.
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from the Wall Street Journal, "Best of the Web", March 18, 2017
What would Jesus say about big government?
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is having fun implying that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s effort to replace ObamaCare is at odds with Mr. Ryan’s Catholic faith. The column is of a piece with the “Jesus was a socialist” arguments that bounce around the left half of the social media universe.
Without wrestling with any difficult questions of faith or logic, Mr. Kristof simply casts the federal bureaucracy in the role of Jesus. Then the Timesman proceeds to suggest through satire that by seeking to reduce outlays and improve incentives in federal programs, Mr. Ryan is defying the will of his God. Of course if federal agencies were ever actually given the statutory mission to do as Jesus would do, Mr. Kristof would be as horrified as anyone. But this seems to be a political season when people who spend much of the year driving religion out of public life abruptly drag it back in as they attempt to justify big government. It’s not necessarily persuasive.
The ancient book has numerous admonitions to perform charity and various condemnations of greed, but it’s not easy to find a passage in which Jesus says that government is the best vehicle to provide aid, or that anyone should force others to donate.
Even casual readers of the Bible may notice that Jesus doesn’t get along all that well with the political authorities of his time and (spoiler alert!) his relationship with government ends rather badly. Back then, tax collectors were not presumed to be the dedicated public servants that we appreciate so much today.