The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    Because it is right

    By Barth on Sat, 10/03/2009 - 2:20pm |
    Forty-six years ago, the President of the United States, the youngest ever elected as President, addressed the civil rights issues facing the nation and explained the core reason why they had to be resolved:

    We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

    The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
    This year, President Kennedy's youngest brother, the one who survived into the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and most of the decade which followed, wrote for what he called a "final time" to a new President he helped to elect about the cause of his own life, a guarantee to American citizens of affordable health insurance to insure that care for those who need it, and almost all of us will, does not depend on one's bank account:

    you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.
     Last week, on Yom Kippur, a rabbi in New York City, stood before a congregation contemplating their lives and their obligations andtold them that:

    we have the opportunity to determine whether we will provide healthcare for everyone in our society, and if so, how. At one point in the history of our nation, you bore no responsibility for how I fared after my working days were over. But the last great economic crisis prompted us to rethink that. 

    Now we agree that every American is entitled to a certain minimal standard of living in retirement. We call that social security - a name which implies that the safety of our society depends on this basic mutual responsibility between neighbors. 

    Our generation is now asked to consider whether we are responsible for the health care of others. And this time it's not about a man sitting on the sidewalk of Lexington Avenue asking for change, or a child whose parents cannot afford to treat her illness. Fortunately, those members of our community are entitled to health care. 

    No, this time it's about those sitting here in our sanctuary tonight. There is a very real possibility that the person sitting next to you is without health insurance of any kind. Or that the person in front of you is worried that she may not be able to afford her premiums if they continue to go up. Or that the person behind you will fall sick and his provider will deny him treatment for one reason or another. The current system is incomplete, expensive and frustrating. We cannot deny that it is broken. 

    Now, we all know that the challenges involved in reforming the system are numerous and complex. We need to offer coverage to all citizens. We need to reduce the cost of care. We need to maintain the availability of top-notch treatments. But in the midst of the debate, we also must ask ourselves: Are we grasshoppers? Will we let ourselves be swayed by misinformation and gross fabrications? Will we cede the debate to those who aim to scare us into inaction? Are we simply afraid of change?


    The issue is not the degree to which the President's political fortunes will be enhanced or diminished by the votes to come, or whether Senators Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln are looking our for their constituents or their campaign contributors. There is no need to dwell on who is the most impolite member of the House of Representatives: one who yells "you lie" while the President is addressing a joint session of Congress, or another who describes the other party's health care plan as based on the two words "die sooner." This stuff tells us a lot about our debased political culture (of which, sadly, we see evidence on this site every day, just as it has become almost all we hear from conservative voices) but does not even rate as a "secondary consideration" against the issue staring at us in the face.

    If you want to appeal to the demons in our public life, to encourage those who oppose abortions and wish to impose their beliefs on everyone, to oppose a new, fairer system to provide heath care to themselves and to their neighbors, by suggesting that by doing so, they will be helping to pay for someone doing something they believe to be immoral, you are a coward, a fraud and immoral yourself.

    If you use this opportunity as another occasion to turn our beloved Statue of Liberty on her head, and repudiate the basis on which this continent became the haven for the oppressed from anywhere else in the world, by railing against "illegal immigrants" as if a desperate flight to our shores was an evil close to murder, and to try to scare your fellow citizens that health care for all will mean that such "illegal" people will get cared for when they are sick, you are a charlatan, a fraud, and immoral to your Ebenezer Scrooge soul. 

    And the issue is not the size of government or its role in our lives. As Rabbi Friedman's sermon quoted above suggests, that issue was resolved during "the last great economic crisis" before our current one, and our greatest President explained why we had to change our views:

    In the old days, for the bulk of the population, the elections were only a seasonal diversion--a circus with an oratorical sideshow--with the real job done by quiet economic and social-perhaps I should say back room--pressures behind the scenes.

    Today there is emerging a real and forceful belief on the part of the great mass of the people that honest, intelligent and courageous government can solve many problems which the average individual cannot face alone in a world where there are no longer one hundred and twenty acres of good land free for everybody...

    In answer to the demands of the American people we have expanded the functions of the Government of the United States. We are handling complicated problems of administration with which no other party has ever had to wrestle. 



    But we have lost our way. Though President Roosevelt died before I was born, his legacy lasted well into my lifetime, until a corrupt president gave way to two nobodies whose inability to inspire anything except empty slogans who in turn was replaced by a ideologue dedicated to destroying the nation's belief in the government as a source of good deeds for its citizens and who, sadly, succeeded in doing so beyond all reason.

    The president between the two Bushes, a moderate Republican to my ears, but twice the successful nominee of the Democratic Party, mimicked his predecessor, the Great Reagan, in holding that "the era of big government is over" but that capitulation to the the greedy and selfish among us was surely wrong. We are a better nation than that, I think, or, at least, I hope.

    It is hard to tell, frankly. Legislation which mandates that everyone buy insurance, that those who have what members of Congress, themselves covered by a generous government sponsored health care insurance plan, decide are "gold plated" plans covering others pay additional taxes for such a benefit, but does not create a plan to make it impossible for private interests to gouge the public (I am sorry, that means health care providers as well as insurers) is not an improvement on the shameful system we have now. It is a gift to insurance companies and their allies in the health care racket. Just saying something is an advance does not mean that it is. (Can you say, "No Child Left Behind" and not cringe?)

    The question is not what will this health care reform do for me, though it will do much for me in the long run. The issue is what is the right thing to do.

    We should have learned this long ago when our President reminded us as he set out to lead the nation we love, that:

    If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.