Freedom to Confuse
Thanks to the abortion amendment, liberals suddenly care about "choice" in our health care system.
If liberals are so disturbed by Congress' dictating whether abortion is a legitimate health care issue or not, it only makes sense that they should be equally troubled by government management of other health care decisions.
Undoubtedly, this is zealously naive thinking on my part. Reaching such a conclusion demands a modicum of consistency. And as we've seen, health care "reform" is an ideological crusade immune from logic.
Take the torrent of hypocrisy that spilled from the jilted pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party after a House amendment to the health care reform bill that would tighten a ban on federal funds for abortions passed by a vote of 240-194—a more substantial mandate against abortion funding, incidentally, than for health care reform.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), immediately began collecting signatures to oppose what she called "an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), went further, adding that the amendment "attempts an unprecedented overreach into women's basic rights and freedoms in this country."
Overreach? Unprecedented? Basic rights? Freedoms?
Right words, wrong issue.
I have no doubt that members of the progressive wing of Congress—folks who generally support a single-payer plan that would eradicate choice and freedom in health care—believe that government's failing to give you something is indistinguishable from government's taking something away from you.
Yet even though no one would be stripped of her right to have an abortion under this legislation, the vast majority of citizens would have to deal with a cluster of new mandates and more than 100 new government bureaucracies to enforce them.
Citizens would be ordered to buy insurance or face jail time. Americans would answer to a "commissioner of health choices" and pay extra taxes for having the gall to buy top-of-the-line insurance plans. They no longer would have the right to choose health savings accounts or high-deductible plans or, in most cases, flexible spending accounts.
That's just for starters.
Accordingly, DeGette, DeLauro, and all who voted for America's Affordable Health Choices Act (sic) should refrain, for credibility's sake, from evoking "choice" or "freedom," as they voted against those principles this past week.
President Barack Obama attempted to quell this mounting problem when he told ABC News that Congress should alter the language on abortion because he had "laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill."
Candidate Obama, on the other hand, clearly stated in a speech in front of a Planned Parenthood Action Fund meeting in 2007 that "reproductive care is essential care" and "basic care, and so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that" he proposed.
So abortion not only is essential care but also was at "the heart" of what the president had in mind for reform. (A courageous reporter might ask the president where he stands on reproductive care today. Is it essential? If not, why should federal funding be banned?)
When DeGette tells The Washington Post that 40 Democrats will vote against a final bill unless the abortion amendment is removed, she is only holding the president to his word—however rickety his word and her logic may be.
I must concede, then, that there is a bright spot within this debate. If reform were to die on DeGette's selective "choice" and "freedom," it would save, ironically enough, many genuine choices and freedoms in our health care system.
It would be a splendid irony, indeed.
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Visit his Web site at www.DavidHarsanyi.com.
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I have no doubt that members of the progressive wing of Congress?-folks who generally support a single-payer plan that would eradicate choice and freedom in health care?-believe that government’s failing to give you something is indistinguishable from government’s taking something away from you.
Good line.
Freedom to have an abortion is virtually the only thing that liberals DO care about people having a “choice” on.
As long as it is the “choice” to have one. Most democrats I think believe that it is a God given right. They think that not funding it would decrease abortions among poor people.
I’m not sure how much longer it will be a “choice” for women and not a “duty.” Limits on family sizes to “save the planet”, restrictions on medical treatments given to newborns with genetic diseases or other birth defects to “reduce costs” or “allocate resources to best benefit the collective.”
Tom Friedman already enamored of the Chinese governmen’s efficiency at getting stuff he likes done.
My guess is that many politicians are waking up to the fact that there are many people who will go to jail rather than pay taxes to fund abortions. And I am not talking about the people out praying in front of abortion clinics. The jails in this country are not big enough to hold them all. Not to mention a further collapsing of the economy.
In many people’s minds, it is one thing to legalize abortion in a democratic society, but it is another thing entirely to make people who believe abortion is evil pay for it.
And you can rant on all you want about intolerance, etc., but there are hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, who will go to jail rather than be forced to fund what they view as the murder of innocent unborn children.
I believe various levels or government are already financing some abortions.
Not federally (the Hyde Amendment), with the exception of federal employee health insurance. Some states (and some local governments) do, however.
To be precise, the Federal Government funds around 200 abortions per year (according to page 27 of this pdf, the feds paid for 191 abortions in FY 2006).
I think war is evil, and I have to pay for it. A lot.
And we see that Tony agrees that two wrongs make a right.
No, just that as a member of a democratic society you sometimes have to pay for things you don’t like.
But do you have to pay for everything you don’t like? Surely you agree that some things people shouldn’t be forced to pay for. The argument that “sometimes” you have to pay for things you don’t like is no argument in favor of maximizing those occasions.
So it’s merely a case then of where to draw the line. I’d like to minimize the places where people are forced to pay for things that they don’t like; I’d be willing to consider arguments about war.
What’s your principle?
Ah, so you don’t actually think that you shouldn’t be forced to pay for wars you don’t like. I didn’t think so; I’ve never met a liberal who has said so.
They’d like to have it as a talking point for why they can force people to pay for other things, but if you try to take them up on the rhetorical challenge and say, “Yes, you’re right, that’s an evil, let’s minimize it and even not require pacifists to pay for war,” they quickly retreat.
It’s just a rhetorical ploy. Apparently liberals love big government much more than they hate war.
All I’m saying is the requirement that citizens sometimes pay for things they don’t like, even things they consider evil, shouldn’t be excepted for Christian conservatives with regard to abortion. It’s a legal medical procedure.
The answer is not to force them to pay for something they think is immoral. The answer is not to make you pay for something you think is immoral.
Theft and slavery doesn’t justify theft and slavery.
Despite what liberals and conservatives believe.
No, the answer is for people to engage the democratic process and work to get policies they consider immoral rescinded. Otherwise everyone would be declaring everything they pay taxes for immoral. It would be like a whole country full of libertarians.
No, Tony, the answer is to minimize that which we expect the people to pay for across the board. Ultimately, everything is going to be objectionable to someone. So why not just permit the people to keep the lion’s share of their own money and spend it in the ways that they deem appropriate. Instead of allowing a tyranny of 50%+1 to force 50%-1 to do their bidding whatever it may be, we could simply stick with the very basics, keep the amount of money that Uncle Scam annexes from the people to a minimum and thereby reduce the breadth of things which may be objectionable to large swaths of the citizenry.
You are saying more guns == more moral.
Which is of course the net result of all collectivist philosophies.
Yes, because a system where everyone gets to vote on what kind of health care you receive souns SO fair and just.
Even if that weren’t hogwash, it sounds better than for-profit corporate entities getting to decide the matter.
You mean people competing to provide the best stuff for my money? Heavens no, that’s to much work. Let’s just steal it. THAT will motivate people to work, invest, employ, produce.
Why should I have to make a futile effort to get policies I consider immoral rescinded? I should not have to pay for murder, it’s that simple. And you’re right everyone would be declaring everything they pay taxes for immoral, because by being paid for by force, it is. The result is the absence of the State a.k.a. freedom.
Anarchy = freedom!
Anarchy is total freedom, by definition.
Libertarians generally (of various schools) would only limit one freedom, the freedom to initiate aggression.
You do for pay for murder via wrongful executions in this country.
My tax dollars are going toward locking me up for possessing substances that I used to control my own reality–one that the government did not think I was allowed to have.
What a country.
We were never supposed to be a democracy.
Constitutional republic. Whatever, pedant. You antigovernment types love to trot this one out lately. I suppose the government we’re supposed to have is whatever puts enlightened libertarians in charge, huh?
A constitutional republic is not only not similar to a democracy, it’s designed to prevent a democracy. Observing 2 does not equal 4 is not being ‘pedantic’.
I suppose the government we’re supposed to have is whatever puts enlightened libertarians in charge, huh?
No, Tony I don’t want to be in charge. That’s your dream, not mine.
I don’t want to tell you what to do. I don’t want you to tell me what to do.
As a citizen of a republic I want the government to recognize that there are some things it should not do.
True, we have to sometimes pay for things we don’t like. But this should be avoided when it can be, especially for things people really don’t like, and things that can easily not be paid for.
Abortion easily qualifies for both.
No, sometimes you don’t the trouble associated with refusing to do so. You’re not morally obligated to fund the murder of innocents abroad, but doing the right thing often sucks until you get a lot of other people on board.
don’t want, rather
The difference is: National security is a power/responsibility that is correctly assigned to the federal government. Health care is not the responsibility of the federal government.
We can argue about which wars are necessary for national security, but at least war and national security are federal issues.
And there’s a little thing called the constitution which outlines what as a member of a republic, the government can force you to pay for and what it can’t. I see war in the constitution (although not “conflict”). I don’t see abortion in the constitution
Then show the courage of your convictions and stop paying for it. It’s pretty simple.
I think war is evil, and I have to pay for it. A lot.
All wars are evil or just some? Regardless I believe the Constitution endows the federal government with a role in war. Not so with healthcare and not so with abortion.
Yes that wonderful, enlightened document that allows all manner of blowing foreign people to bits but forbids providing its own citizens healthcare.
Anyway, if you’re really curious, here’s my answer. I don’t believe in ‘evil’ but if there were such a thing war would come closer to it than just about anything else. In the 21st century there really is no excuse for warfare–which, historically, is rarely a necessary thing but usually a means of powerful elites increasing their own power and wealth at the expense of peons doing the fighting for them. I see little change in modern times. Warfare is only justifiable in defense against imminent invasion.
Yes that wonderful, enlightened document that allows all manner of blowing foreign people to bits but forbids providing its own citizens healthcare.
Do yourself a favor and read it, it is pretty succint. The document only gives the federal government an obligation to provide for the common defence. The 297 Republicans and Democrats who voted for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 are the ones who allow blowing up foreign people. Them and the United Nations. As for healthcare, since it is not an enumerated power, you are right, it is forbidden. If you don’t like it, feel free to amend the enlightened document.
The quality of your trollage has slipped markedly and you started with a pretty low bar.
‘I don’t believe in ‘evil”
What about Stalin’s terror-famine, or the [Godwin edit]? Were those things evil, or just one of those things?
Just don’t like the word “evil” because it has a supernatural tinge.
Sub-optimal? Seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time? Making a boo-boo?
‘Evil’ is a perfectly human term. I would say, a part of human nature. There is nothing supernatural about it.
I would understand if you had reservations about words like ‘sinful’ or ‘satanic’, but ‘evil’?
“but forbids providing its own citizens healthcare.”
Amend it then.
And I believe it is wrong to put adults in jail for getting high on substances of their choosing. But don’t force me to pay for those substances.
And you should not have to.
There is a key difference, Tony: There is no other way to pay for police and military protection than via taxes.
However, public health care IS optional for a society (though a good option), and therefore it should be held to a higher standard.
Ok Chad has been replaced by a pod person.
But fwiw it’s certainly possible to pay for police and military via subscription. It was a common model until the last couple of centuries. Not everyone had ‘benefit’ of a government.
Of course sometimes these employees became the government..
Excuse me, I meant viable way. Going back to the era of “My gang is bigger than your gang” is not a good idea.
Tony, I don’t know that my liberty should hang on your notion of administrative convenience. If you push that argument too far you might end up with large italianiate gentlemen on your doorstep attempting to carry you off to jail for not buying insurance (yeah, I know that could never happen, it’s just an example.).
Of course I don’t mean Tony’s administrative convenience, but Chad’s.
I tend to agree, but I’m still a bit conflicted on this, myself. Would competing PDA’s really be worse? Probably but I’m not sure.
As a practical matter I’d be very pleased if we could devolve and re-decentralize power back to the states. Competing governments is good for people.
They don’t believe in the choice to get high on alternatives to alcohol, isn’t it my body my choice. How does privacy rights apply to abortion, which affects another human but not this, which does not.
Who are you referring to? Pro-choice progressives? I think you’ll find this group the most supportive of liberalizing drug laws except perhaps libertarians.
Pro choice moderate democrats.
There’s a difference between liberalizing drug laws and realizing that in a free country, people have the inalienable right to consume whatever substance they choose.
Progressives won’t ever say such a thing because they don’t have the balls. Or ovaries. Or balls.
Defending freedom is political suicide today. Unless you’re Ron Paul. What a guy.
Paginating articles for 2 paragraphs worth of text pisses me off. JUST PUT THE WHOLE DAMN THING ALL ON ONE PAGE REASON!
Seriously. This is the web, not print. Put the whole article on one page so I don’t have to click a link and wait at the climax of an article. You’re supposed to represent reason: be reasonable!
Paginating articles for 2 paragraphs worth of text pisses me off. JUST PUT THE WHOLE DAMN THING ALL ON ONE PAGE REASON!
Seriously. This is the web, not print. Put the whole article on one page so I don’t have to click a link and wait at the climax of an article. You’re supposed to represent reason: be reasonable!
…
Does this mean we get to drink twice?
Oh the inhumanity!
Maybe to increase hits on ad counters so we can still enjoy this free site?
Well I guess using taxpayer dollars to abort future citizens is one way to not have to pay for their health care. Very efficient
Paul
http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/
Well I guess using taxpayer dollars to abort future citizens is one way to not have to pay for their health care. Very efficient
Paul
http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/
And upload the response on YouTube! 😉
In other news, Politicians: Still Hypocrites Today!
I’m not saying people should have to pay for abortions. I’m saying in the context of a universal healthcare bill I would prefer that abortion not be exempted from legal medical procedures just because some christians don’t like it. Imagine if scientologists started demanding we dog-ear the bill for all their pet peeves in healthcare.
Tony, why do you conflate people who oppose abortion with Christians? There is substantial overlap, but they are certain not the same thing. Even more pointedly, most Christians do not actually invoke specifically religious arguments to back their pro-life faith the majority of the time. Indeed, the Bible doesn’t really say much that is terribly relevant to the abortion debate.
In my mind, it is absurd to expect 40% of people to pay for an optional procedure that they strongly oppose, when there are plenty of other options.
Ok for real.. who are you and what did you do with the real Chad?!
But you’re right. I know pro-life libertarians even. Not me, but I absolutely agree. People should have choice but other people should not have to pay for those choices.
Why did you ever assume I was anything other than pro-life? Why should that belief have any relationship with other opinions I have expressed around here?
Why do you believe that the core libertarian ethical system says ANYTHING about at which point a human being has attained sufficient attributes to deserve rights?
People who truly follow libertarianism’s core maxim (Do not initiate the use of force) should have no specific opinion on the abortion issue. “Government is bad” libertarians do, for the wrong reasons.
I think Chad’s got it right. You can do what you want with your body but if you’ve got another one growing inside you then the question changes. Individual circumstances may complicate that question, but I don’t think that a commitment to personal liberty requires us to dismiss the unborn as lacking standing simply because they fail to meet some arbitrarily specified level of personhood.
Don’t get me wrong I’m just surprised. I have to re-evaluate my opinion about you. Not because I agree with you about being pro-life, I don’t at all, but because your opinions aren’t straight left/right subscriptions. So that means you must actually think, so that means you may be actually subject to rational discussion..
Put simply I mistook you for a Tony or NPRbot, and I have to apologize. And especially because I probbably have been more curt with you than was called for.
It’s a legal, sometimes necessary, medical procedure. When did being pro-life become the only morally justifiable option in this debate? My sense of morality leads me inexorably toward being pro-choice. Why should a bill that covers legal medical procedures punish women who need abortions when there is nothing illegal about getting one?
“I’m not saying people should have to pay for abortions. I’m saying in the context of a universal healthcare bill I would prefer that abortion not be exempted from legal medical procedures just because some christians don’t like it.”
If mandatory coverage of abortion becomes part of the health care bill, and the procedure is paid for with taxpayer money, then ipso facto the government is forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions.
“Imagine if scientologists started demanding we dog-ear the bill for all their pet peeves in healthcare.”
I’d rather imagine that since there are millions of people that do not want any part of this bill passed because it would restrict their freedom of choice, that the entire bill would be thrown out. What part of “Freedom, Liberty, and Justice for All” doesn’t Congress understand?
Why are you fighting so hard for the right to choose between perhaps one or two shitty insurance plans (usally from the same company), which is all the “choice” most of us have under the status quo?
I much rather prefer the “choice” of never being uninsured and paying 50% less for similar care, which is what citizens of every other advanced nation on earth has.
Except it doesn’t work that way in Massachusetts, or Maine, etc., etc.
Ah there’s the real Chad;)
Coverage doers not equal service. That’s the problem with what ‘every other advanced nation’ has.
Telling me I am on a list doesn’t help me when I’m looking at a lump. I need treatment. I’m likely to get cancer at some point and I don’t want to destroy the system that provides the highest survivability in the world.
So instead of the two choices you have why not, before we go on this economically unsound course of destroying the health care economy, lets open the market to competition?
No libertarian is arguing for the status quo, for example we want the right to purchase any health insurance policy regulated under a state of our choice; with our individual purchases having the same tax treatment as employer provided care. Combine that with loser pays tort reform and voucherized and means tested Medicare/Medicaid and we have a system that might actually expand coverage, reduce costs and/or improve quality.
Dammit, I believe in the medical power of prayer. I would prefer for it to not be exempted from medical procedures just because some atheists don’t like it.
It’s not a medical procedure.
The Democrats socialized medicine scheme is an illegal legislative procedure.
It violates the Constitution.
There is no ennumerated power contained therein that authorizes the federal government to force anybody to buy health insurance.
The irony is that, being covered about half as often by insurance as other medical procedures, abortion has been less subject to cost inflation and is still affordable by most people out of pocket. Because for one reason.. it has to be.
If it were mandated coverage the price would suffer the same inflationary forces as other procedures.
o, the answer is for people to engage the democratic process and work to get policies they consider immoral rescinded.
So if 50%+1 decide to vote and make homosexuality a felony you’d be okay with that since it was a product of democracy?
Terrific point. You can make the same one about slavery.
Furthermore, this is entirely contrary to what Roe v Wade says. In Roe, the SC essentially said that the voters of the individual states did not have the authority to define abortion as an illegal practice in their respective states, but rather abortion was a “fundamental right” and worthy of constitutional protection. As a matter of law, I’d much rather tricky issues like this, where the simple limitations of human knowledge on precisely where life begins, be left to the individual states to determine themselves either through their legislatures or an iniative process. I know this puts me at odds with a rather large segment of my fellow libertarians though.
I agree. Abortion is a problem that we clearly don’t agree on nationally. That being the case it should be decided, if at all, at the state level.
Same with homosexual marriage.
Define homosexuality.
A courageous reporter might ask the president where he stands on reproductive care today. Is it essential? If not, why should federal funding be banned?
No one is talking about a ban on federal funding for abortion. As I pointed out above, the government already funds hundreds of abortions per year. The question at hand is, will that number go up by tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands per year, or not?
? Harsanyi, why are you contaminating H&R with your abortion threadjacks? I want to read about Ayn Rand T-shirts, not abortion. ?
Allow me to repeat myself from an earlier thread:
If you take money from politicians, your funding will be decided by politics.
Where’s that laser?
You mean this one?
Chad is actually right here, nothing about libertarianism nor even Christianity necessitate holding or opposing the pro life position.
I personally am a pro life libertarian. There is nothing in the Bible that says when life begins, and there are sound scientific reasons to consider the unborn entities alive.
Actually, it is absolutely certain that embryos are both alive and human. I, like many others, believe this alone is sufficient for minimal rights.
True, it is genetically human and it is life.
But so are eggs and sperm. Yes I know you can in turn draw a functional distinction but it starts to get thin.
I don’t think these criteria are sufficient to impinge on the rights of a person at a certain level of fetus development.
I think black and white thinking on this is not productive. I don’t believe many people would have much negative emotional reaction to flushing something they cannot even see with the naked eye down the drain. But I don’t think many people wouldn’t react to doing the same thing to something that looks a lot like a baby. I submit there’s a reason for this. I also submit simply that this is the reality of human nature and passing laws that don’t adhere to that nature are bound to be error prone.
So I think the zealots on both side are not helping anything and so I consider myself pro-choice because I think during the first few weeks limiting abortion is an unjustified imposition on one individuals rights, by something that nature may dispose of anyway.
There is a significant difference between an egg and sperm that are separate from one another and the zygote that is formed when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg. The latter is both fully human in the genetic sense and is discretely different from either parent. That, to me, is the instant wherein a pair of cells that are part of larger organisms become a new human being unto itself.
I do not subscribe to the belief that it’s okay to kill something because mother nature might do it anyway. You can justify pretty much any form of killing with that line of thinking.
That, to me
Right, and there’s the problem. to you. But to some of us things aren’t that simple or simplistic, and a fertilized egg is clearly not identical to a human being just as a penny is not a million dollars.. even though in time if invested it could so become.
I think libertarians get into trouble when they forget the NAP when in the realm of ethics.
And, playing devil’s advocate here, life is cheap (certainly we have no objection to killing bacteria, which are just as alive as we are), and there is also sound scientific reasons to believe that meaningful human life doesn’t begin until well into the first year postpartum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-rWB1jOt9s
Congress creatures that voted for the ‘health care’ bill = retarded fetuses.
Sort of like voting against choice to vote in D.C. unless the choice to own a firearm amendment is removed.
Ideologues are their own worst enemy.
If the government begins telling 85-year-olds that they’re too old for, say, hip replacements, can it then also tell 21-year-old healthy and financially-able women that they should have their babies?
The abortion issue shows how “privacy” only matters when it enables abortion.
How about respecting a patient’s right to make every other medical decision without government’s involvement?
Can they stop 85-year-olds from using their own money to pay for hip replacements?
Wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe another penalty through the tax code.
If you paid enough “mandated coverage” for the whole of your life, you may not have enough money left.
People seem to forget that all those “public” services drain the pocket of an average taxpayer, up to the state where he has no choice but to use the “public” service.
Go to the NRLC site and check the voting patterns on abortion. Not all those who voted to ban abortions are abortion foes.
I think libertarians get into trouble when they forget the NAP when in the realm of ethics. NAP = non-agression principle.
And others get in trouble with the “whose body is it anyway?” principle.
It comes down to – when is an acorn an oak tree?
Like the fetus/baby argument, it all depends on whether you want to grow an oak tree.
I propose an amendment to the Health Care bill. If we are going to include tax dollars to pay for abortions, then we must include tax dollars to pay for women to go to fertility clinics in order to conceive when they are incapable in doing so themselves. If reproductive issues are a “basic right” as the President contends, then conceiving a child as well as killing a child must be a part of that issue. As for the clause going against the “status quo”, removing it from the health care bill is actually going against the status quo, as we already have legislation that keeps federal funding away from the abortion issue. So, Mr. President, your efforts to try and remove it will actually go against the status quo.
While I’m a Ron Paul supporter, I also do my best not to look at things with rose-colored glasses. That’s how I can read this article and applaud its honesty, even if I don’t like the words from my biased perspective. Oh who am I kidding? I actually have my own idea why he lost like he did.
Aside from the reasons listed (since they’re good reasons), one reason I didn’t see what something that happened at the ABC debates. While I read comments from co-supporters deploring the verbal attack on Paul during the war discussion, they failed to realize that Paul dug himself in a bit in his retorts to the attack. He didn’t defend his stance well and I think that was a key factor in the end result.
While I’m a Ron Paul supporter, I also do my best not to look at things with rose-colored glasses. That’s how I can read this article and applaud its honesty, even if I don’t like the words from my biased perspective. Oh who am I kidding? I actually have my own idea why he lost like he did.
Aside from the reasons listed (since they’re good reasons), one reason I didn’t see what something that happened at the ABC debates. While I read comments from co-supporters deploring the verbal attack on Paul during the war discussion, they failed to realize that Paul dug himself in a bit in his retorts to the attack. He didn’t defend his stance well and I think that was a key factor in the end result.
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My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I’m sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won’t get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there’s more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp. I’m not concerned that Mr. Crumb will go to hell or anything crazy like that! It’s just that he, like many types of religionists, seems to take it literally, take it straight…the Bible’s books were not written by straight laced divinity students in 3 piece suits who white wash religious beliefs as if God made them with clothes on.
My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I’m sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won’t get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there’s more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp. I’m not concerned that Mr. Crumb will go to hell or anything crazy like that! It’s just that he, like many types of religionists, seems to take it literally, take it straight…the Bible’s books were not written by straight laced divinity students in 3 piece suits who white wash religious beliefs as if God made them with clothes on.
My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I’m sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane.
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