The New Tea Party Message - Please Go Die

A number of surveys have shown that the so-called Tea Party movement in the GOP is pretty much made up of conservative Christians. You know, those folks who claim to honor Christ and live their lives according to Christ's Gospel message. The funny thing, however, is that they in fact do the exact opposite. By their actions they reject the Gospel message and instead embrace the worse aspects of the Old Testament where the abuse and murder of men, women and children is glorified as God smites his supposed enemies. Nowhere is this perversion of Christianity in the political realm becoming more obvious than in regard to the issue of health care for the uninsured, poor and sick. The Tea Party messages is basically "do us a favor and just go die." Of course this religion of hate and division is not limited to the issue of health insurance coverage. We LGBT Americans, non-Christians, non-whites, and a host of other groups are incessant targets of contempt and hatred. Returning to the issue of health care, Paul Krugman has a piece in the New York Times that underscores the fallacy that those who lack insurance are simply irresponsible or in search of a free ride. Here are some highlights:

Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.” I’m referring, as you might guess, to what happened during Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.” And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”

Now, there are two things you should know about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighed in, Mr. Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received the care they needed — or at least they would if they hadn’t been corrupted by the welfare state. Sorry, but that’s a fantasy. People who can’t afford essential medical care often fail to get it, and always have — and sometimes they die as a result.

The second is that very few of those who die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypothetical individual who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, most uninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions.

So would people on the right be willing to let those who are uninsured through no fault of their own die from lack of care? The answer, based on recent history, is a resounding “Yeah!” Think, in particular, of the children.

So the freedom to die extends, in practice, to children and the unlucky as well as the improvident. And the right’s embrace of that notion signals an important shift in the nature of American politics. In the past, conservatives accepted the need for a government-provided safety net on humanitarian grounds.

Now, however, compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base.

And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the “common hazards of life” through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.

Are voters ready to embrace such a radical rejection of the kind of America we’ve all grown up in? I guess we’ll find out next year.

As noted before, modern day "Christians" and Tea Party adherents make the Pharisees of the Gospel look like pretty nice folks in comparison. Conservative Christianity is proving itself to be nothing short than a moral evil in the world.