Civil Commotion

Apparently, the United States hasn’t abandoned NAFTA because Donald Trump’s son-in-law contacted Justin Trudeau and asked him to call The Donald and say he’s against America’s withdrawal.

The National Post said White House officials called Canadian officials seeking Trudeau’s assistance in convincing their boss to save NAFTA. The Canadian Press identified Jared Kushner as the White House aide who may have rescued the trade deal, while the Associated Press said Ottawa reached out to Trump’s son-in-law first.

Well … who knows? Since Trump hasn’t any beliefs except in his own magnificence, and is famously susceptible to flattery, the story can’t be dismissed. But it has the sound of the sort of manipulations that go on in poorly-run businesses and dysfunctional families.

On the other hand, it makes it at least plausible that a cabal of friends, family, advisors and sundry hangers-on were schmoozing with Putin and Trump was oblivious. What a mess. THANKS!, Values Voters.

Michael Hamar points toward a piece in the Boston Globe that argues for something I’ve believed for a long time, and said here often: Much of the hostility toward Barack Obama, and the achievements of his administration, is no more than racist angst that a NIGRA MOOZLIM!! did those things while living in OUR WHITE HOUSE!!

Seriously: The racist nutjobs who fantasize about a Sunnybrook Republic that never was can’t stand it, and are determined to make others pay whatever price is necessary to undo Obama’s achievements.

Obamacare repeal is based on racial resentment

House Republicans are taking health services away from disabled children, women who give birth, and survivors of rape and sexual assault. They are consigning thousands of people with serious illnesses to death by making them uninsurable in an era of unaffordable treatment. Virtually every reputable medical organization in the country condemns the health care bill that passed the House Thursday, but the GOP clings to two reasons for passing it.

[ … ]

Most Americans have no quibble with Obamacare itself, but for Republicans, repealing it is and always has always been a way to repudiate former president Barack Obama. Since taking office, President Trump has done several things that he previously chastised Obama for, but these contradictions have had little impact on his party or their supporters.

Most Republicans, who are not conservatives in any meaningful sense of the word, don’t seem to be aware that Republicans since Teddy Roosevelt have argued for some flavor of a national health service, or that Obamacare was modeled after their party’s 2012 nominee’s plan for Massachusetts, which was itself adapted from a plan put forward by a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

It’s all about hating Obama — and they don’t care whom they hurt.

I so often bash the Southern Baptists, a denomination that has degraded itself to the level of a cult of self-abasement since the Fundamentalist Takeover, that it’s a pleasure to occasionally encounter a Baptist who isn’t crazy and single-mindedly devoted to the degradation of others. Today, we have an example of that in this piece in the Dallas News by a pastor associated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Contemporary calls for religious freedom legislation or presidential executive orders or city ordinances mostly run afoul of the First Amendment because they forget the Golden Rule. Most often, these are attempts to prevent me from having to do something for you that I don’t want to do while still demanding that you be required to do that same thing for me. There’s another simple word for this: Selfishness.

Both the Golden Rule and the First Amendment call us to selflessness instead. My freedom is only as secure as your freedom. Even if I disagree with your religion or if my religion causes me to be suspicious of your sexual orientation or gender identity or race, I am called by Jesus and the Bill of Rights to walk the extra mile with you.

Well said. I could probably sit in that church without feeling I had soiled myself.

This would not be a bad time to recall that Congress had a reason for passing the Johnson Amendment: Once upon a time, the tax-free status of churches enabled them to funnel anonymous, unaccountable money to political candidates just as Super PACs do today — and many pastors were willing to allow their church to be used in that way, so long as they got a cut.

Since religion has (deservedly) lost a lot of its social influence during the last several decades, and politicians have created Super PACs to replace them, it is unlikely that the Executive Order signed yesterday by Donald Trump will significantly affect that. Even so, the Amendment should remain in place and be enforced, otherwise we all end up indirectly subsidizing the candidate most willing to suck-up to Pastor Bubba.

By the way, if pastors truly believed in religious liberty they would disapprove of skeptics being compelled by law to subsidize them.

As it happens, the Order signed yesterday was little more than a gesture, glibly instructing that the federal government should protect religious liberty within prevailing law. If anything at all actually changes, it isn’t obvious.

And listen to the feeble, half-hearted applause of the evangelical leaders summoned to witness the signing: They know they aren’t getting what they wanted.

So reads a lawn sign just a couple of miles from my front door.