Winning Words 3/22/10
“One would give generous alms if one had the eyes to see…a cupped receiving hand.” (Goethe) Our view on many issues usually is influenced by personalizing it. The health care legislation is an example of this. Aside from the politics, people can often be swayed by putting a face on the issue. Goethe lived about 200 years ago. Attitudes toward giving haven’t changed much. ;-) Jack

FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY: We participate in the Dick Purtan "Bed and Bread" radio donation program each year. It's absolutely amazing how many people care about the poor and hungry in Detroit. The USA is the most generous nation in the world, both with our time and our funds. I think we have good eyes although there are always going to be the poor and hungry, as Jesus says. FROM JACK: We will miss DP when he retires this week.

FROM L IN ILLINOIS: People can be swayed by bribes, promises and threats, too. FROM JACK: I could have used Haiti as an example, but I knew I'd hear from you if I mentioned health care legislation.

FROM PRJS IN MICHIGAN: The conservaatives in America have fought desperately against every major change that has ever occurred. It took a huge war to stop them from enslaving other people. It took a huge movement....the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries....to keep them from oppressing others in sweat shops and using children to labor for them. It took over 60 years and a depression before they were forced to acknowledge the rights of workers to organize. It took over one hundred years to keep them from using poll taxes, grandfather clauses and threats to stop African American citizens from voting. Now we finally have a health plan which has been in the making since the late 1940s ....but only over their dead bodies. We were the only major developed nation in the world to lack a health plan. It takes so much sweat, toil and tears to make changes in this country that ought to seem obvious. Thank God we have folks who are willing to fight it out and get those changes. God bless Barack Obama FROM JACK: Justice is sometimes long in coming.

FROM GOOD DEBT JON: There is giving as Goethe speaks of here; and since you brought it up “Coercive Giving” through legislation, “where the hand never un-cups.” In the present legislation the IRS will need to hire 17,000 more “charitable development officers” to enforce this coerced compassion. FROM JACK: I purposely chose health care legislation as an example in order to see if it would be a diversion from Goethe's words. Mentioning earthquake victims instead would probably elicited other responses.

FROM SH IN MICHIGAN: How come the insurance company people can't see a cupped receiving hand and the bank people can't see a cupped receiving hand? I think the government (which is financed by us taxpayers) needs to be involved when the private agencies/institutions no longer work for the common social good. I am really dismayed that DMC evidently is going to become a for-profit hospital/medical institution. Maybe all of this is just the inevitability of a society becoming destructive from within and our country has no reason we won't succumb to the inevitability of decay and instability any more than any other great nation power has been able to. Every year at this time, I am especially engrossed with the story of Judas, his maybe even despair with the political situation, what he saw in the institutions around him, what he did. The situation then, the situation now, it all feels so timely. FROM JACK: Inner city medical centers are seldom able to get the financing that they need in order to compete with the suburban hospitals. DMC made the decision to go with a "for profit" institution in order to maintain and enhance care for their clients. It is not a perfect world. Health care will change with the legislation that has been passed.

FROM PRCWR IN B'MORE: I just had a chat with an aide to my Democrat Congressman Kratovil, the only Maryland Democrat to vote against the Health Care Bill. Needless to say, he couldn't believe that I was a Clergyman. He thought that I was a Longshoreman. FROM JACK: Did he explain his vote?