A G K Y R A

A few weeks back, I saw on TV a Republican Congressman, giving a speech on the House floor, who said something to the effect of “Americans deserve the best health care in the world.” I wish I had written down the guy’s name because I can’t find a transcript now. But I did find a lot of similar comments on the web. Dan Kalmick is a young man running for Congress in southern California, and he thinks that “Americans deserve the best healthcare possible.” A researcher quoted in a PARADE article last year says that “All Americans deserve the best health care in the world.” And according to this Senate press release, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) pronounces that “Americans deserve the highest quality health care available.”

So much talk about what Americans “deserve”! And how good we must be to deserve “the best,” “the highest quality” … IN THE WORLD!

I’m interested in this language of deserts. The way I understand the word “deserve,” a person only deserves something based on his performance within a legal, contractual, or covenantal agreement, or perhaps for exceptional service. A worker deserves his wages come payday; he’s entitled to them, his employer owes them, and if the employer doesn’t pay up, the worker can ask a judge to compel him. This is desert in the strict sense.

To give an example of the loose sense, when Nobel Prizes are awarded, we might say that all of the people who were under consideration deserved a prize, even though only one could win it. The nominees weren’t entitled to a prize, and the committee didn’t owe them one. Since the prize is an honor given voluntarily, not by entitlement, when someone says that each one deserved the prize, that is just another way to honor their work.

A quick check of the Oxford English Dictionary confirms my understanding of the word: “To have acquired, and thus to have, a rightful claim to; to be entitled to, in return for services or meritorious actions, or sometimes for ill deeds and qualities; to be worthy to have.”

In what sense, then, do Americans deserve the best health care in the world? Who owes this to us Americans? To whom have we provided services so that we are now, in return, entitled to receive the best health care in the world? Or if we’re talking about desert in the sense of worthiness, what great deeds have we done to be worthy of the highest quality care in the world? How presumptuous for an American to extol the worthiness of himself and other Americans to receive the best health care!

Why is it that Americans — as Americans — deserve the best health care in the world? Why don’t Guatemalans or Laotians or Hungarians deserve the best health care in the world? Does everyone deserve the best health care in the world? Does everyone deserve the best food in the world, or the best drink, or the best TV programming, or the best mattresses? Why don’t we all deserve the best of everything, if it’s just up to us to declare this about ourselves?

“Americans deserve” talk is political pandering. Desert has nothing to do with anything. What Americans do have is just what we produce, buy, or borrow, exactly like every other state, household, or individual in the world. I wish Americans would produce more intelligent, wise, and honest politicians, but Lord knows we don’t deserve them!

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Related posts:

1. FEMACare: Do You Trust the Government With Your Health Care?
2. Universal Healthcare and the Social Security Crisis

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, as is now well known, has been visiting prostitutes. It wasn’t just a one-time mistake — in the federal wiretap investigation that brought all this to light, Spitzer talks about being behind in his payments to the prostitutes and wants to catch up and pay ahead, to have a credit on his account!

I am dismayed, but not surprised, at how many people I am hearing in man-on-the-street polls who say that it’s his private life and has nothing to do with his governing, so the media should just leave him alone. I guess when you have that kind of person voting, you get that kind of governor.

When he was inaugurated — just last year! — Spitzer took an oath to uphold the constitution of the State of New York (watch the short video below). That very constitution specifies his gubernatorial duties, chief of which is to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed” (article 4, section 3).

How can he be responsible to execute and enforce the laws when he, himself, personally, privately, knowingly, willfully, with full intent and a plan, breaks them?

We elect legislators to write and enact laws. What are we saying about the power of the executive if he can single-handedly thwart the will of our entire legislature with impunity?

How can he govern our state and enforce our laws when he goes to the District of Columbia, where Congress, no less, is the governor, and breaks their laws?

Our leaders should be our best people. If the rest of us let ourselves become like these “who cares?” types, they are bound to be our worst. If our leaders are to hold us accountable, we have to hold them accountable. If we don’t, then upholding the law becomes simply optional, a matter of personal preference according to our own convenience.

Governor Spitzer must resign. If he doesn’t, he must be impeached.

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If you haven’t been to the website for Tim Keller’s new book, why don’t you take a look? Make sure your computer audio is turned up so you can hear.

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Starving Econ Grad tagged me to participate in a meme. The meme is: (1) Pick up the nearest book and turn to page 123; (2) skip the first five sentences and post the next three sentences (i.e., sentences 6-8); (3) tag five more people.

I happen to have at hand The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, which I was using last night to double-check some citations in Lloyd Gaston’s disastrous (in my opinion) Paul and the Torah.

Page 123 opens to Sirach 17:6, so following the meme, I will post verse 11-13, which is about God’s creating all the nations of the earth:

He bestowed knowledge upon them, and allotted to them the law of life. He established with them an eternal covenant, and revealed to them his decrees. Their eyes saw his glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of his voice.

There’s something freaky about this: these are the exact verses I was looking up while reading Lloyd Gaston’s book. On page 39 of his book, Gaston cites these very verses as evidence for a Jewish idea that the Gentiles are subject to God’s law but are not party to his covenant (he’s wrong, but that’s beside the point). Isn’t that weird that the meme led me to precisely what I happened to be working with anyway?

Another weird thing happened this morning. About an hour ago, I logged onto the Encyclopedia Britannica website to look up information about Robert Mugabe, the “President” of Zimbabwe. After putting in my user name and password, the Encyclopedia’s home page greeted me with a notice about the biography of the day: ROBERT MUGABE. What are the odds!

I tag Brad Edwards at Confessions of a Seminarian, Kyle Wells at Blue and Wonder (maybe this will spur him on to write more), Nick Gleason at Boondoggle for Free (he needs to be spurred too), Shaun or Danielle Spencer at their daughter Eva’s babyblog, and Bobby Griffith at his blog. And number six: Dane Ortlund at Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology.

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Related posts:

1. Covenant Seminary Blogs
2. Covenant Seminary Blogs

It has now come out that Obama’s rousing speech at the Wisconsin Democratic Party — you know, the “words don’t matter?” speech I just wrote about — is plagiarized from a speech by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. Here is Deval Patrick’s original speech from 2006:

Now here is Obama on Saturday night:

It is profoundly ironic that in his chance to rebut critics who say that his speeches are emotionalistic fluff — just words — he doesn’t even use his own words!

Obama is basing his whole campaign on his superior ability to inspire people, to get them excited about “change you can believe in.” His ideas aren’t really very different than Hillary Clinton’s, and in fact, people have pointed out that a lot of “his” ideas come from legislation that Hillary Clinton proposed long before Obama ever came on the scene.

I wouldn’t bother to point this out about any other candidate, but since Obama’s whole candidacy is based only on the importance of getting you inspired, this is directly relevant. My point is this: Obama wants to inspire you to believe in him — he says policies don’t matter if you aren’t feeling inspired! — and yet he relies on stolen material to inspire you. I wonder how inspired you’ll feel when he runs out of new or borrowed material and goes into re-runs. I bet then you’ll wish you had given more thought to the important issues.

P.S., If you ask me, Deval Patrick’s is the more inspiring version. Maybe Obama supporters should draft him as their candidate instead!

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Related posts:

1. Obama: How Inspiration and Belief Relate to Policy

To his critics who charge that his speeches are just a bunch of windy rhetoric, Barack Obama attacks the straw man that “words don’t matter” — not that anyone said anything like that! At the Wisconsin Democratic Party yesterday, Obama said that the critics are ignoring his years of public service. Wrong again. The shallow emotional appeals of his speeches have nothing to do with his political career thus far.

Then he tries to whip up his audience’s emotions by associating his speeches with some of the most important words in American history: “I have a dream,” “Four score and seven years ago,” “We hold these truths to be self evident.” Obama says, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.” Right. Words with content do matter, or in other words, ideas matter.

Obama goes on:

If we cannot inspire the country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have, and that is why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

Will someone please tell me what that means? This really got his supporters in Wisconsin excited, but I frankly don’t understand it. It looks like he can only reply to the charge that his words are empty with more empty words! What, pray tell, is the connection between inspiration, belief, and public policy? You want to inspire us unto what? You want us to believe what? “Duh, change.”

Whatever that means.

(You can see this part of the speech for yourself at Digg.)

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Related posts:

1. Is Obama’s Plagiarism the Change You Can Believe In?
2. More on Personal Truth
3. Barack Obama, "My Spiritual Journey" in Time