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As the above Perspective highlights, words such as values, rights and liberties are precious to Americans. But are we using these terms too loosely? Are we dumping into these terms ideas and concepts that render them useless? Do we need to redefine them? Or do we need to be more precise when it comes to their meaning? Consider three examples:
- First, the term “rights” permeates the health care debate. For example, in August, President Obama re-framed the health care debate by arguing that there is a “core ethical and moral obligation” to health care. Further, he has talked about health care as something similar to a civil right. Newsweek columnist, Jonathan Alter, makes the same argument: “The core principle behind health care reform is—or should be—a combination of Social Security insurance and civil rights. Passage would end the shameful era in our nation’s history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick.” However, it is time to stop this! Are we certain we want to place our collective stamp of approval on defining health care issues as rights? Is this wise or even possible? Listen to columnist George Will: “If our vocabulary is composed exclusively of references to rights, a.k.a. entitlements, we are condemned to endless jostling among elbow-throwing individuals irritably determined to protect, or enlarge, the boundaries of their rights. Among such people, all political discourse tends to be distilled to what Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School calls ‘rights talk.’” This is precisely what has occurred in the national discussion about health care. Each proposal offered is invested with the dignity of a right, resulting in what Will calls the “apocalyptic clashes of rights.” Framing an issue around the talk of rights “tends toward moral inflation and militates against accommodation.” Rights talk redefines an issue, then places the moral authority of government behind that issue to solve it and the result is an entitlement program that increases the role of government in our lives and pushes the nation toward bankruptcy. Medicaid is an example. It defines health care for citizens below a certain income level as a right. The individual states then must pay for this unfunded mandate to the extent that states like California are on the verge of financial collapse. Framing an issue like health care as a right is a certain path to financial insolvency. Is universal health care really a fundamental human right?
- Second, consider another aspect of the health care debate and the matter of rights. Belmont Abbey College is a Catholic college in the United States. It will not permit abortion, sterilization and contraception to be covered by its employees’ health care plan. It makes this prohibition because it regards such practices as immoral. But the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has labeled Belmont’s health plan “sexist.” The director of Charlotte, North Carolina has stated that denying contraception is sexist “because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By ending coverage, men are not affected, only women.” Even though North Carolina law protects religions institutions from having to cover contraception, abortion and voluntary sterilization, the case could end up in federal court. Furthermore, Chuck Colson reports on these other instances: In Boston, Catholic Charities was forced out of the adoption business because it would not place children with homosexual couples. Christian fertility doctors have been sued because they refused artificial insemination to a lesbian—even though they referred her to another doctor. Christian pharmacists have lost their jobs for not distributing morning-after pills. Furthermore, and perhaps most profoundly, Congress has rejected every attempt to include language to protect the consciences of medical professionals in the health care debate. Further, current legislation under consideration may hand over to a “Health Choices Commissioner” the ability to regulate “basically all health insurance in America.” A bureaucrat will now decide what procedures must be covered by the insurance plans of day care centers, Christian high schools and religiously-based colleges. Scary!! We now define health care as a right but reject any provision that protects the rights of the consciences of health care professionals. One would think that in the US with our Constitution, we would not need to protect the religious freedom of health care professionals. But we are living with the consequences of rights talk gone insane! Even the Constitution is distorted in this debate. The Bill of Rights is no longer used to protect against government intrusion; it is the mechanism for promoting government intrusion at the expense of religious freedom! That is not what the Founders of this Republic had in mind.
- Third, consider our current focus on values, specifically economic values. Many historians have observed that nations and empires have gone through a rather predictable cycle: Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline. Until recently, this had not seemed to apply to the US. Our affluence has not led to indulgence and decline—until now. The early settlers of the nation in the colonial period were frugal and disciplined when it came to implementing their economic values. The pioneers of the West and the immigrants who flooded these shores maintained these same frugal economic values. But this has shifted. David Brooks, the columnist, has argued that there has been a dramatic shift in this nation’s economic values: “Some of the signs are seemingly innocuous. States around the country began sponsoring lotteries: government-approved gambling that extracts its largest toll from the poor. Executives and hedge fund managers began bragging about compensation that would have been shameful a few decades ago. Chain restaurants went into supersize mode, offering gigantic portions that would have been socially unacceptable to an earlier generation.” Another indicator of this shift in values is consumer consumption and debt. From 1950 to 1980, personal consumption was about 62% of GDP but in the next three decades it shot up to 70% of GDP. At the same time debt exploded. By 2007, Americans’ personal debt had surged to 133% of national income. Hence, our current crisis. Now, America must restore its traditional economic values to once again make the US a producer economy, not a consumer economy. We must champion a return to financial self-restraint. In my view, this crusade for economic self-restraint must be accompanied by a religious and spiritual revival. The fundamental problem of America is not financial but spiritual. We must restore a culture of frugality which sees temporal and material things through the gird of eternity. Eternity helps us to see that material things including money are either an idol or a tool. I am afraid for too long we have seen mammon as an idol, not a tool to advance the kingdom of God. That supreme value is what this nation needs.
See David Brooks in the New York Times (29 September 2009); Chuck Colson, “Breakpoint” (26 August 2009); Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse in the New York Times (20 August 2009); Jonathan Alter in Newsweek (24 and 31 August 2009); George Will in the Washington Post (11 October 2009). |
