Want to be used again?

Baptist writer Bruce Gourley traces the history of Southern reactionary conservatism back to Civil War opposition to the abolition of slavery, and finds those sentiments reignited in the opposition to health care reform:

The white anger over Obama’s presidency and health care reform, in the words of protesters, ultimately rests in claims that the federal government is plotting to take away their freedoms and liberties. Video clips of this month’s town hall meetings across the nation include angry senior citizens living on socialized medicine (Medicare) ranting against … socialized medicine. The video clips also reveal claims that the government “outlawed prayer and legalized abortion” and now wants to take away the right to decide one’s own health care, and “we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

The social engineers who are exploiting those old grievances know they’re trafficking in untruths.

Like Ralph Reed, who used Christian conservatives in his promotion of Indian gaming interests and other causes, these groups want to use Christian conservatives for their own purposes.

Reed was out beating the drum again last week, singing what for him is a lucrative old song.

How eager are you to be used, again?

Our Lady of the Death Panels on the Daily Show

This is a thoughtful, courteous discussion:

Part One

Part Two

Too busy for the Daily Show interview? Just read the brief interview with Conservative Southern Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who said in part:

I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.

The Isakson interview is here.

How to think theologically about health care

At Street Prophets’ pastordan writes:

It’s not about “us” at all. Harry Jackson, of all people, gets it right when we calls health care reform “reverse classism.” It is! It is about choosing the side of the poor, the working and the middle class over and against the rich. … that’s the side God takes. God has taken a preferential option for the poor, and God will work out the implications of that choice in due time. We are only involved to the extent that we choose to cooperate with the plan or not.

Read the entire piece here.

Progressive evangelical and conservative have a civil dialog

Amid the manufactured uproar, some do still manage to share their differences in public, and on some points, politely agree to disagree.

Health Care for ‘…the least of these…’

Southern Baptist pastor Wade Burleson posts a thorough, well-researched letter “from a Christian man named ‘Chuck Brown.’”

He calls out to Christian Biblical heritage, writing:

Ultimately, health care reform is not about whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, or whatever else. It is not about whether you are conservative, liberal, independent, or apolitical. It is not about whether you despise Barack Obama or like Barack Obama. Health care reform is about “…the least of these…” among us and our ability to make some changes that will help them.

Read the entire letter here.

God on our side, and health reform

British Baptist journalist Jonathan Langley writes for the Associated Baptist Press that:

… in a week when Americans opposed to a large role for government in health-care reform have been attacking the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, mistaking American rights for “Christian rights” highlights a tendency in some American Christian circles to mistake the United States for the Kingdom of God.

He goes from that right to the heart of the objection some have to health reform. We Americans tend to believe one and all that God is on our side. Thus anything we feel is somehow un-American must be evil:

This, I think, helps explain why there have been such vehement denunciations of the British health-care system in America in recent days. Socialism, to those still brainwashed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s legacy, is “un-American.” Why? Because, as an old colleague returning from a time in Chicago explained to me last week, the American dream is to work for yourself and your own betterment. And any attempt to make you pay even a little for someone else’s health care is a violation of that dream.

Yet as Christians, he writes, “Our duty is to remember that the God Jesus Christ proclaims requires his children to give freely, love selflessly and sacrifice readily for the well-being of others.”

Driven by that faith-based logic he concludes:

Let’s pray that our American brothers and sisters can free themselves of any heresies that would see them deny the less fortunate among them health care for the sake of any false dream.

Huckabee and the fate of the Palestinians

The Jerusalem Post called Mike Huckabee’s rejection of a two-state Israel/Palestine solution as a challenge to “the policies of both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.”

Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt wrote in Foreign Policy:

Given that current demographic trends suggest that Arabs will be a majority in the lands currently controlled by Israel in the not-too-distant future, Huckabee is either endorsing ethnic cleansing or calling for the permanent denial of democratic rights to the Arab residents of the Occupied Territories, which is a form of apartheid. Either way, he is no friend of Israel, and the policies he’s endorsing will do great damage to US interests throughout the region.

Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offered demographic detail:

At current estimates, there are 2.3 million Arabs living in the occupied West Bank and 1.4 million Arabs in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 1.5 million Arabs living within Israel’s internationally recognized boundaries. In fact, there are probably more Arabs living in the “Jewish homeland” than there are Jews. To achieve the single-state, Jewish-state solution proposed by Huckabee, one of two things must happen. The Palestinians would have to either go or stay.

Go, or stay?

Huckabee’s hosts have a preference, it seems. Huckabee was was the guest of the Jewish Reclamation Project of Ateret Cohanim, a Zionist group.

Bob Allen of Ethics Daily wrote in an article published today:

Former presidential candidate and possible vice presidential nominee Mike Huckabee visited Israel as a guest of a right-wing Zionist group that is buying up property to move Jews into Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter in hopes of replacing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque with a reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple and ushering in the Messianic Age.

Although Richard Silverstein goes deeper in his probing of Huckabee’s hosts.

Huckabee’s stance is no surprise. A Southern Baptist Minister is to be expected to base his foreign policy views on his faith.

Huckabee is quite conservative. His views brought him and his hosts together and lead him toward the kinds of solutions which concern Walt and others. Views about which simple humanity may have reasonable concerns.

With no reference to Huckabee, Tony Cartledge wrote Monday in a blog based on Alex Awad’s book, Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and Her People:

I have a lot of sympathy for Israel and the Israelis — don’t get me wrong. But I also have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinians who continue to be displaced and dominated in ways that are wrong in the sight of God and man. The West has perpetrated unspeakable crimes against the Jews through the years — but trying to balance the scales on the backs of the Palestinians just adds one great crime to another.

DC Court of Appeals sets standards protecting anonymous online speech

The arbitrary disregard of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department for Thomas A. Rich’s right to anonymity as the FBC Jax Watchdog blogger could not meet the standards set by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals last Thursday, or of other lower courts which have ruled on similar matters.

FBC Jax Watchdog’s anonymity was stripped away without prior notice in a still unsatisfactorily explained criminal investigation over which no charge was filed and which produced no court action. Although the DC case involved defamation[.pdf], the standards are nonetheless clear.

A subpoena associated with a well-pleaded claim and the opportunity to contest it are required to consider breach of online anonymity:

1. Ensure that the plaintiff has adequately pleaded the elements of a defamation claim.
2. Require reasonable efforts to notify the anonymous defendant that the complaint has been filed and the subpoena has been served.
3. Delay further action for a reasonable time to allow the defendant an opportunity to file a motion to quash.
4. Require the plaintiff to proffer evidence creating a genuine issue of material fact on each element of the claim that is within its control.
5. Determine that the information sought is important to enable the plaintiff to proceed with his/her lawsuit.

The consensus of the lower courts is that disclosure of an anonymous blogger’s identity requires painstaking court consideration. Lack of that is not excused by the dismissive statement[.pdf] of the Jacksonville, Fla., Sheriff John Rutherford.

Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project wrote:

The court also perceived the danger of relying on procedural labels like “prima facie” and “summary judgment” and distilled the most important common feature of the competing tests in this area — that a plaintiff must make at least a substantial legal and factual showing that his/her claim has merit before a court will unmask an anonymous or pseudonymous Internet speaker.

As The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press explained, the D.C. court “noted that states vary widely in what test a defamation plaintiff must meet before it can compel a third party to turn over the identity of an anonymous speaker. Virginia, for example, ‘requires only that the court be convinced that the party seeking the subpoena has a legitimate, good faith basis’ for its claims. But the D.C. court ruled that this lax test
‘may needlessly strip defendants of anonymity in situations where there is no substantial evidence of wrongdoing, effectively giving little or no First Amendment protection to that anonymity.’ “

When anyone’s First Amendment protection is trampled, we are all harmed.

Accepting user comments, and so fully back in the blogosphere

We note in passing that SBC Today gave up its February decision to forego user comments on its blog entries.

We argued at the time that their decision was both self-destructive and disrespectful of their readers.

User response, which in cases like that is in general to leave and stay away until you come to your senses, had its way.