Rick Perry Says Social Security and Medicare Were Given to Us by God. Seriously. [Addendum added.]
The things we have in this country were given to us by God, not by government.
— Perry: Government isn’t your savior, Nick Gass, Politico, today
Social Security and Medicare were given to us by God? Who knew?
The highway system, sewer and water systems, airports and air traffic control, operation of shipping ports, public school systems, and (going back a way) electrification of the Tennessee Valley?
The research that resulted in the polio vaccine?
Guess I’ve been under a misapprehension about their provenance.
—
ADDENDUM: It just occurred to me that, presumably then, the things Canadians, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans have in their countries were given to them by God, not by government. And the French, too—especially their healthcare system, widely regarded as one of the best in the world and available free of charge to everyone.
Which makes me wonder why God favors Canadians, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans and the French over Americans.
That said, I do understand why God favors the residents of blue states here in this country over red states. Just in the last year alone, God has saved many, many more lives and lessened pain and physical suffering for far more people in blue states than in red states simply by deciding to significantly expand Medicaid availability under Obamacare. Why did He decide to be a savior for so many more people in California than in Texas and Kansas? He’s obviously a Democrat. But he’s supposed to be nonpolitical.
This is testing my faith.
Added 6/5 at 2:58 p.m.
praise Allah!
I’m about 1/3rd the way through One Nation Under God: How Corporate America invented Christian America.
For me, it is history that was only hinted about but now reading about it again I am amazed at how much of what we are seeing today is exactly to the words used and phrases used the same as in the past. Most startling is how much Eisenhower was pivotal in cementing the idea of God into our government operations.
I do recommend the book.
Ah. You’re right, rjs. Every one of the countries I just mentioned in my addendum has a large Muslim immigrant population now. Red state Christians need to covert en masse if they want better public schools and such.
They’ll tell you anything and everything was given by their god. One told me that god was “the ONE mathematician” who gave us calculus. It’s just the way they think, and nothing will change their minds. Might as well try to teach an elephant to waltz. I guess it is comforting to have an explanation for everything, even if it explains nothing.
So let’s see:
God gave us plants and animals to eat, rock and metal to build with, sun and rain…
And God gave the animals plants and other animals to eat, dirt to dig in and rain to drink…
God gave polio, malaria, vultures, influenza and dire wolves yummy humans to snack upon… To say nothing of skin mites, who dwell on us like planets.
Once you get started on this “God gave” train of thought, things get creepy pretty quickly, unless you’re a dab hand with the rationalizations. People feasting on turkeys = one of the four freedoms. Vultures feasting on humans… eh, not so much.
Noni you have to understand that God and Obama are much alike in this. Each is just playing 11th Dimensional Chess and it is not up to us mere mortals to try to figure out the apparent contradictions.
Mockery aside but continuing in this vein. Christians have a perfectly good explanation of the existence of Evil. And Malaria. He/They/The Three of Them are playing the Long Game. In fact the Eternal Game. That the Game required the gambit of (temporarily) sacrificing the Son in a way not easily explicable is itself proof the God is the Grand Master. And the only time YOU will get it is after the Checkmate/Rapture.
Now personally I subscribe to either of both the Gospels as revealed in two songs on Randy Newman’s album Sail Away: track 3 “He Gives Us All His Love” which has God shining down his love on a suffering World but not doing anything. Because in the end He doesn’t really care. or track 12 “Gods Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” where the final line of the song reveals “They really need me”.
Benign Sociopath? or Needy Narcissist? Either way it explains the existence of those skin mites.
Well, I don’t mind the skin mites. They’re so little, so modestly dependent on us, that I feel quite benevolent thinking of them.
No, the rationalization or whatever it is, lies in believing that the natural way of things is for everything on this planet to serve our whims, feed our appetites, fall or rise in accordance with our judgement and nothing else, with their judgement of us being of no account whatsoever.
This is the medieval mortal sin called Pride. It is embedded in our species (though to be fair, I imagine all species would give it a try if they had the ability.) We want all good to come to us, at whatever cost to the soil, plants, creatures or our own conspecifics, with as little as possible going the other way.
If something is just lying around, say a swamp, a woodland, a mountain, or an ocean, we assume it’s there for us to take, no matter what creatures may be dwelling there.
The wealthy, I’m afraid, merely carry this view of the world to its extreme. Farming land has oil under it? I’ll just take that. Ocean has a few million sardines doing nothing (except living their lives and supporting a whole ecosystem?) Let’s scoop them up and sell them to the poor for pennies to the pound. The poor are living in our cities and countryside, and we have no immediate use for their labour? How untidy, let’s drive them into refugee camps. Because our valuation of their lives is the only one that counts.
That the so-called religious right doesn’t, apparently, study the seven deadly sins, to say nothing of the gospels, gives them a sort of demonic power. Cornering them for some remedial lessons along these lines would, alas, not be well received.
Noni
God gave us gay marriage. Why is he against it? Does Rick Perry hate god?
And liberals! We have liberals in this country! God gave us here in the United States liberals!
This is fun.
Beverly
God gave us the government. You could look it up.
Dale in the Book of Federalations?
Because this view isn’t found even in the Declaration of Independence. Take a close look at the actual text of the Preamble:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”
The Creator may have given us Rights, but Governments derive their power explicitly from the governed. There is not a hint of agency by an active God here.
Similarly in the Conclusion:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare”
The Supreme Judge serves as a Witness. The People of the Colonies as the Authority.
Nor is there any reference to the Creator or the Supreme Judge and still less ‘God’ anywhere between Preamble and Conclusion. So I did look it up. And didn’t find any evidence as to your assertion. (Assuming that you were not snarking to start with)
And if anything the Constitution is even more explicit on this point:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
We the People ordain and establish. No Moses, no Tablets.
This is an old argument with ugly political implications. I think Psalm 127 sums up the philosophical basis: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” The idea is that everything is God’s doing. It was supposed to keep us humans humble. One of the revolutionary things about Newton’s Principia wasn’t that he had unified the gravitational force driving the planets with the one that guides apples to the ground, it was that his theory ascribed nothing to God.
Like Newton, I’m more of a Genesis 3:5 guy “Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil.” Maybe it was that apple in the Garden of Eden; maybe it was the awful food at Walker Memorial back at MIT where I first ran into this line. There’s a lurid mural that goes with it complete with scientists, greek gods and what not. We can’t blame God for everything.
From Krugman.
Whatever your view of God?
Bruce
it was a joke. with just enough ambiguity to give added pleasure to those who got it watching those who didn’t.
if you paid any attention to actual political speech in this country you would understand what “you could look it up” referred to.
Kaleberg
“One of the revolutionary things about Newton’s Principia wasn’t that he had unified the gravitational force driving the planets with the one that guides apples to the ground, it was that his theory ascribed nothing to God.”
No, the revolutionary thing (not “one of”) was that it showed a clear way to deal with the mathematics of motion and gravity. God was not referred to, as you say, one way OR THE OTHER.
You see, this is what is wrong with “Enlightenment thinking.” Without knowing any science at all they pretend that science is on their side in their political beef with “the church.” Once again, folks, “science” has nothing to do with god, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.
By the way, Bruce, that was the Declaration of Independence, not The Preamble.
For heck’s sake Rick,
Government gave us free will, and can take it away any time it pleases -same with SS and Medicare. Any dem fool knows that.
The modern history of the world going back about 6,000 years (so as to confine the period to that during which a single god is thought to be the Creator and/or Supreme Judge) is chock full of continuous murder and mayhem on a massive scale. War, conquest, subjugation of others, enslavement, annihilation, etc. are all routine human activities over the past 600 millenniums. Didn’t people start wising up, banding together and forming governments in order to protect themselves from what god seemed to have wrought? And now Ricky is crediting that same god with having improved everything? Seems unlikely to me.
I don’t have to look it up, Dale. I happen to know for a fact that God gave us the government. I’ve known that since yesterday, when I read quotes from Perry’s speech and then just put two and two together: We have a government here in the United States, and God gave us what we have here in the United States.
Oh my GOD, Hansberry, you’re right! State and local governments can take away free will and actual, literal physical liberty, in violation of basic human rights or just clear constitutional rights, and do so routinely knowing that the five Conservative Legal Movement Supreme Court justices will say that’s fine. Or actually, knowing that the Court will casually look the other way and ignore the case, unless a lower appellate court audaciously held the conduct unconstitutional and within federal-court jurisdiction to say so. Something about states’ rights to violate individuals’ rights. Except, of course, gun-ownership rights, freedom to impose your religious views on others (including in overt Christian prayer at the start of open government meetings), and state university admissions discrimination against downtrodden upscale suburban white high school seniors.
Beverly
see my reply to Bruce.
one characteristic of fundamentalists of either or any stripe is a complete lack of mental flexibility.
Kaleberg
it turns out you are wrong not only as a matter of principle, but as a matter of fact:
“The puzzle posed by Newton is whether the net effect of these periodic forces on the planetary orbits averages to zero over long times, so that the planets continue to follow orbits similar to the ones they have today, or whether these small mutual interactions gradually degrade the regular arrangement of the orbits in the solar system, leading eventually to a collision between two planets, the ejection of a planet to interstellar space, or perhaps the incineration of a planet by the Sun. The interplanetary gravitational interactions are very small—the force on Earth from Jupiter, the largest planet, is only about ten parts per million of the force from the Sun—but the time available for their effects to accumulate is even longer: over four billion years since the solar system was formed, and almost eight billion years until the death of the Sun.
Newton’s comment on this problem is worth quoting: “the Planets move one and the same way in Orbs concentrick, some inconsiderable Irregularities excepted, which may have arisen from the mutual Actions of Comets and Planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this System wants a Reformation.” Evidently Newton believed that the solar system was unstable, and that occasional divine intervention was required to restore the well-spaced, nearly circular planetary orbits that we observe today. According to the historian Michael Hoskin, in Newton’s world view “God demonstrated his continuing concern for his clockwork universe by entering into what we might describe as a permanent servicing contract” for the solar system.”
Please be careful: I am not claiming anything at all about God… only that you are wrong, saying:
“One of the revolutionary things about Newton’s Principia wasn’t that he had unified the gravitational force driving the planets with the one that guides apples to the ground, it was that his theory ascribed nothing to God. “
Oh, Beverly
one thing wrong with your sarcasm re Rick Perry: HE would agree that Social Security was not “of god” but “of government” and that is why he doesn’t like it.
and please don’t think this is a defense of Rick Perry. or an argument about god.
So who gave us government?
Lord,
So who gave us government? As Bruce noted earlier: we the people.
Lord
nanute
as i tried to suggest above, when a politician such as Perry starts running around saying “god gave us…. ” it is, or should be, useful to point out to them that in their own speeches on another day they say that “god gave” us our government. in any case, by the very beliefs of the religious, it is ridiculous to run around say ing “god works…” only in the ways they find convenient to claim for political purposes: if god gives us anything, who are we to say he does not give it to use by means of “the government”… (or by means of natural selection for that matter.)
this seems to be too difficult for the Rick Perry’s of the world to understand.
but it is also amusing to watch the anti-religion fundamentalists completely fail to see the point because just the word “god” triggers their pre recorded anti-religion message. they can’t see either to the right of them or left of them as they perseverate on their One Truth.
God put these things on earth for man’s usage and it would be sacrilegious not to use them up a quickly as we possibly can. Perry and most Texans haven’t seen past the extraction model.
Don’t have a cow Beverly, everyone knows the authority to deny free will is granted exclusively to the federal government by the commerce clause and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding -right?
Hansberry
i guess i am not smart enough to tell if you are joining me or Beverly in our respective ironic voices… but just in case
we do have a Supreme Court which can in its wisdom …. like other courts… determine what the law is, as well as the facts. Most of the time I don’t like it much myself. But, like Al Gore (and the Founders) I haven’t been able to think of a better way.
Maybe we need to do the actual work it takes to build a coalition that can win a few elections and appoint some Justices whose view of “rights” is similar to ours.
Jim V
“I guess it is comforting to have an explanation for everything, even if it explains nothing.”
Sure must be. Since it works for the Right and the Left.
But let me try something: I have an enormous internal pressure to say “Thou fool!” It is said that Jesus said that puts me in danger of hell fire. That doesn’t stop me any more than it stops anyone from committing adultery in their heart.
Still, and the point I am trying to make, is that it is unlikely I would even stop to think about “why did he say that” if he hadn’t said that. And that is the sort of thing “religion” is about. Has nothing to do with evolution or Kalebergs view of the true importance of Newton.
Now that’s not to say that politicians don’t try to link their politics with the idea of “god” … or that “religions” don’t try to link the idea of god to whatever neurosis they find profitable.
But it is sad for me to watch the anti-religious left drive their natural allies into the enemy’s camp.
and this causes Bruce and Beverly to think I am saying that the Constitution cites God if not actually written by him.
But you can’t teach a fundamentalist new tricks.
Noni
it is not “the wealthy” who rape the planet. it is “us.”
in the first place, it has been “the wealthy” who understood “conservation” long before “the people.”
some people with direct business interests in raping the planet are, of course, wealthy. but saying “the wealthy” are guilty of this or that crime is the intellectual equivalent of saying “blacks are lazy.”
and if you want to see how “the people” deal with the environment under “socialism” look up Aral Sea.
Everyone except several current Supreme Court justices, virtually all Republican members of Congress, and a slew of rightwing pundits—in other words, the entire Conservative Legal Movement and adherents and practitioners of the Southern variety of the States’ Rights ole-time religion—knows the authority to deny free will is granted exclusively to the federal government, Hansberry.
Thus: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/06/04/lawsuit-st-louis-county-sent-swat-team-killed-a-dog-over-code-violations/.
And: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/what-killed-eric-garner.
And: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/04/us/ferguson-police-racial-discrimination.html?_r=0.
And: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/what-killed-eric-garner.
Beverly
I think your heart is in the right place. But I don’t understand why you insist upon using language that alienated everyone who should be on your side.
According to you if we want to save ourselves from police state hell…. and i have the same fear and anger as you…. we need to give up our hope in god, move out of the south, and apply for genetic modification to take the scotch-irish out of our ancestry. and give up the “grammar” that helps us communicate in favor of the “grammar” that requires us to punctuate in the way “run” remembers from the sixth grade.
Perry was being a fool… but relying on political fast talk to suck his constituents into believing he was “for god” and the left was “against god.”
And you bought right into it. Arguing, “facetiously,” that we got Social Security etc “from god” … implying that we got it from “government” but not god. Thus saying exactly what Perry was saying, except that his implication was that “therefore Social Security is not “of god.” While presumably your implication was meant to be something like “there is no god but government.” Which is exactly what Perry wants his voters to think you (the left) think.
Well, continue to wage war against the medieval church if you wish. But i’d be willing to bet there are plenty of “religious” people who would be horrified by policemen battering down doors and killing the family dog and join you in trying to do something about it… if you weren’t helping Perry tell them that you hate god.
ok, coberly, i’ll never praise Allah again. i promise…
rjs
if that’s the best you can do, i think you should give up your career as a comedian.
you are free, of course, to believe whatever you want, even if it isn’t as clever as you think it is. that doesn’t matter. what matters is that you let the real bad guys win the day because you can’t help being so “clever” you play into their hands.
Don’t lose your faith, rjs.
My implication was definitely meant to be something like “there is no god but government,” Dale. Which is why I want to force you to pray to the Aqua Government. http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/who-is-aqua-buddha
well, beverly…
see ms to rjs.
i saw something like this when i was in the second grade.
apparently you get too much pleasure out of being “clever” to make the effort to set aside your tribal superstition long enough to try to work together with your ancient enemies against the current threat.
the bad guys have always counted on that.
Beverly
i think you need to quit reading that stuff before you go blind.