Posted on 10/04/2007 9:04:42 AM PDT by shortstop
I don’t trust Orrin Hatch’s morals.
No, I don’t think he’s got a girlfriend.
But I don’t think he’s got a brain either.
Yesterday, in Washington, Orrin Hatch said that increasing the sCHIP insurance program for kids by some $35 billion over the next five years was the “morally right thing to do.”
Which means he doesn’t know anything about morals.
Because taxing one group of people an extra $35 billion in order to buy votes from another group of people is only moral if you’re a snake. And if Orrin Hatch thinks that being forced by the government to pay for someone else’s entitlement is an act of compassion, then it’s time for him to move into the Alzheimer’s unit.
To claim that morality favors a socialist power grab by the central government is to turn everything Orrin Hatch used to stand for on its ear. It is to actively disavow men who once towered large over and even encouraged Orrin Hatch’s career. It is to slap the face of the Republican constituents who have given Orrin Hatch a career in the Senate.
Orrin Hatch has made much over the years of his onetime status as a Mormon bishop. He is reputed to have counseled various of his Washington colleagues as they have encountered difficulties and scandals in their lives. Part of his political image is built on his reputation for rectitude and moral foundation.
But that is out the window.
It is one thing to believe a falsehood, it is another thing to assert it as fact.
And Orrin Hatch’s credentials as a moral arbiter go down the drain when he claims a moral imperative justifies his efforts to take even more money from taxpaying Americans.
The undergirding of Orrin Hatch’s moral claims is his religion. That fact makes his claim all the more interesting because it is in direct opposition to the teachings of some senior leaders of his own church.
For example, Ezra Taft Benson was an eight-year agriculture secretary under Dwight Eisenhower and spent about 50 years in the highest leadership levels of the Mormon Church, eventually becoming its president.
And Ezra Taft Benson taught specifically and repeatedly that it was wrong for government to take the money of one person to do good deeds to another person. He specifically taught that taking health care from the government was wrong.
So who do we believe?
On the issue of morals, in the context of Mormon beliefs, who trumps – Orrin Hatch or Ezra Taft Benson? Do you believe a member of the church or the president of the church?
Further, when you declare what is moral, you are by implication also declaring what is immoral. More specifically, who is immoral.
By saying that increasing this welfare program seven times more than the president wants to is the “morally right” thing to do, Orrin Hatch is also saying that the people who oppose him are immoral.
In politics, it’s common to declare your opponent’s position mistaken or wrong, but is it common to declare it immoral? Is it right, within the Judeo-Christian ethic of tolerance, to attack the morality of a political opponent because you disagree with his policy?
Is the declaration of morality on a fundamentally political issue an act of judgment that Jesus denounced in the Sermon on the Mount?
Yet further, is it right, when defending a position based on a lie, to claim moral superiority?
Because the fact is that Orrin Hatch’s position on this massive welfare expansion is based on a lie. Twice in a statement released by his office yesterday, Orrin Hatch said that the $35 billion expansion of CHIP would insure “low-income children.”
Additionally, he described the beneficiaries of this program as currently “uninsured.”
Neither statement is true.
CHIP as funded now, and as funded by the president’s proposed $5 billion expansion, covers “low-income children” who do not qualify for Medicaid. The $35 billion expansion of CHIP, as defended by Orrin Hatch, would primarily fund health care for middle-income children.
In fact, many of those children are currently insured. Their parents already provide for their health care needs.
When Orrin Hatch says his plan is for “low-income” and “uninsured” children, his words are deceptive. They are a misrepresentation.
And there’s no such thing as a “morally right” lie.
The simple fact is that there are people in Washington who want to extend welfare to the middle class. They believe that with more hogs at the trough, a majority will develop which is benefited by socialist taxing and entitlement, and that majority will vote to continue to pick its neighbors’ pockets. They want to spread the welfare money to more people so that more people will vote to enrich themselves instead of to better their country.
Unfortunately, Orrin Hatch is part of that effort.
And he claims to be doing the “morally right” thing.
Which kind of proves he doesn’t know any more about morals than he knows what’s good for America.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
Is it the moral thing to do to attack someone’s morals because you do not agree with them about an expenditure?
“A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”
YES!
I forget who stated that ... one of the founding fathers ... .
Orin Hatch is one confused man.
Welfare and lack of morals go hand in hand!
Morality is relative to the person’s beliefs.
Hatch recommended Ginsburg to Clinton and got her passed by Republicans. So democrats were able to claim that they should pick GWBs supreme court picks, and she was a wacko thinking she was the constitution.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years.
These nations have progressed in this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to Complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.
Alexander Fraser Tyler, Cycle of Democracy (1770)
Let me know if you'd like to be on its ping list.
Alexander Fraser Tyler, Cycle of Democracy (1770)
Thank you!
It appears to me we routinely VIOLATE the list.
We are in a decline ... .
Thank you!
Yes, please add me to your ping list.
Desiring to take property/money from one to give to another is always coveting.
Yes ... as people strive to erase the Judeo Christian God and replace Him with the god of global warming and other man made gods ... aids the decline so they have no moral absolutes - so anything goes!
Yes ... as people strive to erase the Judeo Christian God and replace Him with the god of global warming and other man made gods ... aids the decline so they have no moral absolutes - so anything goes!
FWIW, Ezra Taft Benson was the only member of the scandal-ridden Eisenhower Administration to serve the full eight years and with his reputation enhanced, not diminished. Therefore, I would have to go with Benson, even as an outsider.
Orin Hatch has done some good things in the past, but I'm afraid his long association with Ted Kennedy and cohorts has softened his brain. Like Lindsey Graham, he needs a primary opponent. Both their states deserve far better representation.
Nice shot at the author, though. If you can't defeat his ideas, defeat him.
The (very un-PC) term that comes to mind is "going native." Conservative politicians who spend too much time in Washington tend to adopt the attitudes and morals (such as they are) of that city.
As I said, relative to one’s beliefs. Not everyone is Christian.
RINOs like Hatch are the Vichy Regime of Congress.
Weasels, traitors, shills willfully collaborating with the Socialist Left.
RINOs are a cancer on the Body GOPolitic.
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