I believe that we as a society have a responsibility to care for our fellow man. While I believe that everyone should provide for themselves as best as possible, I understand that there are those among us that cannot. I believe that quality healthcare is a right that should be afforded to all men, not just those who have money. I believe that this right is included in the “unalienable” right our Founding Fathers declared we all have to Life.
I believe that every person who seeks a better life should be able to have that opportunity to find it. During my time as a missionary in Mexico I came to understand people a little better. I realized that everyone just wants what is best for ourselves and our families. I feel that as a country and as a society we have the obligation to help those people make a better life for themselves by making it easier for them to find that opportunity, not harder.
I believe in families and that they are central to the success of society. As a society, we have the moral obligation to encourage quality family time. It is absurd to me that the party who is supposed to have “family values” is so adamantly against providing guaranteed time to new mothers and new fathers with their children, especially right after birth. We need to support legislation that promotes families, no matter the makeup of those families, if we want to make both current and future generations strong. These beliefs are rooted in my Mormon faith and in the values I was taught as a child by very loving parents. Much like Harry Reid, I am a Democrat because of these beliefs, not in spite of them.
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Thanks for your response. I agree with you on one point, government is force. My disagreement is when government goes outside of its legitimate authority to force me to pay for things that I don’t agree with, like planned parenthood for example. Healthcare, education and taking care of the poor are not legitimate functions of the federal government. Taxing me for your self interests and perceived charitable purposes takes away my opportunity or agency to decide for myself whether or not to support these things. They are not included in the enumerated powers. They are tenth amendment issues. I ask, if plunder is legal, does that make it honest? I’m being plundered left and right, and there are members of the church that are great with that, some even boast about it. Because we are taking care of the less fortunate. Like I said before, if I am coerced to be charitable under the threat of an armed agent of government, fine or jail or both, that must make me righteous.
A huge beef with me is when people in government go outside of the law to create a law, then they exempt themselves and their buddies from the law, we no longer have law. We have what I like to call the “whims of men.” But since government has armed agents, jails and corrupt people in the justice system, you have the effect of law without law.
I partially agree with you that the community agrees what rights are. That is what the Constitutional Convention was about. I just choose to give God and not man the credit for some of the blessing in my life. What I absolutely hate is when some in our society think that they have more rights than those they deem below them and they want to dictate the rights of others without subjecting themselves to their own edicts. We are turning into an unwritten, loosely guided form of government. That troubles me, but progressives love it for some reason.
Have a great week.
The truth is, we are all forced to pay taxes that pay for wars, roads, and even corporate subsidies, among many other things. There is no principle in the gospel against this.
And listen, you can believe this right or that right is God given all you want. Have fun with that. But it isn’t a legal right until the community agrees on it. That is the reality. And at the moment, healthcare is only a conceptual right… Perhaps as God given as life, since it is health care that often saves life.
Hope my two cents helped.
Thanks for your response. I don’t see whats absurd. Brother Barrow is the one that stated that healthcare is a right. It is not a notion that I made up. I’m simply trying to clarify this thought and align it with the Gospel.
Sure the right to keep and bare arms is a God given right. Sure freedom of the press is also a God given right. It’s called the first and second amendments to the Constitution. To say these rights come for law is to say that one man’s rights come from another man. I simply can’t except that notion, if the worth of one soul is great in the sight of God. That would be saying one man is greater than the other. If there were no Constitution tomorrow, the right to protect myself and property would still exist. My right to speak out against things that go against my beliefs would still exist. No man can take it away save he is a tyrant. Are we only allowed to practice religion because Government allows us? We are allowed free exercise of religion because it is a God given right. But this is not the point of my thread.
Let’s say all the right conditions happen and a law is passed that says “medical care must be given to all, and just compensation is provided for.” My question is, in this process, who has exercised the pure love of Christ? Is it the government bureaucrats that wrote and voted for the law? Are they the ones with the pure love of Christ? You let the healthcare worker off the hook for being directly responsible. Is it those that would be taxed at a higher rate in order to pay the healthcare of the recipients? Are they exercising the pure love of Christ, even though it is now the law that they “must give”? (By the way, if they don’t give, they have the likelihood of being met with an armed agent of government.) How about the recipients themselves? Are they the ones exercising the pure love of Christ? Brother Barrow is a democrat because of his Gospel beliefs. Is he the one with the pure love of Christ? I’m asking on a simple Gospel Principles level. I have no malice, I’m just trying to figure out this point of view.
There is no God-given right to guns or freedom of press anymore than there is medical care. What makes these rights reality is law.
Who’s wrong? Who’s right? Who’s being unreasonable? It seems to me under Brother Barrow’s definition of “Life” from the Declaration of Independence that Dr. Johnson is infringing on Mrs. Smith’s God-given, unchangeable, unalienable right to “Life”. It seems like to me, that if this is the case, the law should be able to come in somewhere. Maybe Dr. Johnson should face a stiff fine, jail, court case or all three? That would show him, right?
Here’s what I see wrong with Brother Barrow’s definition of “Life”. The phrase is “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Brother Barrow’s definition of “Life“ is in direct conflict of my pretend Dr. Johnson’s “Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.” There is no way one person can claim the intellect, education, capital and labor of another person as their unalienable right. On an eternal, Plan of Salvation basis, this is in direct conflict with agency in a very basic and profound way. If we are striving to be Disciples of Christ, and truly believe in the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement, the first thing we should never do is take away one’s agency in support of a social cause, it doesn’t matter what it is.
All Harry Reid did is force me into benevolence.
“Yes because Christ’s way of caring for the poor was taking people’s money and redistributing it to others by law? Look at how the church works and what Jesus actually did!”
Ok, let’s look at how the church works. The church’s “way of caring for the poor was taking people’s money (fast offering, tithing, ect) and redistributing it to others by (God’s) law”.
Obviously a completely different approach…