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malcolm chamberlain

musings about the emerging church, mission and contemporary culture...

God is at large, intimately involved in his world in ways that the church is maybe just waking up to!

in support of the NHS...

Monday, August 24, 2009

This may sound like a rant (because I guess it is!) but I am getting fed up with the complete rubbish (I could have used a much stronger word here) that is being churned out by the US conservative right concerning Obama's proposed health care reforms.

A few weeks ago I had a bit of a health scare and had to go to hospital for some tests, including an invasive procedure (thankfully everything came back clear). The fact that I could be treated by well qualified and experienced experts in the field using state of the art equipment with very little wait and no fear of a hefty bill afterwards is just one indicator of how great our National Health Service is. The further fact that anyone in need of such treatment, regardless of social status, race, gender, creed or financial standing, could have access to it, is the crowning glory.

So when you read of "Christian pastors", such as Rick Joyner in South Carolina, coming out with such paranoid nonsense as... "As incomprehensible as it may seem, this [i.e. Obama's health care proposal] is about euthanasia, the power to determine who lives or dies in America. Hitler and Stalin would have loved to have had such a means such as this for dispatching the millions they killed"(1) it makes me both angry and somewhat embarrassed to be associated with them as a fellow Christian (even if I might try to distance myself from this brand of Christianity). I'm no expert in US politics, but I don't think that Obama has any plans for using a national health care system to commit genocide!

Which is why I have signed 'this petition' - if you're as fed up as me over all this, why not do the same!

note
(1) reported by Andrew Clark and Ewen McAskill in The Guardian Weekly, 21.08.09 (p5)

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posted by Malcolm Chamberlain, 8:40 AM

1 Comments:

Oh, not good news. But glad things were okay after the tests.

Those remarks from the 'Christian pastors' are very extreme.

commented by Anonymous Clare, 9:48 PM  

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