Monday, September 10, 2012

Romney, Healthcare, and God-Talk: The Marketplace Will Save Us



And a final postscript to what I wrote earlier in the morning about Paul Ryan and the moral dimensions of his budget: I do want to give credit where credit is due.  I don't want altogether to discount the GOP's insistence on keeping God front and center in the public square.


And so I want to acknowledge that just this weekend, Mr. Romney said that God will take care of the inequities of any healthcare plans that he and Mr. Ryan craft together when they run the country.  A mysterious divine force will somehow make things right, will smooth out the wrinkles and make straight the paths, as we try to attend to the healthcare needs of all citizens of the nation.

Oh, wait.  Hang on.  On closer reading, the word's "marketplace."

Not God.

The marketplace is the mysterious divine force that will smooth all the wrinkles out, make straight the paths, and make justice roll down like a mighty river across our land.

It's not God the GOP seems to be talking about when they invoke divine forces.  Not the God they insist on naming over and over and over again in their platform and the public square.

That God is strangely absent when we get down to the nuts and bolts of how socieoconomic life works and should work.  There, in the real world as opposed to the verbal fantasy land in which screaming the word God over and over makes us religious people, it seems the mysterious divine force we're asked to place absolute faith, to believe in even when the eyes of our flesh obscure the eyes of our souls, is called the Marketplace.

Never mind.

The graphic--Adam Smith's invisible hand--is by David G. Klein.

No comments: