Reality Liberation Front

Want to catch up on the Health Care Reform debate?  Perhaps you’d like for someone to explain it to you in everyday language?  Maybe you would like to cut through all the noise, distractions, and partisan arguments that really have nothing to do with the core issues involved?

Maybe…you’d just like to better understand how this affects YOU.

Well, Keith Olbermann has done you, and all of us, a BIG favor.  Yesterday evening, he dedicated his entire show to providing one of his signature “Special Comments” on the subject of our Health Care system.

It is factual…in fact, it informed me of several things I did not know, despite my considerable research into this topic.  It is personal…he directly relates the issue to his family’s stories, and the stories of other families.  It is direct…by stripping away everything that is truly just distracting us from what really is at stake, we are presented with what is certainly the most impassioned, clear, and very HUMAN perspective on the crisis America faces.

Consider watching these segments the very best possible use of an hour of your time:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

It is certain, that Olbermann is asserting that he, as an American and a human being, believes it is both his responsibility and his government’s responsibility to provide for the healthy lives of our country’s citizens, while minimizing all possible pain, suffering, and death.  Olbermann says that he wants his taxes to go towards that FIRST…and for what it is worth, polls show that most Americans agree.  It is interesting, that in the next hour of television that I watched, Rachel Maddow had a discussion with an author who has written on the subject of the Puritan colonists who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 1600’s.  In this discussion, it was noted that President Ronald Reagan (and Kennedy before him) often liked to refer to America as the “city upon a hill,” which is a reference to a sermon delivered by the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, in 1630.  Many Republicans and conservatives since Reagan have made reference to this quote (including both John McCain and Sarah Palin)…citing that we should always strive to be that “city upon a hill,” serving as an example to the rest of the world.  It’s just too bad…that these conservatives don’t know what else Winthrop said in that famous sermon:

“…we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.”

That’s right: we should give up our “superfluities,” that is to say our excess, our luxuries, that which we don’t really need…to provide for others’ “necessities.” We must “make others’ conditions our own.“  For all the talk of wanting a “Christian nation“…I hear a lot about wanting “scripture in legislation“….I hear lot about wanting “prayer in our schools“…I hear a lot about “legislating morality“…none of which represents what Christ actually ASKED US TO DO.  Winthrop’s sermon, asking each person to look after his fellow colonists as if they were “members of the same body,” more closely resembles Christ’s commandments than anything I have seen advocated or sponsored by Republicans.  Isn’t it odd…that which Christians have been so clearly commanded to do…is so vehemently  denounced by so many so-called Christians as “vile socialism.“  I say, how can it be so “vile” if it takes only from me what I do not need, and provides it to those who need it?

For now, Olbermann asks only that people visit his webpage, where he soon will be offering a link so that individuals can donate to the group that sets up large scale “free health care days” in various cities.  The goal: to host “free health care” clinics in all the capital cities of states where the Democratic legislators have been ignoring the voices and needs of their constituents by opposing the public option and other elements of REAL reform.  Perhaps…seeing the vast number of their people, turning out for desperately needed free health services, will serve to shame them into taking the action they should have taken a long time ago.

Perhaps…