Selective Secular Outrage

By William L. Garvin

Everything is coming up roses…if you view it through rose colored glasses. In the midst of glowing reports on how much our economy is improving, a few strident thorns are sticking out. All the unemployed aren’t counted as unemployed. Increases in food and gas aren’t counted as inflation. Property values continue to decline and foreclosures continue unabated. The populist thought is this is all due to sneaky, unscrupulous bankers tricking poor, unsuspecting homeowners into disastrous mortgage traps. There was never any problem with greedy, gambling investors buying property they couldn’t afford in the hope of making a quick buck. There was never a problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pressuring banks to make loans to unqualified buyers. There was never a problem with Fannie and Freddie granting excessive bonuses to executives on the basis of quantity of loans rather than quality of loans. Nope, it’s all predatory lenders.

Then you notice that there are 1,500 homes with mortgages of more than $1 million scheduled for auction in the Bay Area alone! Anne Walker, a Coldwell Banker realtor is quoted: “Most of these higher-end people are like 45 years plus, and they’ve gone through all their assets. It’s a really devastating situation for them. They thought they had planned. They had their kids’ college fund, they had their 401(k)s, the stock, the mutual funds, and they’ve been hanging on for the last three years. They’ve gone through everything, and they have nothing left, not even the house.” But of course, there’s no sympathy for the devil, the evil once-upon-a-time-rich.

Selective outrage has always been the norm with liberals. It was obvious when Occupy Wall Street marched right past the New York penthouses of hedge fund millionaires who support Democrats to protest the Koch brothers who support conservative causes. And why is there no Occupy Google or Occupy Facebook? After all, with net worths estimated over $100 billion each, they are in the upper one tenth of the one percent. Why don’t they protest the tax breaks and subsidies provided to Tesla and Fisker? After all, the base price of the Finland-produced Fisker is $102,000 and the 2011 Tesla Roadster starts at $109,000! Only one percenters can afford those. For the little people, you can spend forty to fifty thousand dollars for a Chevy Volt, complete with the spontaneously combusting battery. Volt sales have been incredibly underwhelming and are increasingly sluggish this year. They have not come close to justifying the taxpayer dollars poured into this Government Motors venture but at least they exceeded Solyndra sales.

Where is the leftist secular outrage about President Obama using sections of the Bible and quotes from Jesus Christ to justify raising taxes on the rich? It’s understandable that they would not recognize the lack of accuracy in using the teachings of Jesus out of context but surely they couldn’t miss the drum beat of “separation of church and state.” President Obama tried to justify his government tax policies by quoting Jesus from Luke 12:48: that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” He either didn’t know or chose to ignore that Jesus was speaking about God judging an individual’s faithfulness and stewardship, not government taxation. Again the media ignored the President’s fallacious thinking as they previously did with his erroneous Sermon on the Mount justification of homosexual marriage or his Deuteronomy quote justifying immigration reform. Any serious student of the Bible avoids egregious error in picking and choosing verses out of context to “prove” a point.

Some critics of President Obama’s biblical justification for government’s increased seizure of people’s property think he is putting himself above God in determining how much shall be required/demanded/extorted. Certainly his administration is putting itself above religious conscience and doctrine when it mandates all health care facilities provide birth control free of charge. This pointedly undermines Catholic and other religious hospitals that view all life as sacred. Apparently he did not read those verses in the Bible. He is also putting himself above the Constitution by dictating which of your religious freedoms you may practice.

So put on your rose colored glasses. Trust the government; they’re here to help.