“The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
This ominous warning could be straight out of a gory judgment day flick, but truth is often stranger than fiction: It’s the statement issued by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay upon Terri Schiavo’s death.
Apparently, in addition to being a career politician with numerous brewing scandals, DeLay also has the scoop on eternal damnation.
Last year DeLay told an audience in Texas that he believes God is using him to advance a “biblical worldview” in American politics. Yes, God apparently believed that one Messiah was not enough — He also needed Delay.
Drunk on power, today’s politicians are not content with the freedom to worship God. They also wish to take God’s place as the final authority in every area of human life. Politicians like DeLay can whet their authoritarian appetites in the areas of sex, death and finances by hiding behind a façade of goodness and godliness — a façade currently operating under the name the “culture of life.”
DeLay is not alone in his ambitions. Evidenced by the macabre Schiavo media sideshow and subsequent hate riot against our judicial system, conservative religious fundamentalists have wangled a vice-like grip on our society. They latched onto the Schiavo case with vampiric intensity. eager for another opportunity to smear liberals as proponents of a culture of death and portray themselves as foot soldiers for a culture of life.
Since conservatives are currently enjoying a monopoly on torture, elective war and issuing anti-democratic musings about violence against judges they don’t like, I presume the liberal death culture is limited to Hollywood movies, stem-cell research and gay anal sex.
The culture of life, a term coined by the recently departed Pope John Paul II and later stolen by political opportunists, has died and reincarnated into something insidious. The original culture of life affirms the dignity of labor over wealth, demands that the right to life include access to basic social services and calls for the liberation of the human race “from every oppressive situation.” But nowhere behind the current incarnation of the culture of life is this message of peace and social justice intended by the Pope.
Unfortunately, the Pope’s life-affirming catchphrase has been hijacked by conservative politicians who need candy coating for their radical agenda. Policies that hurt laborers by favoring wealth, cut off social services and create oppressive situations through disregard for civil liberties sure sound sweet when advanced under the guise of “life.”
The corpse of the culture of life is as fickle and nasty as the strain of Free Speech Alley Christianity from which it originates. The death penalty? Slave wages and reduction of personhood to economic worth? War, poverty, hunger, and disease? Such moral outrages are endorsed through reckless policy — policy supposedly influenced by a “biblical worldview.” Even worse: these imminent, far-reaching moral problems are frequently overshadowed by trivial, overly emotional distractions.
Pay no attention to the news behind the Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson and celebrity wedding curtain. Ignore the death of six-month old Sun Hudson, recently taken off a ventilator as a direct result of a bill that George W. Bush signed into law while governor of Texas. While you’re at it, also ignore the record-breaking 152 executions Bush oversaw as governor. Ignore Bush’s grandstanding and signing a special to reinsert one woman’s feeding tube while the malnutrition rate of Iraqi children doubled because of his optional war.
Don’t fill your head with photos of atrocities in Iraq and stories of heinous human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Pay no mind to the harmful results of environmental degradation and the growing global wealth disparity. Disregard fiscal proposals that threaten the middle and lower classes, the elderly and even the future wellbeing of our nation.
Ignore the conclusions of the most comprehensive environmental study ever conducted, which found that our current levels of consumption threaten future generations. Ignore the Center for Disease Control’s report that over 400,000 children die yearly from easily preventable conditions like diarrhea. Ignore global inaction as the genocide death toll in the Sudan climbs to above 300,000.
Ignore all of these painful realities. Otherwise you might realize what living in a true culture of life would be like.