Working Up To It

By Harry T. Cook

On the last Sunday of October 2004 I went into the pulpit and did something I had never done in 40 years of preaching. I gave a pre-election sermon in which I laid out the issues before the electorate and what had occurred in our national life over the past four years.

Without ever once saying the words “Republican” or “Democrat,” or the names “George W. Bush” or “John Kerry,” I told out the facts of what had occurred beginning with the United States’ pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and the resultant war, of how much of the regulatory framework designed to protect the environment had been dismantled, of how a regime of tax cuts had swallowed a huge federal budget surplus and of how it appeared even then that the U.S. government, its intelligence apparatus and military had violated the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners of war.

I was careful to cite only the facts of the matter under discussion, which were indisputable. In the end, I did not advise or counsel members of my congregation to vote for one or another of the candidates. However, I did make it clear how the Bible’s law, prophets and gospel spoke to and illuminated the questions, issues and arguments that had been set forth during the campaign. End of sermon.

At the earlier of two services, my lay assistant of the day stalked out immediately following the sermon, to be followed by a half dozen people from the pews. At the later service, there was sustained applause. A congregation with a split personality, I guess.

Members of one family that had not been present but read about the sermon in a newspaper article promptly left the parish – not angry that the sermon had been given but because they inferred (correctly) that it was critical of the Administration of George W. Bush.

As they exited through the revolving door, in came several other families who read the same article. Now they expect me to stand up one more time in October and do the same. I’m working up to it – and here is where I am six months out:

HEALTH CARE: We need a national, single-payer system that will relieve corporations from the killing burden of health care insurance for both active workers and retired persons. Yes, this sounds like “socialized medicine.” So be it. We cannot continue on this trajectory of rising costs of medical and surgical care while the economy is paring people off health insurance plans right and left. Senators Clinton and Obama have similar ideas about how to begin to fix this untenable situation.

THE WAR: Words fail a person at this point. It began as a war of choice – mostly of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow neo-cons who never got over the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and wanted to make America stand tall once more. How do they think that’s working for them now? John McCain insists that the U.S. press on indefinitely to what could only be a Pyrrhic victory. The junior senators from New York and Illinois, respectively, say they will remove U.S. troops from Iraq sooner rather than later. Of course, there may ensue internecine clan war in what’s left of that country, but the presence of U.S. troops on Middle Eastern soil is a huge impetus to terrorism. And, to cover all the bases, it is both possible and desirable for candidates and voters alike to honor of courage and bravery of those military men and women who did their best with honor in an otherwise dishonorable war. Meanwhile, what I haven’t heard any candidate yet say is just how much in reparations the U.S. should pay Iraqis for wrecking Iraq, which leads us to . . .

TAXES: Sen. Obama has thus far been clear that he favors higher income taxes on the affluent and a higher threshold for payroll taxes. If he were to be elected and would make good on that offer, I say we use some of it to build up what our careless and criminal invasion of Iraq and clumsily mismanaged war there have wrought. In addition, maybe Social Security and Medicare can begin to be fixed – especially if the tilted-to-favor-the-affluent Bush tax cuts are not made permanent.

LIFE ISSUES: Be aware that there are sure to be two, maybe three, vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court in the near- to mid-future. If women voters would like the government to keep its hands off their reproductive organs, it’s fairly clear which of the candidates will help them in that regard. Sen. Obama has criticized the court for upholding the so-called partial-birth abortion ban. He would also support a repeal of the idiotic “Defense of Marriage Act,” which is really just institutionalized homophobia. Sen. Clinton is a feminist.

GUNS AT THE OK CORRAL: A rugged Wild, Wild West mentality has got hold of some candidates and sectors of the electorate. Those so afflicted have come to believe that it is faintly un-American not to own a gun and absolutely un-American to want even a minimally sane level of gun control in this nation where almost every week it seems as if there is a report of a deranged gunman shooting up a school, mall or public building. Sen. Obama while in the Illinois Legislature sponsored banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. Will he have what it takes to press that point, even now while the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court work overtime to parse “a well-regulated militia” out of the 2nd Amendment?

THE ENVIRONMENT: Is Al Gore coming back, maybe as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency under a President Obama? Or in some other influential position? You can hear the groans of dismay from the editorial page department of The Wall Street Journal all the way out to Nebraska. What a statement bringing back the author of Earth In The Balance would make to the country and to the world.

FOREIGN POLICY AND NATIONAL SECURITY: Do a little research to find out which of the candidates voted to deny legal immunity to telecom companies that cooperated in the Bush government’s warrantless wiretapping; which has continued to hold out for the right of habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo; which has repeatedly said that talking with a perceived enemy is better than going to war with him.

These are only some of the pressing issues and concerns bearing upon the coming presidential election. Implicit in it all is the question of what kind of nation and people we want to be. Those who look through the eyes of reason to the Jewish and Christian scriptures for guidance in answering that question will, with those issues and concerns in mind, have no problem in deciding for whom to vote in November.

© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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