Sunday morning –
April 3, 2011
At the end of Mass this morning – the priest at my church - rose and addressed the congregation to voice his outrage and shock about the recent verbal attack on the Roman Catholic Bishop of Manchester by a member of the NH General Court. The priest’s basic points were how could someone who claims to be a catholic be so rude and show such disrespect for the Office. He ended by asking us to pray for the General Court and this representative.
While I certainly agree that such behavior & comments are disrespectful – why should we expect anything else from a group of individuals who see nothing wrong in calling Firemen thugs (Yeah? The people who rush into burning homes & save lives) – Republicans who disagree with them are shunned & called RINO’s – and the term democrat is interchangeable with socialist & communist. However, among the most shocking is – the 80+ year old couple who care for their 60+ year old developmentally delayed child being treated as if they are somehow trying to scam the system! Their only crimes being fear and worry over who will care for their child after they are gone and asking for some help now to supplement the care they give 24/7. Now, I could go on and cite more examples of insults – but that isn’t necessary. The message seems to be – not only are we going to deny you help – but we see nothing wrong with insult and abuse should you disagree!
A week or so back I wrote about “Who are these People” and how the NH House of Representatives is controlled by a group intent on dismantling government and how they seem to consist of Home Grown Libertarians; Social Conservatives; and Free Staters. I went on to write that what I find especially troublesome is their – intolerance! Many appear to be affluent and seem to not have any knowledge about the needs of average NH families. Consequently, since they see the best defense as a good offense – it is only logical that they revert to branding people who are affected or disagree. They are convinced they know what’s best!
That attitude was reinforced this weekend in reading the State Legislator email thread where numerous republican representatives came to the defense of their majority leader. One a vice chair of a committee actually stated “I am a Catholic and I stand with DJ. McCormack has always been a corrupt scumbag in my book!” He goes on to write “This is one of those instances where no apology is necessary in my opinion. Why should we kowtow to a corrupt hack of a Bishop??” One concurred with: “You speak from my heart the things I cannot say not being of that faith.” Another expressed shock that the Roman Catholic Church was against the Death Penalty – “I was personally insulted a while back when the Bishop issued a statement against the death penalty, making it sound like such punishment was against Catholic doctrine.”
Of course – then there is the republican rep who wants the Bishop to “apologize to his church and to those practicing catholics that he seems to denounce.”
Now in fairness – there was one republican rep who wrote and stated the comments were wrong and that “if you want respect give respect.”
However – a telling example of this group’s belief that government does not have any responsibility for the general welfare of its citizens was provided by a rep who wrote:”Government is force, not charity. Government should be limited to protecting the rights of all people to be treated equally under the law. All people, by the way, includes the rich, the middle class, those who are struggling and anyone else. Charity comes from the hearts of individual people acting on their own free will…” Forget that charitable organiztions in NH presently provide 500 million in charity statewide and would have to double that amount to fill the gap created by this budget.
So Government is force and has no business in providing a social service net: is this what we want for NH & is this what you really voted for last November?
