Ryan claimed that Obama's vision was
Ryan went on to say "President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith" and said that he believed the contraception clause was the worst part of Obamacare which represents a "threat to our religious freedom."
This is a very strange position which ignores the reality that President Obama bent over backwards to appease religious lobbyists, offering them a means of opting out of the contraception requirement, something Ryan and other right wing religious advocates always seem to forget. It seems Ryan is far more interested in a fight than in solving a problem - how to offer women of all faiths the full gamut of healthcare options available to women who don't work for religiously affiliated corporations without upsetting some of the men running those corporations, men who allege that denying women copayment-free access to contraception and IVF is a form of religious expression.
It's also odd that Ryan who repeatedly and loudly describes himself as pro-life feels that the most offensive thing about a healthcare reform is being forced to offer contraceptions without copayment, even if aborting that reform would help perpetuate the status quo in which one American dies every twenty minutes for want of health insurance. Remember we are not talking about abortion or euthanasia or capital punishment over which intelligent adults disagree but contraception - a settled issue since 1918 and something used by 99% of Catholic women to time their births or treat a host of other conditions from uterine fibroids to severe PMS to acne.
At any rate, talk of war is as dishonest as it is deliberately inflammatory. Wars involve killing people, seizing real estate, violence, and shock effect. Anyone who has experienced actual war should be offended by this use of martial metaphors to score cheap points in an argument that is essentially a question of accounting, actuarial risks and benefits, and access to healthcare.
a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty and compromises those ... Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us a great and exceptional nation in the first place.Actually, the values that our country was founded on were secular Enlightenment ideals, a reaction to the religious fanaticism that had torn Europe apart in the centuries before. It's perhaps a geographical quibble but Judaism and its offshoot Christianity are more Eastern than Western. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans, and Pythagoreans can all correctly be described as Western but they were suppressed or destroyed when Mediterranean Monotheism was imported and imposed upon the West in the form of Christianity. What the United States achieved it achieved in spite of not because of religious zealots which the founders wisely protected us from.
Ryan went on to say "President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith" and said that he believed the contraception clause was the worst part of Obamacare which represents a "threat to our religious freedom."
This is a very strange position which ignores the reality that President Obama bent over backwards to appease religious lobbyists, offering them a means of opting out of the contraception requirement, something Ryan and other right wing religious advocates always seem to forget. It seems Ryan is far more interested in a fight than in solving a problem - how to offer women of all faiths the full gamut of healthcare options available to women who don't work for religiously affiliated corporations without upsetting some of the men running those corporations, men who allege that denying women copayment-free access to contraception and IVF is a form of religious expression.
It's also odd that Ryan who repeatedly and loudly describes himself as pro-life feels that the most offensive thing about a healthcare reform is being forced to offer contraceptions without copayment, even if aborting that reform would help perpetuate the status quo in which one American dies every twenty minutes for want of health insurance. Remember we are not talking about abortion or euthanasia or capital punishment over which intelligent adults disagree but contraception - a settled issue since 1918 and something used by 99% of Catholic women to time their births or treat a host of other conditions from uterine fibroids to severe PMS to acne.
At any rate, talk of war is as dishonest as it is deliberately inflammatory. Wars involve killing people, seizing real estate, violence, and shock effect. Anyone who has experienced actual war should be offended by this use of martial metaphors to score cheap points in an argument that is essentially a question of accounting, actuarial risks and benefits, and access to healthcare.
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