tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post3568741915239234578..comments2023-10-05T06:20:40.173-04:00Comments on Quaker Pagan Reflections: Pagan Values: Hospitality (And the Affordable Care Act)Cat C-B (and/or Peter B)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-38290731292700723832012-07-07T12:21:28.648-04:002012-07-07T12:21:28.648-04:00Tara, thanks for the link!Tara, thanks for the link!Cat C-B (and/or Peter B)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-53629464752714724262012-07-07T12:21:14.606-04:002012-07-07T12:21:14.606-04:00Thanks, Hystery. I hope you got at least a little...Thanks, Hystery. I hope you got at least a little of what you were looking for and that you didn't feel I'd dismissed the question. (That wasn't at all my intention.)<br /><br />Jan, thanks for responding to Unknown in my absence from the Web for a few days. <br /><br />Unknown, I don't think you quite <i>got</i> my post... I was examining the spiritual roots of my acceptance of the ACA, not making a policy case for it (though I do think there is one to be made). I note, too, that your critique of the ethics of the ACA seems to rest mainly on the grounds I identified in my article that some Pagans use to justify opposition to it: the notion that Paganism is inherently opposed to all the ways society might cause us to "do good against your will." I believe I addressed that critique; I don't believe that any Pagan society in history has taken that approach and I don't find it morally compelling in our modern, multi-faith society, either.Cat C-B (and/or Peter B)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-60358290513041695432012-07-06T09:15:57.841-04:002012-07-06T09:15:57.841-04:00Just to be clear, I asked the question because I w...Just to be clear, I asked the question because I want to know and understand you better. I am, as I say, an isolated Pagan so while I can read and understand a variety of perspectives of Paganism, I sometimes just really want to know more about what my online Pagan friends believe and understand not as a starting point for argument, but as a way of hearing them better. Unfortunately, the internet is an awkward medium for learning about our friends and their thoughts.Hysteryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02044678910937934731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-36799438574125658202012-07-04T16:07:17.756-04:002012-07-04T16:07:17.756-04:00To Unknown: I'm not sure that here is the best...To Unknown: I'm not sure that here is the best forum for debating the ACA. Still, Universal Healthcare, along the lines of what Congress is currently afforded, was the original proposal. President Obama was forced to compromise, but at least ACA is a step in the direction of providing healthcare for all Americans. <br /><br />As for skyrocketing costs, well, let's say I understand the spin, but the economics do not bear out that view. You and every other taxpayer already pays, and pays dearly, for those who are unable to buy or cannot afford health insurance. Take, for example, a homeless person who hurts his/her foot. An ER is the only place that person can go, which requires an ambulance/EMS, a fire truck, and the police to respond to the call. Those goods and services aren't free, but they are paid for through taxpayers' dollars. By the time the person is treated and released, the price tag may be as high as $4,000! On the other hand, if the EMS alone could respond, assess the injury, and either refer or take the person to a walk-in clinic to be treated, the price goes down to around $300. Now your taxes are better spent and more people can receive treatment. Your hospitality is put to better use, and everyone's costs actually go down. Also, I can't see why any of this should entail huge mountains of bureaucratic paperwork--no larger than are already required for my example, anyway. <br /><br />All nations have growing pains, and this is one for the U.S., but it is necessary. Individual responsibility is fine, but governments, in order to prosper, must take care of their citizens. In my view, our hospitality as a nation is what is at stake.Jan W.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-52940215327069393562012-07-04T12:24:54.155-04:002012-07-04T12:24:54.155-04:00Juris imprudence: Why ignoring America's docto...Juris imprudence: Why ignoring America's doctors will not pan out well for Obamacare <br /><br />supportershttp://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/medicine-and-politics-america/2012/jul/2/ignoring-doctor-bad-obamacare/Tarotsfoolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01312849239831153734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-48398709429836115592012-07-04T11:36:34.314-04:002012-07-04T11:36:34.314-04:00Cat, I wanted to let you know that I included a li...Cat, I wanted to let you know that I included a link to your post at the Staff of Asclepius. Thanks for writing such an informative and important piece.<br /><br />To the unknown commenter:<br /><br />I'll address your last paragraph with this. Physicians for a National Health Program. They are a group of American doctors that want universal healthcare in the US and they have the statistics to prove it can be done. www.pnhp.org/Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09622967471889859591noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-30060447700059085632012-07-04T06:04:12.047-04:002012-07-04T06:04:12.047-04:00Sorry, but this will not be affordable healthcare....Sorry, but this will not be affordable healthcare. It will add more unnecessary bureaucracy to a system that is already floundering under it. More regulations will limit the freedom of doctors and patients to decide on the best method of treatment for the individual. It create more paperwork, increasing time and expense needed to process government forms and decreasing time and effort focused on patient care.<br /> Hospitality and benevolence are good things, to be practiced by the individual. If individuals in the community come together to increase their ability to aid, that is fine, as long as that is their choice. But to demand that others give against their will is wrong. <br /> If you pass a homeless man on the street and give him a few dollars, that is your choice, as well as the decision not to. If that homeless man were to reach into your pocket and take it without your consent, you would consider it theft. Yet just because it is the government taking that money to give to someone else does not make it less of a crime. <br /> Helping others is an wonderful thing to do, but is an individual's choice and responsibility. Being made to do so against your will is coercion at the least, and slavery at the worst.<br /> How many people will be helped when the number seeking their "free" healthcare skyrockets, yet the number of doctors, pushed to the brink by increasing workloads, oppressing bureaucracy, and overwhelming paperwork demands, will decrease as those physicians see the futility of just such a system and leave the profession?Tarotsfoolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01312849239831153734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-7178897124001811502012-07-03T13:10:57.234-04:002012-07-03T13:10:57.234-04:00Thanks for the explanation. :)Thanks for the explanation. :)Rhodahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09094127970843216948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-41298703934548697122012-07-03T08:47:36.635-04:002012-07-03T08:47:36.635-04:00Hello, all! Thanks for reading, and for commentin...Hello, all! Thanks for reading, and for commenting.<br /><br />Jan, I appreciate the compliment... blessed be right back atcha. *smile*<br /><br />Threshold Mum... it's really exciting to see a comment of yours here, as I am a big fan of your blog. I do often think that American views on healthcare suffer from a lack of perspective on the realities in the rest of the world. The horrors of "socialized medicine" as our Right likes to call it are so terrible that I have yet to encounter a single citizen from a country that actually has it (like Britain or Canada) who would trade it for our system.<br /><br />But that doesn't convince those who feel that, now that our country has taken some small steps toward universal coverage, there's nothing left to do but flee to Canada--which, of course, has had single payer insurance for decades now. <br /><br />And I fear that our systems of class and race segregation keep far too many Americans unaware of what it is like in this country for the many who lack health coverage. I wish we had a more global perspective, and I also wish we had a clearer vision of our own country than we are likely to get from network television...<br /><br />Hystery, I agree with you that true universal care, as opposed to universal access, appeals more to my sense of justice and fairness. For me, that feeling is more about my political and economic understandings than my religious ones, however, and I wanted in this article--in this blog generally, in fact--to stay rooted in my religious and spiritual understandings.<br /><br />As far as my use of ancient Pagan examplars to support a modern Pagan view of justice, and the degree to which I am attempting to extend my own definition of Paganism to all Pagans: I was attempting in this post to speak <i>to</i> all contemporary Pagans, as a participant in the <a href="http://paganvalues.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">Pagan Values Blogject</a>. While I often speak in the blog from my own immediate and subjective experience, in this case, I wanted to ground my comments in a more shared cultural heritage.<br /><br />I would not say that the myths, customs, and beliefs of the ancient world are binding on modern Pagans--though I certainly know of some Pagan traditions that feel otherwise, and in particular, Hellenic, Roman, and Norse reconstructionist Paganisms seem to do so to a significant extent. It's a bit like the situation in most of the Quaker world, where the Bible is seen as perhaps inspired, but as words <i>about</i> God rather than the Word <i>of</i> God, but some (like <a href="http://www.evangelicalfriends.org/6" rel="nofollow">Evangelical Quakers</a>) take a fairly literalist view of that document, and others (like Liberal Quakers, who may be non-theist or non-Christian) may reject it entirely. <br /><br />However, just as the language and mythology of the Bible forms a common vocabulary which informs all the branches of Friends to one degree or other, familiarity with ancient myths and legends--and to some degree with the beliefs and practices of indigenous polytheists and animists throughout the world--forms a common ground which modern Pagans share. To some degree, our religious culture draws inspiration from that strata of history; for some of us, it is central, and to others, less so.<br /><br />And for a much better discussion of how that view of Paganism today fits in with other competing views, I'd much rather steer you, Hystery, Rhoda, to John Halstead's wonderful essay, <a href="http://allergicpagan.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/the-three-or-more-centers-of-paganism/" rel="nofollow">The Three (or More?) "Centers" of Paganism</a> over at <a href="http://allergicpagan.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">The Allergic Pagan</a>. He does a much better job than I could of describing the way Paganism is often more a matter of overlapping concepts than of exclusive definitions.Cat C-B (and/or Peter B)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-45709241309235340852012-07-02T09:36:44.098-04:002012-07-02T09:36:44.098-04:00I echo Hystery's question. I was a little put...I echo Hystery's question. I was a little put off that you seem to be applying your definition of paganism to everyone who professes paganism. Maybe I misunderstood, I really hope I did.Rhodahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09094127970843216948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-13316942135824538872012-07-02T09:28:37.116-04:002012-07-02T09:28:37.116-04:00Hospitality is a good word to invoke in this discu...Hospitality is a good word to invoke in this discussion. Hospitality is such a vibrant, complex, interfaith, cross-cultural human/e concept too often confused with the offering of crackers and juice after meeting for worship. In the name of community and hospitality, I feel that the current situation is a step in a healthy direction but gives too much power to already powerful people/organizations and continues to neglect many of the needs of the least powerful. It is not radical enough (using radical as a word indicating a need to create change at the "roots"). Count me in the lefty leftist column, but as one who grounds her belief that we need to continue to move toward universal care both in spiritual and political/economic theory. <br /><br />A question for you asked from my position in Pagan isolation (because it surprised me to see you using ancient Romans to support a contemporary justice issue): How binding/important/relevant are ancient Pagan beliefs and practices to you in determining right relationship to your faith and practice today?Hysteryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02044678910937934731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-34001320828352972502012-07-01T01:20:18.537-04:002012-07-01T01:20:18.537-04:00Thoughtprovoking & beautiful Cat. For me, com...Thoughtprovoking & beautiful Cat. For me, coming from the UK where the National Health provides for all basic care free at the point of use, and now living in Kenya, where so many around me cannot afford the basic healthcare their families need - and seeing the awful impact of this, I find it difficult to understand why a society wouldn't want affordable healthcare. I loved thining more about the links to a wider hospitalilty. Thank you.ThresholdMumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18138871428967189369noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25987874.post-86659111568909877712012-06-30T15:40:41.976-04:002012-06-30T15:40:41.976-04:00I read your blog often, and I find this post espec...I read your blog often, and I find this post especially wonderful! Thank you for expressing this sentiment so well and coherently. Bravo, and blessed be!Jan W.noreply@blogger.com