Excellent post today from Bruce Gourley. Check out a snippet below:
Richard Land, Ethics spokesperson for the SBC leadership, continues to spread lies about government health reform “death panels” and continues to equate theoretical government health care rationing with Nazism, although he refuses to equate current free market health care rationing as Nazism.
And now a battle has erupted between two Baptist Richards.
In the one corner, Richard Land, free market champion and anti-Obama crusader, seems oblivious to the fact the the Nazi movement was in large part a product of, and equated itself with, right-wing Christianity. Aligned with right-wing Christians, the Nazi Party advocated Christian Nationalism, sought to kill homosexuals, remove liberal intellectuals from universities, promote a pure Christian faith, join state with God, and enforce Christian morality consistent with Martin Luther’s antisemitism.
In the other corner is Richard Pierard, renowned Baptist historian whose area of expertise is modern German history, particularly Nazism from 1933-1945. Pierard has lived and taught in Germany, and he denounced Richard Land’s statements as bunk: “The effort to reform health care in the United States has absolutely nothing in common with the events of 70 years ago.”
Who are we to believe?
Continue reading this post at A Baptist Perspective.
Also, check out Brian Kaylor’s article over at EthicsDaily.com titled Richard Land Flip-Flops on Nazi Apology
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- Richard Land’s Man Crush & The New Republic Apparently, the folks at The New Republic are familiar with...
- Richard Land’s Lie As a follow-up to last week’s post entitled The Faith...
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What bothers Dr. Land is apparently this statement in the House Health Care Bill 3200:
“SECTION. 1233. ADVANCED CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.
(hhh)(1) Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term ‘advanced care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years.”
The ERLC says this “could be the slippery slope that potentially leads to euthanasia.” (See ERLC Analysis: The House Health Care Bill H.R. 3200 at erlc.com)
Decide for yourself if Dr. Land’s rhetoric warrants what is in the bill.
I think that it is time for the SBC to begin paying taxes. It is delving deeply into politics and should no longer get tax exemptions.
I’ve heard Dr. Land talk on the radio about this, so maybe I can supply a little more insight.
What Land has a problem with is “advanced care planning.” The issue for Land is whether this advanced care planning will “encourage” older patients to forego treatment that might extend their life, something patients might opt for if they are in significant pain or so incapacitated they see no point in living and, from Land’s perspective, given a little push with advanced care planning.
I believe it may be Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (an Obama health care advisor) who has written more extensively about advance care planning. He’s the person Land compared to Josef Mengele. Basically Emanuel says if a patient is in sufficient pain or so incapacitated that life for them is pointless, then the patient might want to go ahead and “not take your medicine.” But Emanuel does not recommend euthanasia (at least in what I gathered from the radio}. But the ERLC calls “not taking your medicine” a slippery slope to it.
In any case, does the bill say a patient has to have “advanced care planning?” I haven’t read enough of the bill to know. Does the bill control what a doctor says to a patient in advanced care planning? I doubt it could.
Another point:
Doctor’s dealing with elderly patients necessarily have to deal with advanced care planning.
My dad, eighty-six years old, had a heart attack a year ago. The doctors told him he could have by-pass surgery that would extend his life by a few years but had a 50% chance of killing him and a 75% chance of putting him on a dialysis machine for the rest of his life (since low blood flow to his kidneys had made them weak). After more tests the doctors strongly advised him not to do the surgery.
This is also advanced care planning, and it’s not necessarily bad — it’s giving patients their options.
Land’s Ph.D. is also in church history, but on early Calvinistic Baptist history.
But Pierard is an amazing historian. His work on America’s wars and on civil religion is very good.
I have found Land to be sloppy in most of his reasoning on most subjects. This is no different.
The idea of “advanced care planning” is that it is done in advance, that is, before the patient is in a condition that makes it impossible for the patient to express their wishes with regard to how agressive end of life treatment will be under various circumstances that may affect the patient. The alternative to agressive treatment that may prolong life is palliative treatment that controls pain, whether at home, in a hospice facility, nursing facility or hospital, and allows the disease process to proceed. There may also be less and more agressive treatments to select from depending upon the condition of the patient.
As one who survived a car wreck and broken neck, I advocate that everyone over the age of 18 should have an advance care plan for circumstances that they may encounter, such as those that result in apparent brain death from an accident. That way, the patient determines how agressive the treatment will be, rather than some third party.
Another example is the “do not resuscitate order” or DNR, which may be appropriate in cases involving advanced Alzheimer’s, severely disabling stroke damage, and the like. A patient could request such an order be entered if they were in such a condition.
There is nothing in the law that requires a patient to receive that treatment, but most medical facilities and many physicians insist that patients under their care have prepared a physician’s directive prior to treatment in the facility if possible. It avoids battles over the continuation of invasive and/or painful treatment for those who are no longer able to decide for themselves at the critical time and who have no prospects of a cure, but which treatment may delay death for weeks or a few months.
BDW,
Land is probably stretching his point, but it is certain that today’s U.S. conservative Christian movement, of which Land is a part, has nothing to do with the Nazi atrocities mentioned.
Whose stretch is more offensive to the cause of Christ?
No one said that today’s Christian right was affiliated with German Nazism of the 1930s and ’40s. The time difference between the existence of today’s Christian right and yesteryear’s Nazism clearly makes that impossible.
That does not mean that the two movements do not share certain limited political issues, such as limiting the rights of homosexuals, and the use of the state to promote Christian faith.