What’s the truth about
health care and torture?

Speaking of Religion
The Rev. Dr. Tim Griffin

[Jesus said] "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" (John 18:37-38).

Pilate’s question about "truth" has often been taken to represent the height of cynicism and his treatment of Jesus’ case before the crowd at the height of political expediency.
Perhaps this explains why I was reminded of his words and actions by the events of last week. I am thinking in particular of events surrounding the child health-care legislation and the New York Times’ disclosure of "secret" Justice Department decisions concerning torture and the impact of anti-torture legislation upon the administration’s practice of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of alleged enemy combatants held by the American government.
As concerns the former, a National Public Radio report — I believe the program is All Things Considered — noted the false statements by both Democrats and the President concerning the legislation.
As for the first, the majority whip in the House of Representatives contended that a young child who died from an infection caused by a cavity in one of his teeth was the result of his not having adequate medical coverage. In fact, as the report pointed out, the child had insurance, but his mother was unable to identify a dentist who would accept the Medicare coverage.
I think we can and should be outraged by this — that a child in the United States can die under such circumstances, but the country did not owe anything to a child having no health-care insurance.
In his justification for his veto of the legislation — again according to NPR — the president also made a false statement to the country. He claimed that the legislation would allow a child whose parents earned in excess of $80,000 per year to receive insurance benefits from the health-care program.
In fact, that very concern had resulted in the legislation being explicitly altered so that no child from a family with such an income could qualify. In fact, nothing even close to that figure was the truth.
Later in the week, the New York Times reported on secret Justice Department decisions concerning torture. The story strongly suggests that the current administration made high-level appointments within the Justice Department to ensure that its program of "tough" treatment of detainees was approved.
Thus, even the anti-torture legislation approved by Congress to prevent the continuing use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the CIA and the military was held not to apply to such practices as water-boarding, sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, head slapping, and who knows what else.
According to the Justice Department "decisions," these practices, which are regarded by the rest of the world as torture and as cruel, inhuman and degrading, are in fact not torture. And these decisions enable the current administration to continue to assert that "America does not torture."
I find this tendency to distort the truth and to make false statements extremely disturbing for a number of reasons.
It is disturbing that as citizens we are placed in a position of not knowing what the truth is because we are given misinformation or the common meaning of language is redefined to mean something else entirely.
It is disturbing that as a consequence of these actions, the United States is seen as hypocritical when it condemns human rights violations elsewhere in the world.
It disturbs me that my government apparently believes that those it represents are so ignorant and apathetic that we neither know, nor care to know, what the truth is.
And most of all, it disturbs me that there is not a greater outcry by us — the citizens — which seems to confirm the government’s attitude.
There is much at stake in this issue. It says much about us as a people and a nation and much about our values. Obviously the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate — between cynicism and the truth — is an ancient one. It is being played out again in our midst. How will we choose? ••
Father Tim Griffin is priest-in-charge at the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, at 1946 Welsh Road in Bustleton.