Tapu Misa has written a coruscating piece in the NZ Herald on "religious nutjobs" in the US. It meanders all over the place and unfortunately contains more slurs than coherent argument.
She commences by professing that it is hard to love fellow Christians. She finds the Westboro Baptist folk particularly despicable because they protest outside the funerals of US soldiers in a most ungraceful way. She goes on to misrepresent a recent decision by the Supreme Court on the matter.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the church's right to behave despicably is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.
Well, actually Tapu, no. The Supreme Court was a bit more sophisticated than that. The Court upheld (as it has done many times) the right of local communities to regulate public speech, but the plaintiff in this case was not part of the community at all. He was not seeking a local restriction, but a blanket interdiction against Westboro Baptist views and practices--an entirely different matter. But, as they say in journalism, it's best not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Then comes an egregious slur of the United States in general.
When it comes to religious nutters, we have nothing on America. The most religious of Western nations excels at breeding the seriously theologically ignorant and misguided. If only they weren't so supremely confident of God's approval as well.
OK, so now we are going to get some examples of "the seriously theologically ignorant" in the United States. Listen up. Maybe Tapu is going to give us an analysis of the aberrant theology of Westboro Baptist believers--you know, something along the lines of their misplaced apocalypticism, or the fact that they appear to have little understanding of divine providence, or what separation from unbelief really involves, or how their ethics call for strict separation of wheat and tares now, despite our Lord's prohibition on this matter, etc.
No. For her "case in point" Tapu Misa points us to Governor Walker of Wisconsin. Now here is one seriously misguided theological nutter if ever there were. What? Yes. He is busting up unions in Wisconsin. He is on a mission from God (and his billionaire backers) apparently. Unfortunately our columnist is starting to let her petticoats show. Her theology appears to be informed far more by marxist rhetoric and class warfare than the Scriptures.
Not a word about democracy, elections, voters, and Governor Walker's recent inauguration as Governor of Wisconsin, having won an election by promising to deal with Wisconsin's $3bn annual budget deficit. Not a word about keeping one's integrity with voters. Not a word about the evils of public debt binding up future generations of children and grandchildren. Not a word about fiscal rectitude and its theological underpinnings. It's all about stripping away union rights.
But, as with her rendition of the Supreme Court's recent decision on Westboro, a half-truth actually becomes a misrepresentation eliding mighty close to a lie.
Not that "beating up" (state sector) unions is not on Governor Walker's agenda. It clearly is. A recent piece in Time Magazine puts the matter succinctly.
Walker has a strong case on the fiscal merits. The cost of state employees' benefits has skyrocketed in tandem with the rising power of public employees' unions. It has become a perverse and semicorrupt arrangement: the unions raise millions from dues, which are then used to elect labor-friendly politicians who cave at the contract-negotiating table, especially on long-term employment deals, whose cost really begins to crush the state or city budget in the years after the agreeable politician has left office. This is where public-sector unions lack the moral authority of their private-sector brethren. When the United Steelworkers negotiate with a steel company, they don't also control the company's board of directors. (Who's to blame in Wisconsin?)
Few Americans understand how the public-employee-union money machine works. Many unionized state and local public workers have their dues automatically deducted from their paychecks. On average, a teacher in Wisconsin pays more than $1,000 per year to the union (from an average salary of $51,264). A decent chunk of this money is used to fund political activities. That doesn't mean just making contributions. It also means running lavish independent ad campaigns in support of their chosen candidates and against their opponents. Even Democratic candidates who oppose union priorities can face massively funded negative campaigns targeting them in primaries. Engaging in such well-funded political activity is the unions' right, of course, but their immense financial power means they are bringing a machine gun to a fistfight.
Then the biggest hoot of all comes. Tapu Misa begins to lecture us all about the evils of inequality in the United States. She paints her own version of Armageddon, which is that the future of the US is under threat due to growing inequality. Having made due obeisance to Westboro-like nutter, Naomi Klein, she then cites a professor of sociology in California:
"The poverty rate in the United States, which was cut in half during the 1960s, is now the highest of the wealthy democratic countries. And according to a recent Unicef study of child wellbeing, the United States ranks 20th out of 21 OECD countries."
If the attack on public sector unions triumphs, it will "have dire consequences that will go far beyond union members and their families, for it will shred America's already tattered safety net and further concentrate power in the hands of the privileged".
Note: this is theological acumen and understanding according to Tapu Misa. We would caution her to be careful about throwing around sobriquets like "religious nutter". They might prove to be a little bit closer to home than she would wish. In any event, we are all for equality. We wish the public sector unions in Wisconsin were as well. Through their gaming of the political system and their self-serving conspiracies with State Democrats they have been able to vote themselves money out of taxpayers pockets to where they are paid well above private sector wages.
If Tapu Misa genuine believes that inequality proses a great social danger she should ardently favour Governor Walker's programme. The (presumably) offensive inequality between public sector and private sector wages will be obliterated by the good and righteous Governor. Right on, brother.
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