Evangelical Humanitarians, Condoning Anti-Tax Violence, Etc.
Peter beat me to recommending Ross’ great column on the health care summit, but almost everything in the Times Week In Review section is worth a read this week.
Nicholas Kristof on evangelical humanitarians expanding the definition of “pro-life”:
A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?
It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.
…Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.
And Frank Rich on Republican pols who got way too close to condoning the suicide attack on the I.R.S. building in Austin:
What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
Elsewhere we have a clash of European privacy and American speech, the terrifying things that could happen if we leave health care alone, and some typical Gore on climate change.
