Religiosity can “cloud” one’s thinking and human beings on life support are the “living dead,” according to Bonnie Erbe, contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report. Her August 11 blog post, “Sarah Palin's Lies About Obamacare Are Based on Religion,” attempted to rebut former Governor Sarah Palin’s controversial remarks about health care, and ended up insulting people of faith.
It all started on August 7 when Palin wrote a Facebook note. “And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
To the liberal Erbe, “flailin’ Palin” went beyond the pale. “Once again, former Governor Palin is letting her religiosity cloud her thinking.” But Erbe didn’t stop there.
“She and others of the Schiavo ilk read into the Bible that the public should pay for life support even when there's not a remote possibility that the life in question is salvageable. We don't need healthcare reform to resolve that problem. All we need do is shift the cost of sustaining the living dead to the people who insist on keeping them on life support. And I don't mean to their insurance companies, I mean shifting that cost to the individuals themselves.”
Attacks on Palin are nothing new for Erbe. As CMI previously reported, on March 12, Erbe wrote that Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol, was more mature than her mother. After Pope Benedict XVI suggested that the use of condoms was counter-productive in the fight against AIDS in Africa, Erbe wrote on March 18 that it “was one of the most horrifically ignorant statements.”
And then there’s Erbe’s fantastic advice on April 1 when she suggested that pregnant women who are struggling financially should consider having an abortion.
Erbe seems to be the one with clouded thinking.