This blog is about my man, Mr. Joe Wilson. No, I'm neither being sarcastic, nor am I a rabid NObama-niac (did I just make a new word?). However, I understand completely the position from which Joe Wilson is coming. He (and many of his constituents) have been reading the bill that is currently put forth, have been listening to the President's speeches, and noting that the two do not agree on very large fronts. [As a side note, intention when writing a bill and how it can be interpreted when put into action are two very different things sometimes.]
He is forced to appear on television in front of the rest of Congress to listen to a speech about health care reform. Say what you want about the Daily Show, but I think they've got one thing right: "If [the president and his cabinet] say something often enough, it becomes true."
Repeatedly have misleading statements been made by the President, namely that 43 million people are without health care, and that illegal aliens will not be covered by this plan. Most people would put that together and believe that either a) Illegal aliens had not been counted in that plan and they won't be covered or b) Illegal aliens were counted in that plan and they will be covered. However, neither of those statements are true.
So, Mister Wilson decided to do the same thing that the President had been doing to his face for the past 20 minutes: become blunt about opposition to his own view; he simply said, "You lie!" Now, if you think that these were the only heated words coming from this speech, think about the fact that Obama was essentially saying earlier that all opponents of the bill are simply people that employ scare tactics to get the way of the special interest groups. Essentially, he called all of them people that take bribes to strike unnecessary fear into the heart of Americans. To me, that sounds much more like name calling than "You lie!"
However, I'm digressing. Why am I behind Joe Wilson? First, I'm glad that people are so willing to show their disagreement when (what they see as) imaginative ideology is shoved down their throats, they disagree with a voracity that matches the level of ridiculousness of the rhetoric. Second, when people are lied to from an authority position, they should not simply sit there pensively. Something needs to be done when lies are present and building upon one another.
When I was in 8th grade, I went a major part of a youth group that was doing major things. We started pushing 200 people in a youth service in the middle of the week, while the normal service on Sunday was barely getting above 300 a week. We were tight as a leadership team, everything was going quite successfully until the Pastor decided he did not agree with what the Youth Pastor was doing. Some say that it was jealousy that caused the tension, but whatever happened, the Youth Pastor resigned under the tension.
The Sunday after this happened, every single youth sat on the back two rows instead of our normal front three rows. The pastor was not present. In his stead, he had the senior deacon stand up and give a prepared statement. Suffice it to say that the statement was misleading, inappropriate, and almost slanderous (in its implications about the actions of the Youth Pastor). When I heard the first deliberate lie, I immediately got up noisily from my chair and left the sanctuary.
Later on, I wished to God in Heaven that I had confronted that deacon in front of the congregation. Would it have caused a huge stir in a Baptist church? Heck yes. Would it have been more of a dialogue than the filth that was being spoken from the pulpit? Yes. Unfortunately with my exit, it only highlighted the lie to a few select people. I wish, in that situation, I had acted more like Joe Wilson for the sake of Truth.
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