Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00121)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Meredith" 
<bill_meredith@e...> wrote:
> That the USA is perfect has never been my position nor do I think 
Bart
> subscribes to such silliness.

When did you and Bart change your minds? Especially for someone to 
change his position so radically after forty is extremely usnusual.

> We could ask what should the good
> Samaritan have done if he had come upon the scene when the 
traveller was
> being stripped and beaten by the robbers?

I love that story. Yet, setting aside the question of whether trying 
to colonize Iraq for its oil wealth was a good idea, the Good 
Samaritan story is a grossly inappropriate choice. Consider this:

(1) The Good Samaritan did not shoot up the place, then tell the man 
he was rescuing that he could have no food, water, electricity, or 
gasoline thereafter but that he could feel free to rell his rescuers 
where they could go since there was a language barrier and it all 
sounds like angry jibberish anyway.

(2) There was not an insurmountable cultural barrier, so that when 
the man the Good Samartan saved shook his shoe in the air the Good 
Samaritan mistakenly mistook this vile insult for a sign of deep 
affection.

(3) The man the Good Samaritan rescued did not protest like hell 
before and after the rescue and even resort to the use of firearms to 
make his point.

(4) The Good Samaritan did not dissolve the agencies of government, 
allowing criminals to run wild in the streets while he dreamed of 
returning to his hardware store in California.

(5) Because it originated in an earlier and simpler era, the story 
does not play well in a pluralistic society. The Samaritans revolted 
against the Jews and established their own temple at Mount Gerizzim. 
>From the point of view of the Zionists on our list "Good Samaritan" 
is an oxymoron.

(6) The story does not accurately characterize the Republican 
ideology. George Bush would issue Treasury Bonds to pay for a tax 
break to the wealthy innkeeper (assuming the innkeeper had White 
house connections) and tell the man who was stripped and beaten that 
life just is not fair. The innkeeper would then get into secret 
meetings with Dick Cheney on energy policy, establish dummy offshore 
companies to handle the tax break, and take the whole company down to 
bankruptcy after telling the employees their stock sales were locked 
down until the execs walked away with all the money. This of course 
would be sold to the Samaritan people as a stimulus to the flagging 
inn industry.

One thing the two scenarios do have in common, though, is that nobody 
elected the Good Samaritan and he did not feel that it was nevessary 
anyway.