The Democratic Senate candidate running to represent Texas — a state that last elected a Democrat statewide in 1994 — stood in a DeSoto church and told the congregation that Jesus Christ would support a government public option for healthcare.
No, really.
“If you read our scriptures, if you read the New Testament, what does Jesus spend most of his time doing? It’s not preaching, it’s not teaching, it is healing. Healing the sick.”
This is one of the most enduring and dishonest sleights of hand in progressive politics — the claim that Jesus’ call to personal charity translates into a mandate for government healthcare programs. Talarico invoked Matthew 25, where Christ tells his followers they will be judged by whether they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and healed the sick. He then jumped directly to: therefore, the government should provide a public healthcare option.
The jump doesn’t work. It has never worked. And it requires a fundamental misreading of both the Gospel and the nature of Christian charity.
Jesus addressed his commands to individuals. “I was sick and you visited me.” Not “I was sick and your government administered a program on your behalf.” The entire moral weight of Matthew 25 rests on the personal, voluntary decision to care for another human being. The man who gives his own time, his own money, and his own presence to care for the sick is doing something morally significant. The man who votes for a politician who then takes money from someone else to fund a program administered by bureaucrats is doing something categorically different — whatever its practical merits or demerits as policy.
What Talarico and every progressive who pulls this move is actually doing is using Jesus’ moral authority to justify state coercion. They are saying: because Christ commanded charity, the government may compel it through taxation. This is not Christianity. It is the state wearing Christianity’s clothing.
The practical irony is that American Christians — the people Talarico is essentially lecturing — are the most charitable demographic in the country by every measurable standard. They give more. They volunteer more. They build hospitals, food banks, homeless shelters, and addiction recovery programs. They do this not because the government requires it but because their faith does. This is exactly what Matthew 25 calls for. Personal response. Voluntary sacrifice. Not a line item in a federal budget.
Talarico also said the Karmelo Anthony verdict — in which a Texas teenager was convicted of murder for stabbing a classmate at a youth soccer game — was a “tragedy.” This is the man running for Senate in a state where parents overwhelmingly want criminals held accountable.
Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to statewide office in thirty-two years. James Talarico is doing his best to make it thirty-three.
God is nonbinary. Jesus wants socialized medicine. The Karmelo Anthony verdict was a tragedy.
Texas will have thoughts.
