Sure, Texas Could Require Less-Drowny Summer Camps. But Would Jesus Approve?
What Would Jesus Regulate?
In the aftermath of the flash floods in Texas Hill Country that killed 137 people, including 27 girls and staff at a summer camp where several cabins were built in the flood plain, Gov. Greg Abbott called the Texas Lege into a special session so it could take care of the important work of gerrymandering five new Republican-leaning congressional seats at the request of Donald Trump. Oh, yes, and to pass additional recovery funding for the towns and people hit by the floods, that too.
In addition, while it wasn’t among the governor’s list of priorities for the special session, lawmakers have introduced at least nine bills aimed at improving the safety of youth camps. The proposed bills “would address everything from emergency plans and camper disaster drills, to better communication systems and life jackets inside every cabin.”
But as the Texas Tribune reported Friday, it’s not terribly likely that any of those camp safety bills will pass in time for the end of the special session on August 19 — and that’s without the Democrats fleeing the state to deny the governor’s mapfuckery a quorum. Rather, the camp safety bills are likely to take a backseat to other flood-related proposals like “fast-tracking disaster funding to businesses and improving emergency disaster response,” the Tribune reports. And that stuff is itself a lower priority than rigging the 2026 midterms for Donald Trump.
The Tribune piece was published before most of the Democrats in the state House skedaddled for the safety of blue states to prevent a quorum, shutting down not only the gerrymander but also everything else. Abbott is likely to keep calling special sessions until either the gerrymander passes or Republicans suffer an unaccustomed fit of sanity and agree to a special session focusing only on flood-related matters. Nobody’s betting on that.
Following the floods, several spokespeople for summer camps emphasized that they too are grieving the terrible losses and want to work with the Lege to make sure camps are safe for Texas’s precious children. In reality, the summer camp industry in Texas is surprisingly powerful, and has a history of resisting regulation, because what part of Texas industry was unclear to you? The Tribune reminds us,
Two weeks after the flooding, the Associated Press reported that Camp Mystic had in recent years successfully appealed to FEMA to have several of its buildings removed from federal flood zone maps, which could have lowered Mystic’s insurance cost and made expansion of the camp easier to do.
So even if additional special sessions are called, as seems likely, the summer camp bidness seems well-prepared to push back against Big Government Interference.
The God Of Small Government
And as we’ve noted several times in our coverage of the floods, many Republicans in Texas haven’t been too hot on stuff like emergency warning sirens or flood alert systems, because they cost money. At a meeting in Kerr County in 2021, several residents vehemently opposed federal funding from the Biden administration, since it might come with strings attached, like communism or mask mandates. Even when local governments have tried to get the systems built, the state Lege has just as often sidelined the budget requests.
Besides, the mood in Republicanland since Reagan is that government is a bad thing in general, so government help will only make things worse. That’s basically been the message from Department of Homeland Security head cosplayer Kristi Noem, who explained shortly after the disaster that states are supposed to run disaster response, and the federal government should only have a secondary backup role. Besides, the really great thing we see in disasters, Noem emphasized, is that “God created us to take care of each other,” which was demonstrated by how volunteers did so much of the heavy lifting when government was nowhere to be seen.
But wait, said several smart Wonkette readers in the comments yesterday, don’t Republicans recognize that government is one way that We The People take care of each other, what with promoting the general welfare, including providing emergency resources that individuals and communities can’t all pay for on their own, or using regulations to help keep children as safe as possible? That’s the whole social compact thing right there, isn’t it?
Well sure, if you’re a commie atheist. But for a lot of fundagelical Christians, taking care of each other is something people should only do on their own, because God wants government to be very, very limited.
As for taking care of each other, or regulating whether cabins can be built in flood zones, that’s not the government’s business, although most of the fundie arguments about the proper role of government center on worrying about welfare, not building codes. They basically argue that helping the poor and the needy is the responsibility of private individuals, and taxation is theft. Here’s a pretty typical take, from something calling itself the “Foundation for Economic Education”:
Government welfare programs, even those providing temporary relief, are in complete opposition to, and destructive of, acts of Christian charity and are totally inconsistent with Christian tradition.
One of the fundamental tenets of the Christian church is that the human is a creature possessing free will. It is because of the Christian recognition that man has control over his actions by means of his own will, that he is considered responsible for all of his actions. […] It is also held that for a Christian to perform an act of charity and to gain the spiritual rewards for this act, it must be performed by the deliberate intent of the individual. An act of charity—an act of helping those in need—can only be a Christian act when it involves the application of free will.
Since taxation is coercive, it takes the choice of helping others out of people’s hands, and governments can’t do that! You wouldn’t rob your neighbor to give to charity, so you aren’t allow to tax your neighbor either, because “True charity, without choice, is an impossibility, and when attempted, negates the concept of Christian love.”
Worse, government spending — COERCION AND THEFT, you mean! — will destroy America by making recipients of government support parasitic degenerates, and by enslaving “the productive members of society.” Other arguments insist that God commands us to work for a living, so welfare encourages idleness and offends Him.
We should note that this particular screed doesn’t address disaster preparedness or assistance, but it would seem to follow that since people are responsible for themselves, government has no business telling Christian summer camp operators where they can put cabins or how to plan for emergencies. Similarly, it would be wrong to tax anyone to warn of flooding, to rescue victims, or to help them rebuild, because all of those get in the way of people protecting their own families and communities and rob them of the free will to donate food or construction supplies. You see a blue tarp on a roofless house, but a real Christian sees the chains of slavery.
Presumably this does not hold true for emergency relief for businesses. Why? Shut up.
Following Hurricane Helene last fall, the “Standing for Freedom Center” explained that the death and destruction of a natural disaster must be understood through “sound Christian doctrine,” which is why no one should think that the hurricane had anything to do with “climate change,” which isn’t real, and is in fact “a fabricated crisis that is weaponized by the global elites.” The editorial condemns lefties who suggested that Appalachia “deserved” the floods because people there don’t believe in climate change — hey, I agree with that, because extreme weather isn’t a person and can hit any of us — and besides, “There is only one true God, the Triune Christian God, and His name is not ‘climate change’ but Yahweh.”
The piece also mildly chided Christians who said Asheville was hit because of all the sin and homosexuality there, but mostly because mere humans shouldn’t presume they know God’s thinking, and besides lots of less sinful parts of the South were hit, too.
The main point, says the editorial, is that natural disasters “are a result of living in a fallen and sinful world,” and that humans and the natural world itself are both cursed by original sin, so you’d better focus on getting right with Jesus. Also that extreme weather, like the rain, fall on both “the just and the unjust,” and God’s will is inscrutable (and of course human activity like burning fossil fuels can’t affect the atmosphere). But most importantly, natural disasters are a reminder to “repent or perish,” because see point #1 about living in a fallen world.
The piece is surprisingly silent on whether government is allowed to tax people to cover weather forecasts, emergency preparedness, or rebuilding assistance, but presumably such worldly matters are a mere distraction from salvation.
Of course, not all Christians are quite so extreme in their views, but we should remember that if they aren’t, they’ll burn in Hell just like us liberals the end.
[Texas Tribune / Acton Institute / Foundation for Economic Education / Standing for Freedom Center]
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Friend I just saw in LA said that when she boarded her flight in San Antonio, a bunch of guys in uniform, each with dogs, got on the flight at the last minute. At first she was wondering what the hell that was about, then one told her they were on their way back to California after helping with the rescue and search efforts in Texas. Those were the people and dogs locating bodies.
I mean, just in case Texas Republicans feel like knocking California.
"Government is a bad thing. Also, I would like to be in the government."