"Christianity and Buddhism share the idea that it is important not only to love God but to love others as you love yourself. It's not an order; it's an understanding that by loving others as you love yourself, you realize you are not separate. This is different from getting what you want at the expense of other people.
Our culture rewards people for isolating themselves from each other: "Hey, I work hard, I got my stuff, I'm okay. If you don't have the stuff, I'm not responsible." In the long-term, this is self-defeating. In a recent speech Mario Cuomo pointed out that when poor people are in need, we say we're not going to throw money at them because it's their fault. We punish them, and take away their welfare. But we help rich people by giving them money in the form of incentives and tax breaks."
purifymind.com
I'm not really interested in being "disabused of my impressions." I understand the principles of libertarianism very well, and made my own conscious decision to reject them quite a long time ago (because I don’t want to live in a place that reminds me of Calcutta). You lost me completely with your “let them eat beans!” comment, and the idea that the parents of hungry American children should be standing outside begging for money for breakfast. And the idea of abortionists on every corner just horrifies me. Of course you are welcome to express any opinion at all here, but I am pretty sure we will never find any common ground on this particular subject at all, because our world views are too divergent. You seem very intelligent, and it would be interesting to discuss other things with you, of course.
"If you take care of only a few people that you are intimately related to, you are practicing partial love more than universal love. It is partial love that is responsible for all the calamities that human beings suffer."
Mo Tzu |
