James, with respect, I completely disagree with you.
Government has no exclusive right to social services nor has religion any particular right to lay claim to morality, community or love thy neighbor.
In fact, one needs no better example of how two great world religions have failed to do just that than the way so-called Christians have plundered Iraq for its oil and so-called Jews in Israel are oppressing the Palestinians and have taken their land. As regards Muslims, I have seen what the Taliban and other fundamentalists have done to other Muslims who don't take their religion seriously enough for their liking. Sorry, James, don't talk to me about religion, they can keep it.
> We can become a nation of self sufficient hermits living within our own castles and surrounding moat
I don't see why? Those are neither attributes conferred by enlightenment nor education. I must say, however, that, more and more, and possibly as they become self-sufficient, people throughout the world are tending to live that way. I know I am and I do.
> Forget the disabled, the poor and the uneducated. Maybe we will then get to decide what to do with them.
Charity and kindness are one thing but do you not think that people should take some responsibility for themselves and their own offspring? I believe, at the moment, one third of children born in the US are to unwed, African-American teenagers who, clearly, have neither the ability nor the intention to care for them. In Africa, families of greater than ten children, all living in abject poverty, are the order of the day. The AIDS epidemic in Africa is rampant but the last thing Africans want to hear about is abstinence. What they want is for someone else to pay for their anti-retroviral drug treatment so that they can continue with their sexual profligacy.
> Perhaps the old ovens can be fired up or new ones made for Pax Amerikana.
I know you are being facetious but have you considered what happens to the multitude of uneducated, unfed children who grow up with no prospects for anything and, indeed, no hope --- they become revolutionaries, freedom fighters or terrorists, in the new parlance. I wonder how you would feel if a million or more deprived teenagers were running around the US with AK47s. Well, that's what is going on in Africa. And, whose fault is that? I presume, America's, for not giving enough hand-outs?!
And, meanwhile, certainly in Africa, all these deprived kids are in countries replete with governments (all getting Western aid and all corrupt) and missionaries who, I admit, are doing their best but will surely be murdered in due course like like many of their bretheren have been. |
