I think you are getting extremely specific here, yet in a way that doesn't capture the spirit of what I was trying to say. No one can help the less fortunate 24 hours a day! I believe most liberals are more conscious of trying to help them, than, say, libertarians or conservatives. Now these people may do individual good works, of course, but it is liberals who believe in expansive governmental safety nets for all people, national insurance coverage, food for the hungry, etc.
When Ionesco and I both suggested that a wonderful way to help child slaves and children living in poverty would be to eat organic sugar, coffee and chocolate, I didn't see all the conservatives jumping in, but perhaps everyone was so busy going to to natural foods store to buy these items they didn't have a chance to post. This is a way to help millions of children.
I don't believe that when conservatives say they don't want to help the needy because that would make them dependent, that kind of "help" by not helping is of the same quality as what the poor really need to survive. For example, we have ended welfare in this country, or at least severely limited it. But a lot of poor women with children are taking long bus trips in the middle of the night now to work minimum wage jobs and their children stay by themselves. It would have been better to teach skills so that these people could get better jobs, and for the ones with small children, I don't think small children are any better off being proud of mothers who work as they fend for themselves than they were when their mothers were collecting benefits but were at least there to care for them. Small children deserve to be cared for when their parents aren't home, period.
There are an awful lot of rules and absolutes when conservatives want to help in an institutional way. I don't think we can really compare the way liberals and conservatives help the needy in their private lives, because it would all be anecdotal. I think we need to look at government programs and political philosophies.
We COULD have a conversation in which you nitpick all my posts to death, but I really don't have time to do that, and I would find it tedious and boring. Your own philosophy on how to help society's poor and needy would be very interesting to me, of course.
If you want to talk about abortion, conservatives are very concerned with controlling women's wombs, but pretty much uninterested in taking care of the babies that result from that abortion prevention. And they tend to be against thorough sex education and easy availability of birth control to teenagers, policies that prevent abortions. And I don't think you can conclude that all liberals like abortion, either. I don't think any of them do. But some of them would argue that it is the woman who will have to bring up a child who can best make the decision of whether she is up to doing a good job at that. Unwanted children tend to become neglected and abused children, so you could just as easily say that conservatives are interested in creating neglected and abused children, if you really want to throw everything up in the air and argue about it. But I don't, really. |
