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To: SMGFan; PGalt
When Marvin Olasky became a Christian he became deeply concerned with the issue of Christian compassion. He wrote a book about it, entitled The Tragedy of American Compassion. He learned that “compassion” means “suffering with.” Hillary nor anyone else, save only God, can have compassion on everyone - because that would mean paying attention to them, and their needs and trials, individually.

That is what makes socialist “compassion” a joke. It is “one size fits all” on steroids. “Welfare rights” claims that money is the cure-all panacea for everyone. The irony is that we learn that among lottery winners it is not rare for them to turn up broke as ever, within a few years of winning millions. Money is a mediating factor in society. Society is not, and must not be, coextensive with government. Because that would mean “everything is either mandatory or illegal.” It is the very definition of tyranny.

In society, people serve each other, and themselves, according to their own motivations. Most serve most others for money - it obviates the need for a great deal of otherwise necessary knowledge and trust. Your dollar in your wallet represents, if you didn’t steal it, either a benefit you did for someone else or love someone else had for you. Either way, if I do something for you or give you something which you are willing to give me the dollar for, I don’t have to know what you did, or what the person to gave you out of love did, to earn it from someone else. Either way, I have recompensed some previous benevolence to another member of society, and I have that satisfaction as well as the dollar.

Now in steps Hillary Clinton, declaring that I have “won life’s lottery” and seizing the dollar from me to aggrandize herself by giving it to poor Joe. I still have the satisfaction of having benefited you, and that is what Hillary cannot give Joe. And it may be that Joe needs that far more than he needs the dollar - but is prevented from knowing that by “Hillary’s gift” of my dollar.

I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read which demonstrates that far-flung reaches of society are involved, ultimately, in making something as simple as a pencil. Most of that involvement is mediated by money, so the precise information outlined in I, Pencil need not be accounted for in any other way than that shorthand, the bottom line. As Thomas Paine put it, “society is produced by our wants” - and money is a critical intermediary in the process. But even though it is conventional to use the dollar printed by the US government for that purpose, money existed long before the dollar - or even the paper currency generally - ever did.

Government, Paine pointed out, "is produced . . . by our wickedness.” It “promotes . . . our happiness . . . NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.” A government which presumes to provide - and first, to define - "our wants” can only be tyrannical.


39 posted on 06/15/2015 5:38:44 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; All

Thanks for the post/links in a thread of good posts.

conservatism_IS_compassion

Socialism Is Legal Plunder - The Law; Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

“Everything about socialism is sham and affectation.” - 23.11 Ch23 Evil; Economic Harmonies; Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)


43 posted on 06/15/2015 6:01:52 AM PDT by PGalt
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