Sunday, August 16, 2009

Kindness of strangers

Most people who have been in the backcountry for any good length of time at all, including me, have benefited from the kindness of strangers. The moral obligation is that you look out for each other.

In this story, a stranger named Karen Picotte was instrumental in saving the life of a lost man hiking alone. Picotte acted altruistically even though her phone call did not take a huge effort.

This generosity of spirit is widely spread among humans and knows no ideological boundaries. There are differences in how it applies, however.

My mother is fond of saying that East Tennesseans would literally give you their shirt if they found you in dire straits, but that they'd never ever put together a program to distribute shirts to people in need.

Liberals like me are willing to tax ourselves and, yes, conservatives to make the moral obligation legal, as well as more consistent and widespread. Sometimes we do it badly, but the results are pretty good, despite what you may hear from libertarians who put their precious theories ahead of actual real-world facts. Look around: The high tax states with strong commitment to the common weal are by and large the wealthy states, while the low tax states without that commitment are the poor states.

Conservatives resent every dime they pay in taxes. Well, maybe not what goes to the military, to the police, and to themselves - but every other dime. They are happy to say when there's no Karen Picotte around to help: Tough luck, you deserve what happened to you.

Somewhere in that tough luck is a willingness to cast others in an out group aside that few people have when confronted with a single person in need, an eagerness to rationalize that bad choices are the problem (and they do sometimes contribute) instead of imperfect social organization.

5 comments:

globeisatrocious said...

Dismissive and irrational, this post succinctly summarizes the inherent illogic in your ideology. But damn you are so very, very moral, it doesn't matter!

Let's say Mom did not say this, cuz I don't hit Moms:

"East Tennesseans would literally give you their shirt if they found you in dire straits, but that they'd never ever put together a program to distribute shirts to people in need."

The program that A and B would put together to give a shirt to X would take money from C to do it. Who asked C? He is The Forgotten Man. Your ideology holds a gun up to C and steals his money, and by extension, his life. Not so very, very good after all.

lovable liberal said...

Shorter gia: Taxation is armed robbery.

Yeah, there's a facile and feudal ideology.

It's easy for him to forget that taxation without representation is tyranny.

globeisatrocious said...

"Shorter gia: Taxation is armed robbery."

Succinctly my ideology - While A, Barney Frank does pack a gun, you call B, Ted Kennedy, representation?

lovable liberal said...

So, really a feudalist? Or an anarchist?

Frankly, I think anarchy leads to feudalism anyway.

Or are the expenditures you want funded by special non-felonious armed robbery?

You don't like Ted and Barney, no surprise their. But their constituents do. Tough living in a democracy for those like you who want the rich to rule.

lovable liberal said...

'their' ==> 'there' - what an embarrassing typo!