My too often nonsensical and forever unenlightened reflections on people and life and everything else I understand as well as I understand everything else. Not well at all, in other words. Love thy neighbor, is my motto. Unless something better comes along. Make sure to say so when you find it.
In an age, like all ages, when compassion has become a dirty word. These folks help us clean up that legacy.
Jesus 101. For those who take his message, and the principles of all major religious traditions, more seriously than their egos. It was his signature message, when those who lack his courage and strength, take a moment to consider the beams they carry.
Did you here them take responsibility for their failures? Refreshing change of pace, huh?
Note the contrast with the current era. In every walk of life.
That's what real progress looks like. No matter the protestations of those with less love in their hearts.
When bullies remind you that they could be bullying you much worse, if they pleased, on any issue that they see fit, remind them, nicely, to go fuck themselves. Because that is exactly how bullies and illiberalism have functioned since the beginning of time and the world over. The Iranian mullahs have made it into a theology. As did our own Judeo-Christian adventures in illiberalism. And virturally every culture has tried the same since the beginning of organized human existence.
And we left those ways behind for a reason.
Freedom and compassion are and always have been the values that make us great. They are what distinguish us from our illiberal past and illiberal cultures the world over.
It is our freedom and compassion and a wiser, more courageous notion of human nature that liberal values offer that make us stronger and better as people.
What we are doing today is what we have been doing since the beginning of humanity.
Choosing between our more honest and compassionate strength and our more self-centered and petty-minded weakness.
Wanna know a secret?
There is no such thing as too liberal. Or too free. Or too compassionate. Or any of the rest.
There is only a thoughtful, more decent, and honest application of these values and our missteps and failures. That's it. The rest is excuses by the less thoughtful and decent among us to excuse their own cowardice and much more profound failures of humanity.
Obviously, we need policies that make sure that we cannot hurt one another with impunity. And policies that constructively facilitate genuine responsibility when we do hurt one another. And contain those, in the meantime, who are honestly dangerous to others.
There is no world where more recrimination, aggression, punitiveness, and mean-spiritedness makes the world better. Never has been. Never will be. No matter our protestations to the contrary.
And the places where despotism and terrorism fester should be evidence enough for that conclusion.
America was conceived so that legacy could be thrown off for good. There is no reason we should be treating that logic like it is our birthright when, in fact, it was the very past we were casting off to offer something better.
Something freer. Something more decent.
Something to make us genuinely proud to bear that name American.
