tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post2971573949804224872..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The sadism of late-LeftismBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-7178295332294526252012-06-13T06:38:07.545+01:002012-06-13T06:38:07.545+01:00@OdE - (BGC shuffles feet and looks at the ground)...@OdE - (BGC shuffles feet and looks at the ground) err, thanks...<br /><br />Since it seems to have been helpful, you have inspired me to publish the comment as a posting.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-75018029460332910752012-06-13T03:24:42.064+01:002012-06-13T03:24:42.064+01:00BGC, you are so enviably level-headed and clear-si...BGC, you are so enviably level-headed and clear-sighted. It is always refreshing to come here and read your words. If I could only keep your last post in mind, it would be so much easier to understand the way the early church fathers felt about the poor.B322https://www.blogger.com/profile/18257802768718375656noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-101689672527835952012-06-11T15:33:03.553+01:002012-06-11T15:33:03.553+01:00@Thrasymachus.
Well, I don't know where you l...@Thrasymachus.<br /><br />Well, I don't know where you live, but there are NO poor (in the Biblical sense) in the West (except isolated individuals with specific causes - there no poor as a *class*). <br /><br />The 'Biblical' poor worked all waking hours until they dropped, had chronic malnutrition and usually died of starvation, and almost all their children died before adulthood of starvation and diseases. <br /><br />The modern "poor" do not work at all, are obese and have more children than anyone else, and no matter how many kids they have nearly all will survive to mature adulthood. <br /><br />Chalk and cheese.<br /><br />Everyone nowadays is wallowing in 'luxury', by ancient standards. <br /><br />Therefore, when people talk about 'the poor' they are talking about the lesser-Rich, often the idlest rich or the most feckless rich.<br /><br />And the Rich are the ones who can only rarely get to heaven, via the eye of a needle.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-86648938970846504912012-06-11T15:11:21.951+01:002012-06-11T15:11:21.951+01:00@dearieme - oh yes indeed. But the answer is not t...@dearieme - oh yes indeed. But the answer is not to train oneself to *hate* people in the abstract - but to recognize the necessarily feeble claims of people in the abstract comapred with actual responsibilities.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-59889121351767275012012-06-11T14:50:55.131+01:002012-06-11T14:50:55.131+01:00I grew up in a leftist Catholic family. The poor w...I grew up in a leftist Catholic family. The poor were regarded as beautiful, wonderful people loved by God above all others. My personal interactions with the poor as a child showed me that usually they were cruel, sadistic, violent, willfully stupid, and worshiped power. I concluded my parents were insane and became a Nietzchean libertarian for many years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-60635434373209178062012-06-11T14:28:33.320+01:002012-06-11T14:28:33.320+01:00Some people "care" only in the abstract....Some people "care" only in the abstract. They "care" about the poor, for instance, but not about actual poor individuals they might come across. It's a pretty common deformation on The Left, isn't it?deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-26003818054025946702012-06-11T09:57:44.180+01:002012-06-11T09:57:44.180+01:00@JAD - well, you shouldn't care *much* about r...@JAD - well, you shouldn't care *much* about remote strangers - but (if you accept that neutrality is impossible) then you must at least care *a little* (on this side of neutrality)...<br /><br />since the only alternative is some degree of hatred towards them - to take some degree of pleasure in their misfortune. <br /><br />This probably has near-zero implications for public policy, but highly significant implications in respect to the 'unseen warfare' between Good and evil. <br /><br />And this is not a matter of subjective sentimentality, but merely a recognition of the objective reality that humans are not ultimately separate but are ultimately united, 'in it together'. And of course *that* is a Christian recognition.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-57411086380113707822012-06-11T09:35:06.678+01:002012-06-11T09:35:06.678+01:00No one actually cares about far away strangers, pe...No one actually cares about far away strangers, people very different from themselves, their kin, and their friends.<br /><br />If you have an ideology that says that you should care, the result is hypocrisy, not caring - whether that ideology is a version of Christianity, or the mutant heretical spawn of Christianity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com