It isn't compassion with other people's lives
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <12/7>

      It was bad enough when the only thing the Republican Revolution was doing was half heartedly making cosmetic changes in charity for beggars currently known as the welfare system. It was hoped at one time there would be an end to the forcible taking of the property of some and giving it to others because they are "suffering." With that it only needed to be said, it isn't charity with other people's money.
      But now, in response to the "suffering" in Bosnia we are sending in our troops to be killed. Lets start promoting a new phrase. It isn't compassion with other people's lives.
      Of course it is the lot in life of soldiers to go where they are sent and do what they are told to do and only grumble about the pay and the food. But one would expect a serious and responsive government to limit their risk to that in the oath, "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." But here we clearly have a case of surrogate compassion.
      The lives of our citizens are being subordinated to the suffering of other people. It is a terrible thing to put at risk the only thing a man has and will ever have. It is an even more terrible thing to watch the slave masters who send them out to die to express their own false sense of compassion.
      This is what we have to expect from a nation that started with simply considering the labor of people lives to be the property of the government in the belief it is charity to beggars.
      Now we have gone the final step. We are paying the cost of a false sense of compassion with the lives of others, our slaves.
      As with the oath, that is not what they agreed to do. They agreed, swore and oath even, to do exactly what I quoted. But of course they are only soldiers.

For it's Tommy this and Tommy that and throw him out, the brute
But it's saviour of his country when the guns begin to shoot
-- Rudyard Kipling
      It was not a large step from charity with other people's money to compassion with other people's lives. It simply demonstrates how bankrupt our moral system has become. We do not care about the hours of their lives people spend earning money nor do we care about the lives themselves. Everything, even human life, is the property of society as a whole.
      We gave Congress our best shot at turning around the country and instead it is business as usual. Bob Dole supporting the same power he wants as the next president is not going to get him my support. Gingrich, is he for or against or what?
      And again and as always, not one of them is making the moral case. The only life you can sacrifice to your conscience is either your own or that of your slave. It is not compassion to sacrifice a slave.