Tag: Compassion

Misplaced Rage

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
26131152
 

The air is filled with outrage, hostility and frustration for most Americans right now. Inflation is devastating family budgets. Pregnant women are dying in Ukraine. Russian soldiers don’t even know why they are fighting this war. Joe Biden blames Russia for just about everything. And now someone has tossed the threat of nuclear war into the mix.

And all we can do is watch the horror show.

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People Will Die

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
3914
 

As the country starts to breathe a sigh of relief and emerges from the lockdown that is devastating our economy, people will use this opportunity to attack those who have supported the country’s efforts to re-open. They will cry out that people are dying. And they are right.

Whether the country began to re-open this month, or next month or in September, in other words, no matter when we strive to return to normal lives, people will die. Some will die from heart attacks, or pneumonia, or simply old age. And some will have contacted COVID-19. We will probably never know how the virus actually contributed to their deaths, but even now it has been implicated as the source of many deaths. And people who supported opening up will be called out for conspiring with those who are greedy, those who lack compassion and concern for other human beings.

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On Compassion

Stina
Stina
4217
 

My husband was watching some commentary on loan forgiveness. The talking heads kept reiterating that this wasn’t “compassionate” because it isn’t “fair” to the people who paid off their loans.

Regardless of your feelings regarding that particular policy, I want to dispel this ridiculous idea that Compassion = Fair.

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Member Post

Front Seat Cat
Front Seat Cat
22
 

Summer is trying to turn to Fall here in Northwest Florida without much luck. It’s Hot, Dry – no rain for 35 days. I watch the birds, bees, and butterflies take turns sipping from the bird bath and fluttering through the cold water spray from natural springs below ground when I turn on the sprinkler.  […]
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Member Post

Isaiah's Job
Isaiah's Job
85
 

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.” – Jean Vanier I recently learned of the death of theologian, author, and humanitarian Jean Vanier, who passed away at the age of 90 in a facility in Paris run by the L’Arche community […]
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Member Post

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
10716
 

I’m very upset. I’ve been a volunteer for different hospice organizations for over 15 years, the last ten with Hospice of the Comforter in Florida. It was taken over by Florida Hospital, part of the Adventist Health system. Now all their facilities will be called Advent Health. The major change is they’ve decided to promote […]
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Member Post

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
3611
 

Ah yes, it’s the time of year to start planning our New Year’s Resolutions. We can imagine that somehow we will make a heartfelt change to be a kinder person, to get rid of a bad habit, to be a more loving friend, spouse, parent . . . . But many people think that they […]
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Member Post

zandertunz
zandertunz
24
 

It is no secret that there is a resurgent and perpetual upheaval in our politics.  That’s been underway for over a year, starting with a particularly contentious and incendiary presidential primary process.  And the situation has only gotten more inflamed following the actual legitimate election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency.  I’ll be honest, […]
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Three Martini Lunch

Slashing Government, Sanders’ Misguided Compassion, Gabbard’s Mystery Mission

11
Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

In the final podcast of the Obama presidency, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer Donald Trump’s goal of aggressively reducing the size of government but acknowledge it will not be easy.  They also react to Bernie Sanders saying America is not compassionate because our government does not do as much for people as more liberal governments do.  And they scratch their heads as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard embarks on a mysterious trip to Syria.

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Member Post

Titus Techera
Titus Techera
618
 

So I turned to the members feed of Ricochet to feast my eyes. Yesterday was a good day for comedy, so why not push my luck? I see an article that starts with a startling claim. Progressivism is nailed to the cross of wealth inequality. This is the problem with Progressives! They don’t get that […]
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Don’t Walk a Mile in My Shoes

Rob Long
Rob Long
2724
 

What we sometimes say, when we’re trying to feel empathy — or, more often, trying to get someone else to feel it, is “Hey, when you’ve walked a mile in his (or her, or their) shoes….”

The theory is, if you can put yourself in someone else’s place you’ll have more empathy, more understanding, of their situation. Which makes sense, I guess.

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Member Post

Bryan G. Stephens
Bryan G. Stephens
12828
 

Imagine with me for a moment: You wake up in a hospital, and the doctor is there telling you that you will be fine, but that thanks to a very rare disease, your body has spent the last 3 weeks in a coma changing your sex. Everything else will be OK, but from now on, […]
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Focus on the People, Not the Numbers

Kristian Stout
Kristian Stout
118
 

Conservatives and libertarians face a common problem: our principles. Once you catch the passion for liberty and understand how the freedom of billions of humans can coalesce to make a world undreamable by any individual person, it is increasingly difficult to take seriously complicated schemes of regulation and legislation that purport to know better than the market. But why is this really a problem?

I have long been searching for a way to reframe libertarian issues as human interest stories for two reasons:  1) that’s what they are; 2) that’s what people really care about and connect with. To that end, I have been thinking about Jim Pethoukoukis’s “Generation Katniss” post, which walks through exactly the problem i’ve been trying to sort out.  I think a lot of the comments on that post missed the point. It is not that libertarian-conservatives need to change what they talk about, it is that we need to change how we talk about it.

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The Family, A School of Compassion

Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson
3331
 

“Good Lord.  I’ll never, ever let that happen to me.”

Thoughts along those lines used to cross my mind quite a lot when the Booths and Daytons and Birchards and Balls were all still alive—these would be my mother’s parents and their cousins.  They had been born before the turn of the last century and spent much of their lives on dairy farms, the men awake at four every morning to milk the cows, the women awake not much later to chop the wood, start the fire in the stove, and cook breakfast. (My grandmother refused to permit my mother to touch an ax. She wanted my mother to have an easier life than she’d had, and she believed that if she never taught my mother how to chop wood, then my mother would never have to chop wood. It worked. More than a dozen young men proposed to my mother before she married my father, but none was a farmer.)

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