Politics and Compassion: was OT reducing your carbon footprint

["Dean, Hal " <HDean@wcupa.edu>]

It is important in these discussions to make a distinction between the
significant majority of people, of all stripes, who are decent and
caring, and those in the worlds of politics, media, and business who
purport to speak for them, at least AT them.

I would agree with assessments of the political right, many
fundamentalists with whom the political right has been aligned for a
long time now, and the big businesses that have benefitted from the
extremely pro-business climate these folks have put in place. I would
ALSO agree with Jeff that there are plenty of Southern Baptist
churchgoers who are compassionate. There are also a lot of just plain
uninformed voters across the whole spectrum, people whose beliefs are
informed by little more than screaming talking heads and manipulators,
and who develop biases and maybe hatreds as a consequence.

The sad thing is that so many middle and lower class Americans have been
bamboozled into thinking the right wing is their best hope (Sarah P hit
all their talking points again last night... they DO stay on message,
don't they?).

I don't pretend to speak for Bill Walker, but I'm pretty sure he'll say,
"Yes, I'm referring to the right wing power brokers and fearmongers, not
the folks in the pews, on tractors, or mothering their hockey kids."

It is neither useful to tar all the individuals of one sort with a big
brush, nor to ignore the general drift of our society towards
materialism, endorsement of terrorism, transfer of power to the
executive branch... I'll stop there. Others have spoken here about all
of this.

Hal Dean

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Larson [mailto:jeff.larson@sailpoint.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 4:29 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: RE: OT reducing your carbon footprint

> The "right'" seem to be very discompassionate (see: Katrina)
> and self centered.

Oh yeah, there was not a single Southern Baptist church in Texas that
was willing to provide shelter for Katrina refugees.  Oh wait,
actually there were quite a few.  That seems rather compassionate.
They must have been taking some time off between rounds of genital
mutilations.

Jeff