And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’

From Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free":
“You know, Herr Professor, we are told that not a sparrow falls without God’s care; I am not being light when I say this—that not a person ‘fell,’ fell ill or in need, lost his job or his house, without the Party’s caring. No organization had ever done this before in Germany, maybe nowhere else. Believe me, such an organization is irresistible to men. No one in Germany was alone in his troubles—”  
“Except,” I said, “‘inferior races’ and opponents of the regime.”  
“Of course,” he said, “that is understood, but they were few, they were outside society, ‘over the fence,’ and nobody thought about them.”  
“But these, too, were ‘sparrows.’”  
“Yes,” he said. “Could these,” I said, “have been ‘the least of them,’ of whom Jesus spoke?”  
“Herr Professor, we didn’t see it that way. We were wrong, sinful, but we didn’t see it that way. We saw ‘the least of them’ among our own people, everywhere, among ordinary people who obeyed the laws and were not Jews, or gypsies, and so on. Among ordinary people, ‘Aryans,’ there were ‘the least of them,’ too. Millions; six million unemployed at the beginning. These ‘least,’ not all who were ‘least’ but most of them, had somewhere to turn, at last.

Morality and politics "cut both ways." Agendas and ideologies that emerge from the most fervent and abiding love/care/concern for members of our own beleaguered community can have negative effects on people "over the fence" and it's extremely hard and extremely unnatural to ever think about those people or to meet them, or to see any of those secondary-effects.

As human beings, we're tasked with this awful responsibility of drawing a horizon for our moral universe—deciding who is and who isn't worthy of our love and concern and empathy. This decision, usually happening outside the purview of conscious thought, has a decisive and terrifying impact on who we are in this world—our politics and our morality and our legacy and the fate of our immortal souls.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Favorite Scene From the Book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Contains minor spoilers. For me, Philp K. Dick's  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep  speaks directly to this political moment. The book deals extensively with themes of empathy, compassion, law enforcement, our thinking about illegal immigrants and criminals, and what it means to be human. Even though it was published in 1968, the book anticipates virtual reality, and the desire to broadcast our experiences and emotions and tap into the experiences and emotions of other strangers in a way that evokes how Facebook and Twitter are used today. Like other Philip K. Dick novels, Do Androids Dream depicts Earth as a bleak post-apocalyptic dystopia. The plot follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard working for the San Francisco Police Department to hunt and kill androids living on planet Earth illegally. Deckard's work is complicated by the fact that androids are basically indistinguishable from human beings with only the following differentiators: Androids are manufact...
Read more

A Guide to Debating Ben Shapiro on Poverty in America

Shapiro's Stance: Class and income mobility exists in our society Anyone can succeed in America by simply: a) finishing high school, b) waiting until married to have kids, c) getting a job Poor people are poor because they "suck at managing their money" We don’t need to worry about poverty in America because being poor here is better than being poor in most places in the world Opening Question: Student: There’s a popular Youtube video of you speaking at a public school, with many low-income students in the audience and you say something along the lines of: “if you are permanently poor in the United States it’s because you suck with money” ( video , DailyWire article ). Shapiro: Yes, and then the principal of the school interrupted me and said I "went too far" and told the kids they were all free to leave. Student: Right. What does it mean to "suck with money"? What is this skill that all poor people lack?  Shapiro: It means...
Read more

The Forever War, Dexter Filkins

At a time when trust in the American news media is at historic lows, The Forever War is a demonstration of the invaluable journalism that is so necessary for being informed about the world and makes democracy possible. Before reading this book I knew almost nothing about my country’s war in Iraq and I didn’t know how little I knew. The way the US was operating in Iraq, its agendas and processes, the personalities entrusted with the success or failure of the project, the enemies we faced, the experience of Iraqi civilians caught in the conflict, the potential or lack thereof for installing a Democracy in the wake of Saddam Hussein, the reality of the conflict on the ground, the causalities of the conflict, the experience of our troops, etc.  The book covers the initial invasion of Iraq until 2008, so it doesn't speak directly to the rise of ISIS in Iraq, but it gives invaluable context necessary for understanding why ISIS happened. The book opens with the author’s experien...
Read more