Guilt is powerful.
Some religions have made it their bedrock philosophy.
But in a strange way, it's just another name for compassion.
We feel uneasy to be blessed with more material gifts than others, even if we've worked hard to obtain them and our fellow humans have made choices that have placed them in the crosshairs of disaster. It's called "being my brother's keeper." And while it sometimes rewards the undeserving, it's generally a good thing.
Guilt was also a catalyst for the civil-rights revolution. It helped feed the understanding that the manifest unfairness of slavery and Jim Crow had to be eliminated. That's the good sort of guilt, even though it sometimes can take on a life of its own and can morph into a different sort of inequity, like racial preferences.
But guilt-fueled governance is a bad thing when it leads you down the road to bankruptcy. And that's just what will happen to this country after the full effects of the health-care bill passed by Congress are felt, primarily by those who can least afford it.
To read the rest of Christine Flowers' column from today's Philadelphia Daily News, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment