Reply #212: Please explain your concept of "compassion"

[El Fuego]

Most people living in Mexico or Guatemala (just for example) aren’t suffering. They aren’t getting daily beatings. They don’t need our “compassion.”

They are merely poor. And there’s no dishonor in being poor. The poor are "people" too. It’s not a disease to be cured. You’re saying they need our compassion only because they live simple lives, without air conditioning, the Internet, and satellite TV. Believe it or not, it’s possible to live a fulfilling life without those things. You say we have “friends to the south,” but your denigration of these countries (which have proud heritages of their own) as merely something from which people need to escape shows that you are basically racist.

It’s very arrogant and shallow to say the American way of conspicuous consumption is the only meaningful existence, and it’s right and noble to anything you can to get here, including violating our laws. Our way of life is artificial anyway, made possible only by our oil supply.

They’re not coming here because they’re being oppressed and persecuted, they’re coming out of greed. They want more more MORE. They want to live The Life. They want The Bling. They want Tivo. They have my understanding, because we all want more, and they’re no different from me in that respect. But they don’t necessarily have my compassion.

While I respect anyone’s desire to improve their lot in life, it’s just NOT POSSIBLE for the U.S. to absorb everyone in the Third World. We don’t have the resources. If the borders were open, millions and millions of poor uneducated people would continuously stream in. Then WE will be a third world country.

It’s a fine and noble idea to want to care for every poor person in the world, but it can’t be done in reality, and it’s a dangerously naïve notion. It’s like one of those wacky cat ladies who takes in every stray out of compassion, and after she has accumulated 200 cats they just start to die and starve in their own filth.