The error of "I got mine!" politics a' la' Hagar the Horrible

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This is something I'd posted elsewhere some time ago, with a few changes and typo corrections.
I've decided to repost it here.

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I'm often told that I have somewhat "conservative" views: I believe in hard work, in "being all you can be" (to borrow the Army's phrase and be a bit hokey). I believe that serious decisions should be given serious thought. In my view, we are all created equal, but we are not equivalent, meaning, we are not all identical clones of one another: we have different abilities, and different levels of abilities; and different ways in which we can achieve beauty, especially beauty of the spirit. Some of us are extremely gifted in one or more ways; others of us have "only" the gift of strong hands and the will to endure crushing labor for the sake of a dream, a hope for a better future - if not for ourselves, than for our children.

Now, for the sake of honesty, I need to note that, no, I was not blessed with children. But that in no way precludes my understanding of the love, and the dreams, that people have for, and invest in, their children.

I mention that to make a specific point, that being: compassion, literally, "feeling with" another human being, relating one's own emotional experiences to theirs, and the fact that one person does not have to be "exactly like" another in order to have compassion for that other.

To be honest, I despise labels and pigeonholes. I have no idea what "liberal" or "conservative" really mean, what constitutes their actual substance, because bothe words have been so overused and, most especially, misused. The definitions seem to be considered to be merely a matter of viewpoint, thus arbitrary. At what point does "conservative" come to mean "recidivist", "back to the days of plantations and robber barons"? At what point does "liberal" come to mean "everyone but you has a right to the results of your efforts"?

I don't know the answers to those philosophical questions, although the way I learned it, neither extremeist useage is at all accurate. What I do know - or at least have deduced I know - is that, although I do have the right of ownership of the fruits of my labors, I also realize that a necessary component of survival is compassion. Setting aside the moral and philosophical aspects of this issue, if we have no compassion for the downtrodden, for the hungry, they will eventually fulfill their needs by force - the history of revolutions has shown time and time again that, if the well-off sit on high and drone "if they've no bread, let them eat cake", said drones are likely to find themselves becoming well-acquainted with the business end of a pitchfork, symbolically speaking but more ominously, perhaps in physical actuality.

I hear people say they "feel sorry" for others, but in order for the human race to survive its own exploding population, compassion must, to at least some degree, be reified, translated into action, given substance. To punish a lackadaisical mother by allowing her children to be abused and hungry, and eventually driven into the hard arms of violent gangs, not only does not work - it's actually rather stupid, because it's much shooting oneself in the proverbial foot, especially given that violent gangs are expanding their operations into "exclusive" neighborhoods which used to be considered "safe" because of their distance from areas with endemic and seemingly unsolvable poverty. In a sense, every home invasion in an "exclusive" neighborood is the fruit of a shortfall of societal compassion and a rejection of the lessons of history.

Hope lies in the reification of compassion; hope does not lie in us each building bunkers surrounded by razor-wire and collecting weaponry and canned goods, but rather, in building bridges, in building a different future both on our small planet, and in space. Hagar the Horrible politics, which boasts "I got MINE!" with all the hubris of an aristocracy which claims it is entitled because it is supposedly "superior", might satiate individual appetites for the short term, but it is destructive in the long run, if only because its proponents will eventually run out of space to build the many mini-fortresses, and more to the point, if these mini-fortresses begin to over-run farmland and pastureland and watersheds, it will all become moot, because that destruction will destroy all of us. And worse, possibly most other species as well. More immediately, however, the proliferation and nation-wide migration of violent gangs is proving the fundamental error of imagining that distance equals safety. That was only true to any extent as long as things like cars and long-distance weaponry remained confined to a small segment of the population.

And so, this somewhat-misanthropic, somewhat-crotchety old introvert sits here and cites compassion. But not because it's the warm-fuzzy, Disney-cartoon-cute, naively-idealistic thing to do, but because, in the end, it's necessary to the survival of our species. We can be individuals, yet still work together to try to make the world more of a place where poeple do not feel the need to turn to violence merely to gain the reasonably-decent life.

Sadly, the politics of fear and selfishnes remains powerful, seeking to assert its dominence - even if it has to do so by force of arms.
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