Thread by @rebelcinder

This distils something important about the difference between right-wing and left-wing people.

It seems common among right-wing people to care for others in proportion to how much they concretely know them. It's a Confucian model of family first, then friends, then colleagues.

https://twitter.com/MikeBeauvais/status/1402253643819126784

They tend to view the utopian call to care for the welfare or the feelings of people you don't know as at best impractical, and at worst a cover for government to deprive you of resources, or for busybodies to police down to the smallest detail the way you interact with others.

"Don't force me to care" efficiently connects right-wing thinking on immigration, taxes, 'cancel culture', and civil rights.

So what is a left-wing response?

One response is that Jesus is not Confucius; he very clearly calls for us to view all people as our neighbor, whether they are personally known to us, or of the same nation, or not.

Another response is to acknowledge that this is a counsel of perfection. In practice, nearly everybody is more passionately committed to helping their family over complete strangers, or a friend over an enemy.

But governmental policy should exist to help those in particular who aren't able to draw on existing networks of kin and friendship to get by. It should, if anything, focus on the friendless, the desperate, and the oppressed.