"This tragedy points to the selfishness of the human heart and demonstrates that greed is not confined to the scions of Wall Street. Quite the contrary, these Main Street shoppers pursued their own materialistic impulses at the expense of the needs of those around them. They were focused on themselves, intent on getting to the deals first. Their trampling of Mr. Damour, each other, and the employees who were trying to help him, exhibits hearts that care more about saving $50 on an HDTV than about the health and safety of their fellow man....
How did we get to this point in "the home of the brave"? Why do so many Americans exhibit so little concern for their neighbor? Doubtless, there are many causes, but prominent among them is our willingness to sacrifice core principles of human dignity on the altar of convenience...
The trampling of Jdimytai Damour should be a wake-up call to each one of us. It should cause us to pause and consider whether we place too high a value on our own convenience and our own possessions. We should examine our hearts and ask ourselves whether we any longer have the capacity to sacrifice our own desires for the good of another. We are missing the big picture if events like these capture our attentions just long enough for us all to gasp and say, "How awful!", then turn back to our shopping carts and our self-centered lives."
Wow, this was appearing on a conservative web site, but my first thought was that such commentary would just as easily fit in at any liberal web site. This appears to be an area where many conservative and liberals people can find some real common ground. (The article later goes on to criticize abortion, but let's focus on the above thoughts for now.)
When I was reading the above comments, I must confess that my first thought was that Ken Conner was going to admit that liberals were right about some things after all. Community spirit and caring for your neighbors was more important than the blind pursuit of individual self interest that is so often associated with conservatism. How could anyone possibly interpret what he was saying differently?
The comments section for the article contained an amusing spectrum of views. One common thread really grabbed my attention though, because it was the exact opposite of what I was thinking. For many people, the motivations and actions of the shoppers at the Wal-Mart were a perfect example of why conservatism was morally superior to liberalism. To them, liberalism represented a culture where "The right to pursue unrestrained pleasure is all that matters" and "responsibilities and duties are onerous and inconvenient concepts". This results in a decline of moral responsibility that the "sense of entitlement at the foundation of the welfare state certainly exacerbates".
Oh my, each side has such a dramatically different view of what the other side stands for, yet each side equally deplores what happened. It's clear that trying to characterize this incident as a liberal vs conservative thing just doesn't cut it. If anything, the resulting argument over ideology destroys any insight, agreements and common ground that may exist. Both the "liberal view" and the "conservative view" each contain a complex collection of differing attitudes that cannot be done justice too by the simple categories we tend to use. We need to move beyond these characterizations if we're going to move beyond the bitter partisanship of the past.
A good friend once told me that if you're going to break the world into two groups, don't do it along the conventional political spectrum. It's more useful to divide the world into people who care and people who don't. While that's not entirely correct since we all exist along a continuous spectrum of caring and our positions change with time and circumstances, perhaps it is a more useful way to look at things sometimes. Perhaps it can lead us to some common ground and common work on ways forward despite other differences.
By the way, did you know that Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death at that Wal-Mart while he was trying to shield a pregnant woman against the onslaught? In all the hand-wringing over that incident, we tend to forget that there was some real heroism involved. We need to emphasize that more as the real story of that day.
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