Check out the motivation!

[rrneck]

20. No society can last for long

without compassion. Certainly no society that calls itself civilized.

Did you know that you can patent an idea? In this culture ideas - thoughts - are property. We can, and do, profit from the production if ideas. That profit comes from consumers and investors. Those ideas are distributed through various forms of media. It is the oldest and easiest way to get rich. There is very little capital investment and the unlimited market of human desire for self validation as the source of a revenue stream. And all you have to do is tell people what they want to hear. It kept preists in a good living a thousand years ago and it keeps scholars, pundits, preachers and publishers in air conditioning and iced Scotch today.

Those kids, the value of their work notwithstanding, got their religious convictions from someone who made a living producing and distributing them in a very competitive marketplace of ideas. They bought books, listened to presentations, and paid tuition for those ideas and did so because they liked them. They made an emotional investment in them.

There is no difference between Christian compassion and Muslim compassion. The difference to the believers is who gets credit for fostering those feelings. I think civic duty, which includes compassion and justice for every member of society, should be nationalist inspired compassion. Because when we share, on that most basic and human emotional level, compassion for one another from a common source we will be able to exercise political power to make this a better country in which to live.

Religions gain power by bundling votes. If a religious organization can command enough followers to impact society any politician with half a brain will court the organization rather than the voters it represents. That gives the religion political power, and that relationship always ends badly.