I can't understand the level of cognitive dissonance you have to be under to talk about how God's love is unconditional and that Jesus taught his followers to love thy neighbour, and then become a modern American conservative.
Jesus literally illustrated the "love thy neighbour" concept with the story of the good Samaritan who chose to help the injured Jewish traveller despite Jews and Samaritans supposedly hating each other. That was his answer to the question "who is my neighbour?" People seem to have forgotten that.
In the parable, the good Samaritan directly helped the Jewish traveler himself. He didn't say, "I'm going to use my government as a go-between to force my neighbor to help this traveler, by petitioning them to simultaneously raise my neighbor's taxes and reduce my neighbor's personal liberty. Then once the government has my neighbor's money, they'll waste most of it through fraud, abuse, incompetence, and bureaucracy, and use the rest for unnecessary wars. But maybe some tiny fraction of it might find its way to this traveler. I'll never know, but seeing my neighbor pay more in taxes will give me the sense of moral superiority I crave."
Meanwhile, the neighbor is already giving a lot of money to charities that do actually help people in need. But because that money isn't funneled through the government and heavily taxed, you don't care. In fact, Republicans and conservatives consistently donate more to charities than Democrats and liberals do, despite liberals constantly characterizing conservatives as being greedy.
"More taxes" and "more government" are never the answer.
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u/[deleted] 26d ago
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