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b312ddf
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Politically, he was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.
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humanitarianism
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Joseph Heller |
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33ee29e
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You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.
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history
humanitarianism
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Sarah Vowell |
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79e2e86
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Whereas Jesus and his disciples were distrusted by the state largely because they respected the poor and shared everything, the fundamentalists of the present hour would appear not to know that the poor exist.
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religion
james-baldwin
humanitarianism
hypocrisy
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James Baldwin |
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b31b5cb
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Today we are less likely to speak of humanitarianism, with its overtones of paternalistic generosity, and more likely to speak of human rights. The basic freedoms in life are not seen as gifts to be doled out by benevolent well-wishers, but as Casement said at his trial, as those rights to which all human beings are entitled from birth. It is this spirit which underlies organizations like Amnesty International, with its belief that putting someone in prison solely for his or her opinion is a crime, whether it happens in China or Turkey or Argentina and Medecins Sans Frontieres, with its belief that a sick child is entitled to medical care, whether in Rwanda or Honduras or the South Bronx.
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humanitarianism
paternalism
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Adam Hochschild |