Why are you so focused on fasting rather than hunger? This is like suggesting we give everybody a day of chemo so they have empathy for cancer patients rather than using our resources to cure cancer.
Self indulgent Yuppie sack-cloth and ashes doesn't feed the hungry. It feeds the egos of the spiritually vacant.
If a President were to use the bully pulpit to good purpose it would be to supporting community food banks. I don't care if people know what it is to be hungry as long as they know what it is to feed the hungry.
>>Please be clear - fasting by the well-fed does not make the poor less hungry, however much it satisfies the hunger for self-esteem of those who fast.
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>Imagine if President Bush said to everyone (I bet some of you are already working up a refutation):
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>"Hey America. I would like today, if you did not eat anything. See if you can do it.
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>See if you can not eat or drink whatever you want. See what happens.
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>When you decide to eat or drink something on this day, think of the people who can't eat or drink whenever they want.
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>And then when you must, eat the food, and drink the drink, and be thankful that you can."
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>You think that would have no effect on America?
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>You could be right.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
