Monday, October 17, 2005

A Proud -and Worried- Bleeding Heart Liberal

You know how conservatives "accuse" us of being "card-carrying members of the ACLU" as though that were a bad thing? And our confused response is "Of course, I'm a member of the ACLU (although I have no idea where my card is)". The same thing happens with "bleeding heart liberal."

I woke up this morning to an NPR story about how children are the most vulnerable victims of the earthquake in Pakistan. Welcome to the world of social work. Children are almost always the most vulnerable victims of anything bad. That's why they're supposed to have grown-ups to take care of them. Here's the story: Youngest Survivors

The upshot of it is this. There are young children, alive now but who will undoubtedly die of exposure in the next few days. They will die alone, in pain, hungry, and afraid. The intellectual (such as it is) part of me is still awake. And I ponder how on earth to mount an effective disaster response when there's no infrastructure for doing that -or not much, anyway. How do you reunite separated family members when there's very little recorded data as to who lived with whom in the first place?

But mostly my heart just bleeds for those children. That's what hearts are supposed to do.

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