Large numbers of people are as important as individuals

Here’s an action that seems so far away from what I would imagine anyone doing, that it feels silly to write down. I don’t know a single person, conservative or liberal, who would rip a bottle of anti-seizure pills out of someone’s hands, and throw it in the trash.

That’s because the people I know are not terrible people.

It’s much easier to grasp the stakes of health care on a gut level when you can see the person in front of you, about to take an anti-seizure pill with lunch.

It’s much easier to understand their situation when you know their name, and you know they had a stroke a few years ago, and how hard they worked in rehab to recover from it.

It’s much easier to understand why they can’t just “get a job” to get health insurance, because they already have a job. It’s a consulting job and it doesn’t come with insurance.

What I’m asking from my conservative friends today, is to keep that person that you know personally in mind. Use that person as your mental stand-in for all the millions of people that health care laws affect.

It’s not something our brains were wired for. It’s much easier to be decent and compassionate to the person you know and can see. It’s an unnatural skill to have the same feelings towards large numbers of people, many of whom you’ll never meet in person.

But, this type of imagination is essential for living in the 21st century. As we make decisions on larger and larger scales, let’s commit to the 21st-century skill of seeing large numbers of people with the same decency we show our neighbors and family in person.

—The Polite Liberal