I believe the “culture of corruption”, the Mordida, the bribe is the problem. As I said. If you have not lived there you cannot understand how deeply entrenched this is.
Again, liberals have compassion, but conservatives do also. The difference is in the response, that was the point I did not make very well.
One of the tenants of conservatism is understanding the nature of man.
So what should be our response? Pass a law? Give money?
We have a limited sphere of influence. One thing that occurred to me years ago is I noticed folks will go halfway round the world to talk about Jesus but their neighbors have no idea they are Christians. We could discuss the reasons at length and I could write a PhD thesis.
Let’s consider a housekeeping analogy. If I fail to clean the dust in weeks the place is grimy and in months you can’t tell where the house stops and the yard starts. In a year or so the yard is cluttered with debris and weeds and you can’t tell where the yard stops and the field starts. In a few decades you can’t tell there was a house there. What benefit is it for us to bitch about the standards of housekeeping in the next county when they are but a few years “ahead” of us?
As George said, “Let us raise a standard to which the good and honest an repair.”. Curious word, repair. In this meaning the context is in the phrase “failure to repair.”. Repair meaning to be in the appointed place and time as for a soldier. But in our context, working on any object that has previously been completed and functional could be considered to be repair.
What has all this to do with your question? I suspect you are intelligent enough to get what I am driving at. Do all you can to “raise a standard to which the good and honest can repair” inside your sphere of influence. If, inside your sphere of influence you can change the behavior of one person who subsequently emulates your example, and etc.
It is just me but, I see people say “pray for the middle east”. To me, it makes more sense if I want to cast my influence to a point on the compass, pray for my neighbor to the East. Be a neighbor to them. Pray you are setting a standard. Pray they will as well. Get me?
Why bemoan our lack of influence in places where we have none and fail to maximize our influence in places we do have influence.