A few thoughts...

Being egalitarian.
It has only been my second run-in with the idea, the notion, the definition-really. However, I whole-heartedly embrace it. That is, until anyone with more experience, with actual practice could show me why it errs.
My thinking is this: Use dogs, as examples. Some dogs live in houses, others are outside dogs, but they have the security of an owner who more than likely supplies its food and water and at the very least protects the dog through vaccinations and some kind of boundaries that are intended to keep larger, more threatening wild-life out. Move along to the mangy mutts one might see in the streets, in towns, cities and states (and countries!) where the dogs have lost their owners or have been too heavily produced, leading to abandonment. There are of course other categories, we have the dogs being housed in shelters, probably not the idea life, living on cement flooring and receiving a ration of generic dog food, but better than starving. We then have distinctions between types of owners, rules are definitely set in place, but there are those who disregard them in support of their own tempers and ill-fitted relationship with the dog (is abusive owners or malicious children). All of this is to say the range of dog-care varies to the extremes of purse dogs, who never lift a paw for anything on their own and whose only wants might be to stop being emasculated by the pink and purple sweaters to the "wild" dogs who either viciously kill their prey in some Alaskan wilderness or get scrapes from the local dumpster. But do dogs sit around and wonder who has the better life? NO. It is assumed by humans that the dogs with the caring family are more fortunate, that their standard of living is the ideal to reach for all animals. The same can be said for humans. Here we are in America with everything at our fingertips, healthcare if we need it, school for our children, a plethora of food and entertainment and clothing. All of this, for a price. Then there are those in this same great country who are lacking. There are those abroad who have nothing, who have literally become slaves of their rulers, no longer owning the rights to their own bodies. And what is the state of our thinking? I'll tell you what mine is. I think, first of all, how lucky I am to be an American citizen. To have a family who can support me until I one day will make enough money to turn around and do the same thing. I thank God for a country who, like the outside dog, has built a fence around me for protection but has still given me the illusion of independence to come and go as I please. I'm even sometimes like the hand-held dog who snaps at my owner for giving me too much, for codling me too much, for giving me everything because that is not exactly what I wanted. There's a balance there that I think we are missing. We want our government to work for us, far after we have stopped working for it. We want all it has to offer, yet we want none of the responsibility. What is it that I think we, the people, need to do differently? Stop biting the hand that feeds us. Appreciate the qualities we do have, and then search for the problems we can no longer live with and mean really, truly cannot live with. For example, human rights. Are those more or less important than our economic status? Probably more important, although that also probably depends on who you ask. Anyway, what good does it do fixing the "rights" of those in other countries when ours are in disarray at home? We need to focus our good deeds here, strengthen the children and the families living within our boundaries before we go around trying to correct the pets that belong to other owners. It is not that other countries do not have severe problems or that I think they should be forced to live with their unfortunate circumstances and providing aide, if asked, would be highly desirable. But to go intruding when we weren't even asked. Most Americans I know won't even look twice when a child of the neighbor is misbehaving, why on Earth would they think their right to go reprimanding people in countries far away? It might stem from a compassionate root, but it comes off looking haughty and rude and presumptuous. Besides, do we want the other people coming in and telling us that our ways are actually leading to greed and corruption. NO. But they could, they have and we, we disagreed. I do not believe we disagreed because these people were wrong, but because no one likes fingers pointed in their face, because everyone has their own way of dealing with issues and because that was not the area we thought we needed help in. None of us want to look at our government to solve social problems anymore. But that is a whole other issue that I don't feel so inclined to go into right now. Maybe next time.