"Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time", Marcus Borg | Chapter Three

In the midst of our modern culture, it is important for those of us who would be faithful to Jesus to think and speak of a politics of compassion not only within the church but as a paradigm for shaping the political order.  A politics of compassion as the paradigm for shaping our national life would produce a social system different in many ways from that generated by our recent history...
  
Such an emphasis on could involve a recovery of ... "covenant" and "civic virtue" as images of community.  The issue of community (rather than the maximizing of individualism) would become the primary paradigm for thinking about the political order. It seems to me that, although Christians might disagree about the best way to implement such a system, a politics of compassion in our day clearly implies universal health care as an immediate goal.
    
Marcus Borg, "Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time", excerpts from Chapter Three
   
TALK ABOUT IT:
What other political issue comes to mind that would look different through the lens of compassionate communities rather than through the lens of individual rights?  How far would you go with this politics of communitarian compassion?  
   
CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY: WISDOM AND PRACTICE: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION