Livre d'Or

I'm glad you commented, because you're one of a small minority of my friends who challenge my politics from the right rather than from the left, I'm used to being more right wing than most of my circle. It's really hard for me to imagine a society entirely without a welfare system, because that's the only thing I've ever known, and I think it's often really useful to think outside the box, as it were, to imagine a really radical difference rather than small tweaks to the system we're already used to.

But equally I think this discussion probably isn't going to work well here, given that your political views are so different from those of most of my friends, it's almost inevitable that you're going to feel a bit piled on. I would really like to talk about this with you calmly over cups of tea, and not with a bunch of people who don't know you but are liable to assume you're the right-wing bogeyman. It's really good for me to breathe some air outside my generally lefty bubble, and I deeply respect the way you think about politics and I'm not automatically horrified by the idea that people aren't entitled to benefits, even though I think that on the whole people are entitled.