The essential difference is...

The value of every individual. January 12 2010.

I awoke with the thought above, often there is this struggle for clarity, an inspired thought seems to be just beyond reach. You may have the figurative mental light which just cant quite be expressed. I jotted this down

"The essential difference is the value of every individual".

That was supposed to be enough to jar my thoughts back to some inspirational thought. Actually this time it seems to work.

The essential difference of WHAT is the value of every individual.
The difference of everything.

If we look at religions, the essential difference is the value of every individual.
If we look at political ideologies the essential difference is the value of every individual.
If you look at the corporate world the essential difference is the value of every individual.

Essentially it is how we value the individual that separates all philosophies. It isn't just what individual value is but whether it is uplifting and glorious and salutary.

Mao Tse Tung (estimated as high as 70,000,000 purged): Li Rui, Mao's personal secretary, goes further and claims he was dismissive of the suffering and death caused by his policies: "Mao's way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him.

Stalin ( as many as 20,000,000 purged): Stalin like Hitler, did not value human life. By this time in Soviet history, Stalin already had experience in committing mass murder and had his own well-developed system of concentration camps. Stalin would kill anyone for any reason. The slightest suspicion, real or imagined, was enough to make a person vanish without a trace inside the Soviet terror state he created.

Hitler (20,000,000 dead) knew that civilized men such as Schuschnigg, and those who followed, would readily compromise to prevent the loss of life. They would all learn too late that Hitler did not value life and that war was his ultimate goal.

Catholic Bishops: Real freedom rests on the inviolability of every person as a child of God. The inherent value of human life, at every stage and in every circumstance, is not a sectarian issue any more than the Declaration of Independence is a sectarian creed.