The corners of our fields

Leviticus 19:9] When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10] You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Eternal am your God.

Plaut commentary: This passage (and its parallels) is not an appeal to the landowners' generosity. It confers the right to glean and to harvest the uncut edge on those who have no resources of their own. It is perhaps the oldest declaration that the disadvantaged members of a society have a right to support from that society. They should not be dependent on voluntary benevolence alone -- though the latter is constantly stressed as well.

Anath's comment: And so many people who would use Leviticus to deprive certain people of their civil rights will also insist that the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill are blights on our society who have no right to assistance. . . read a little further from your pet chapter and verse, folks.

I wasn't looking for this...

There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.

The ending narration to Deaths-Head Revisited.