Compassionate Conservatism: Oxymoron Or Redundancy?
By Margaret Snyder (06/18/03)
Hillary Clinton says that it is impossible to be both Christian and Republican. Some are shocked. I am not even surprised. This is what most mainstream Protestant churches believe today.
This is because they, along with today’s cultural elites (news and entertainment media, education establishment and liberal politicians) have a mistaken idea of what compassion is. They believe that if we are a compassionate people, our government should be seeing to everyone’s needs, and that a government which does not satisfy the needs of the needy lacks compassion.
They do not understand that compassion is not an attribute of institutions, but of individual human beings. Mrs. Clinton, along with the churches, media, etc., believes that a politician is acting with virtuous compassion when he or she votes to create or sustain programs that help people. There is a logical leap occurring here.
How can there be virtue in doing good deeds with other people’s money, particularly when you are extracting that money from them by force? Likewise, how could we say that the taxpayer is engaging in acts of compassion when he is not giving freely, but under threat of fine or imprisonment?
And yet, liberals hold exactly that: that they are compassionate and generous because they favor government social programs. And that conservatives, because they do not favor these programs, are uncompassionate and ungenerous and therefore not Christian.
We can find clear examples of this mindset in their actions. When Al and Tipper Gore first made public their tax return, many were shocked at the paltry amount they claimed in charitable deductions.
I wasn’t surprised because a few years earlier, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania and his wife also made their tax return public and they too had made pitifully minimal contributions to charities. My guess is that in both cases, the Democratic politicians regarded their politics as their good deeds and they saw no reason to enlarge their good works by freely sacrificing their own money.
Now let us take a look at conservatives. Why don’t they support government social programs? It is not for want of compassion. When the news media show us heart-wrenching images of needy children, single mothers, or other poor souls in dire straits, our hearts are wrenched too.
It’s just that we don’t automatically assume that a government program is likely to be the best answer. Yes, it might alleviate the immediate suffering of the individual we see in the paper or on the TV, but what would be the long-term effects of Program X? Our understanding of human nature tells us that the government program would inevitably lead to increased suffering in the future.
For a concrete example, look no further than Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Feeling compassion for teenage single mothers, politicians undertook to “help”, thus subsidizing single motherhood, and ensuring that there would be many more teenage single mothers in the future. Conservatives’ understanding of human nature enables us to consider the results of a program. We have compassion for those we see but also for those we can’t see, perhaps yet unborn and much more numerous, whom such programs would sentence to a life of poverty.
What about the heart-wrenching image before us? Non-governmental charities are more likely to address such needs without creating a debilitating sense of entitlement in the beneficiaries or a vested interest in ongoing misery in the form of an expensive government bureaucracy.
This is just a hunch of mine, but it is based on my understanding of the liberal mindset as outlined above and on intimate familiarity with the conservatives who raised me: I think it likely that on average, conservatives probably give a greater percentage of their income to charitable causes than liberals. They feel a personal responsibility to act, rather than an “I gave at the (IRS) office” mentality.
Compassionate conservatism: it’s redundant.
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