Killing Compassionate Conservativism

For the better part of my life I have heard the phrase "Compassionate conservative" and come to believe and support in its goals. I had believed it was a counter balance to the "bleeding heart liberal". I was wrong. It is not a counter balance at all, but a pablum alternative.

That may sound like a pretty harsh statement for my friends who still subscribe to the compassionate conservative marketing slogan, but it is not a repudiation of the values of conservatives, only the mindset of those marketing conservatism.

The whole point behind putting the adjective compassionate in front of conservative is to soften the supposed hard image of the conservative. This should insult any conservative to his core. A conservative, by his very philosophical nature, believes in justice, honesty, self reliance and property rights. What is hard about any of those concepts? What needs to be softened? Is it possible to have too much justice? Is it possible to have to much honesty, or self reliance or even property rights? What then needs to be smoothed over and made more palatable to the American voter? Nothing! Then why do it?

It's all a marketing ploy. A gimmick. A slogan to put in a press release, a commercial or a speech that ultimately means nothing but sounds good.

The purveyors of modern conservative thought have bought the lie told by their adversaries that they are cold and heartless. This lie comes from the people who pretend to sell compassion. It comes from those who wish to rob from Peter to buy the vote of Paul by giving Paul an undeserved and unearned slice of the blessings of Peters industry. Those criminals waved a banner with the word compassion written on it so long that the sales and marketing folks in the conservative camp thought it would be a good idea to appropriate the very word for themselves.

It was a misguided idea for it held in it short term gains and long term loses. Reagan and others like him were able to use the catch phrase to propel themselves to power, but ultimately it proved to be unsustainable because compassion is not a core value of men. Men are inherently more focused on self-interest. It is not a winning long term strategy to build your house on a transient emotion. With only the fewest of exceptions, men have compassion to a larger and smaller degree as their personal circumstances change, but men always have self-interest to motivate them.

It is time to stop shying away from the nature of men, and to proudly harness it for the better of all of us. We can only do this when we drop the pretense of compassion and appeal to the ever present self-interest of the electorate.

Compassionate conservatism is destined to fail so long as it continues to compete with those who are willing to steal from one person to buy the votes of another, because those who practice compassionate conservatism are conservatives, and thus unwilling or at least hesitant or even inept at stealing to buy votes. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage, and time has shown this is the truth. The recent election of socialists thieves proves the point. So long as conservatives are unwilling to stand for the things have proved to be the bedrock of their success, justice, honesty, self-reliance and property rights, then they will continue to compete at a disadvantage, and they will continue to lose.

Remove the word compassionate, and focus on those things that are true of all American voters, and return to power bringing with you your values, most especially, justice.