Conservatives aren't Against Everything

A writer on AOL, Jill Lawrence, asks the question of whether the 'compassionate conservatism' of George W. Bush is dead. In supporting her point, she offers a laundry list of things which various Republicans and Tea Party favorites espouse: getting the federal government out of the education, unemployment, and even social security markets, to cite a few. The obvious insinuation is that anyone who supports such ideas are callous.

It is an unfair and irrational perception. Why is it that if someone is against, say, the federal Department of Education, it is assumed that they are against education as education? We have yet to hear a Tea Party maverick assert that children should not be taught to read, write, and cipher. Likewise on health care: no one is saying that the folks who need a doctor's care or hospitalization should not get it if it can be had. No one in the GOP asserts that we should not put in place in our nation the mechanisms which will allow anyone and everyone truly seeking gainful employment to have a decent shot at it.

What it all boils down to, again, is philosophy. If you're a big government tax and spend liberal, then any opposition to Washington being involved in our day to day affairs is immoral. Period. Yet if you believe in the sanctity of the individual then you believe that his freedom to choose what he wants out of life, among his legitimate options, is what will in the long run best promote decent education, affordable heath care, and an environment where jobs can be created and maintained through human ingenuity and industry rather than by government command.

In short, conservatism and conservatives aren't ogres. Indeed, they give more charitably than any other political group, of their time and money. Sure, the liberals give: but that's the practice of giving your money to other people. It is not true charity. Indeed, it is patronization on the one hand, and to a degree (because not all government spending is wrong of course) organized theft on the other. That does not promote goodwill or compassion. It creates jealousy of the worst kind: that because person A has something and person B does not, then there must be something wrong with the system. That is not charitable. It is, however, in the long run a recipe for dictatorship.