Compassionate Conservatism, The Ultimate Oxymoron

Jumbo shrimp photo by adactio

After reading John O’Sullivan’s attack on "compassionate conservatism" and Michael Gerson’s defense of it, I can’t decide who’s the bigger delusional wanker.  Is it O’Sullivan?

My initial response to compassionate conservatism was to feel that it was redundant, vain, and self-serving. It was redundant because relieving poverty and improving the condition of the people have been important strands of every conservatism since Edmund Burke. It was vain because it indulged in an act of moral self-congratulation. And it was self-serving because it suggested that all other conservatisms were lacking in compassion.

Or is it Gerson?

Instead of being a "romantic cult," compassionate conservatism is often motivated by an ancient orthodoxy: that God is somehow found especially incarnate in the poor, suffering and weak. Instead of being a "sentiment," it is a conviction: that government can be a noble enterprise when it applies creative conservative and free-market ideas to the task of helping those in need.

The fact is, they’re both very, very wrong, just in different ways.  O’Sullivan makes the ridiculous claim that conservatism is all about compassion, which is one of the most demonstrably laughable ideas I’ve ever seen.  Let’s review some of the major strains of conservatism and see how compassionate they are:

Corporate Conservatism: Tax breaks and preferential treatment for corporations and rich people, nothing for everyone else.  The poor and middle class should all be able to get by on a combination of trickledown, self-reliance, and gumption.  (Mmm… gumption…)

Social Conservatism: Gay people who love each other can’t get married; women should carry rapists’ (and all other) babies to term no matter what.

Neoconservatism: Exterminate the brutes (but torture some of them first).  Troops don’t need adequate armor, veterans and wounded don’t need quality healthcare.

O’Sullivan is right about the implication of the phrase "compassionate conservatism," which is that conservatism is an inherently cruel and callous ideology.  Gerson tiptoes around it, but the phrase’s very existence is a tacit admission of this fact.

Where Gerson goes wrong is that "compassionate conservatism"… isn’t.  He could have made the argument that Bush failed or betrayed this shiny new ideological vision, but he doesn’t.  Instead he argues that "compassionate conservatism" is exactly what Dubya has been practicing over the last eight years and it’s been awesome.

This is a truly staggering claim, considering that Bush is probably the least compassionate president in American history.  He fiddled while New Orleans drowned.  He killed, tortured, and displaced millions of Iraqis.  He vetoed healthcare for children.  He slashed taxes for the rich and gave the poor nothing.

If that’s the compassionate version of today’s conservatism, then the standard version would destroy the country in a matter of weeks.

Related posts:

1. YOYO, or The End of Compassionate Conservatism
2. FDL Book Salon Welcomes Bradley Graham, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld
3. Principled Conservatism: American Conservative Union Caught Whoring Itself Out to Highest Bidder
4. Late Night: Words Certainly Can Kill.
5. Maxine Waters on Public Option: “I Don’t Think There are Any Better Ideas”