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Name that idea
“Sadly, compassionate conservatism is now dead as a political label,” writes Marvin Olasky in the latest WORLD. Marvin adds that the label is “dead among liberals because of the war in Iraq: They equate the term with hypocrisy. And it’s mostly dead among conservatives because of President Bush’s refusal to veto any domestic spending bills for six years: They equate the term with big government.” But as Marvin reports, the concept isn’t dead. It just may need a new name … like “social justice.”
Read his entire column on the concept here.
Topic: Issues, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: compassionate conservatism, Politics
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back to top24 Comments to “Name that idea”
Maybe the label is dead because the political movement was conservative enough but contained no compassion. That should hardly surprise conservatives, who believe the most good government can do is to check human nature.
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The most government should do is get out of the way and let freedom reign unhindered Scroopy.
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Marvin Olasky writing about social justice? You know, this one I might just pass on…
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Maybe the label is dead because it never was a very good label. In a society that is so polarized in many ways between liberals and conservatives, using a term that includes the term “conservative” for an idea that is trying to get bipartisan support is probably not going to be all that effective. Different people will hear it different ways, but it can sound like you have to be conservative to be compassionate, or, alternatively, that a compassionate conservative is a special kind of conservative because the rest aren’t.
Nothing wrong with the idea behind it, which is basically “a hand up instead of a hand out” – but it does need a better label. Preferably one less than seven or eight syllables long.
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From Olasky
When prisoners are merely warehoused, that’s a social justice issue.
A good description of the American Gulag and Gitmo. But I don’t seem to recall a compassionate conservative view of either other than supporting the warehouse.
Compassion conservatism is neither.
Compassion merely requires human empathy and a response to this empathy. Olasky’s bracketed definition of government compassion is merely a defined strawman. Government implementation of a compassionate response to poverty is what the government makes it. The real problem arises when pity and condescension are part of the compassionate response. When you define compassion as “challenging, personal and often spiritual”; you place the onus of poverty upon the individual ignoring systematic problems. By blaming the poor you express a condescending attitude — “the poor should just get up face the challenge of the world and get over it, and accepting God would help to” similar to a 12 step program or self-help gurus on late night television. Its this attitude that fails the compassionate definition.
Its not conservative because fiscal conservatism wouldn’t increase the bureaucracy by promoting overlapping faith based agencies which because of their patch work framework are inefficient. The American neo-con has no real interest in the poor — its not part of their ideology. Social conservatism is more interested, at least politically, on moral issues. Thus you have an idealogical aversion to alleviating poverty through non-market forces and you have a moral focus on other somewhat related issues.
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Reading HRW’s post (5), the thought just occurs to me:
“Compassionate conservatives” would work for — among other things — puting an end to the war on drugs.
Criminalizing the sin and imprisoning the sinner is far from compassionate.
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David Kuo, Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives wrote a good book about the whole “compassionate conservative” scam.
Marvin Olasky was a prime “move and shaker” behind the “compassionate conservative” agenda and the Bush administration’s efforts. As to whether Marvin knew it was a political scam, or was sincere in his efforts, it’s hard to say.
Either way, it’s clear that it was a blatant attempt by politically connected conservative Christians to line up a the government trough and get their share of the feed.
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It was a good idea but was there ever any real effort to put “shoe leather” on the concept? Alas, Bush and the “big government conservatives” only bloated up an already pork-laden budget. I still can’t understand why no R men mounted a vociferous oppo to NCLB and the “free” prescription drug program.
At what point did R politicians embrace expanding instead of contracting the scope and power of the Federal govt??
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I don’t really want a compassionate government. I just want one that works.
We don’t need government to be our nanny. It isn’t government’s responsibility to watch our fat intake or tell us to wear helmets or make sure all skin colors get the same amount of stuff.
What we need is a government that will secure the borders, set standards, build infrastructure, regulate trade and blast the hell out of anyone who tries to harm us.
The government we have fails on nearly all the basics. So why also put it in charge of wiping our noses too?
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Good idea.
We’re nearly there, anyway.
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I meant we’re almost at the “Big Brother” scenario.
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Yikes! “Social justice” is probably the very worst term that conservatives could adopt. It is already used by ultra-liberal people to refer to their causes.
It is heavy on the “social” and light on the “justice.”
No thanks.
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Agreed Xion. I don’t know how it is where you live, but our local news has become the daily, in-home purveyor of the latest state-think/good-citizen nanny offering of stupid help thoughts like BHO’s idiotic inflate your tires/tune your car/solve the oil crisis pap. Stuff like: feed your pet, wear helmets, wash your hands, wipe your nose, blah, blah, and blah ad nauseam. This tripe is really blather best given to mindless children and nothing faintly resembling the delivery of news that thinking adults might appreciate. Thank you, I’m better now.
As for the need to relabel this concept, I’d ask why?
What is the need to label something that is supposed to be a part of life for every citizen anyway—like it is some flashy new idea needing only to find itself on more buttons to adorn shirts proudly/vainly proclaiming that nearby flesh is of that exemplary sort. Jesus also told us to not let one hand know what the other was doing to help us avoid such pride issues.
Whatever it’s called, lefties will again simply trash the concept, mock those who openly support it and eventually co-opt it just like they do every other term they think they don’t like or can score political points using to denigrate conservatives.
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Right on, Kyle A.
If the term “social justice” gets applied to a conservative cause, it won’t be conservative for long. This is how the right’s slow slide to the left takes place.
Remember Dabney’s quotation: the conservative party is just the shadow of the liberal party as it moves left. Are you trying to speed that up, beat the left at its own game?
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#5 HRW
I don’t like your preaching style. One big put-down of so many conservatives.
You are educated and well versed in your liberalism and socialism. I have read your dissertations on how to solve so many social ills, but I have yet to see how they are so good in the real world.
The main thing that Olasky puts out in his ideas of Compassionate Conservatism is that there must be a God component to it. No government program in the USA is allowed to have God in it. Without God, it won’t work.
The Left is a demanding taskmaster, it is their way or the highway. No dissent allowed. The problem with the Left’s solutions is that they don’t work.
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You may not like the term “social justice,” but any honest accounting of the social engagement by Evangelicals would recognize its ancestors in the social justice movements of the 20th Century. That’s because both — tho’ theologically quite distinct — nonetheless exist as branches on the same Protestant (Reformed) tree.
As to “Compassionate Conservatism” my impression is that it was pretty well done to death by the “Mayberry Machiavellians” as John Di’Iulio called them. Partisan politics undid the idea, much the same way as it has affected other parts of the government.
And speaking as a Dem, that’s a shame. Compassionate Conservatism was at its core, an honest effort to engage social issues from a conservative perspective. Because it was built on principle it always existed in tension with the political pragmatism of the administration. And so finally, near as I can tell, was reduced to a shell. Perhaps Olasky can write a new book, The Tragedy of American Conservatism.
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A God component, Bob?
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14 – Amen. I love that Dabney quote. The man certainly knew what he was talking about.
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Without God, it won’t work.
Other countries manage to deliver quality social programs without a God component. Is there something unique about America that it needs God in its programs.
The problem with the Left’s solutions is that they don’t work.
Frequently people reply to my posts with the above refrain yet don’t offer specific evidence to back up this assertion. In the past I’ve linked to several studies which outline the lower infant mortality, higher life expectancy, higher functional literacy rate, etc enjoyed by social democratic countries. If one wishes to assert non-socialist policies work better provide the evidence.
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I’m a big fan of RL Dabney (what I know about him thus far, anyway), and I’m quite aware of humanistic liberalism’s use of and fondness for the term “social justice” as a catch-all excuse for more and bigger government programs that usually involve the coercive redistribution of wealth.
But I don’t think that necessarily makes the term “social justice” a non-starter.
It is the job of the people of God — his bride the church — to speak prophetically re. justice (among several other things) to their cultures and their rulers. This necessarily entails bringing the claims of God to the table, for justice cannot be sufficiently understood apart from the person and character of the Almighty.
So we shouldn’t be acting as if “social justice” is the rhetorical equivalent of cooties. Instead we should be taking dominion and fulfilling the Great Commission by pressing the claims of Christ in all spheres of life, including the need for just rule and social equity. (Which, please note, is not the same thing as “social equality.”)
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“Social justice” is a cunning slogan for a conservative-evangelical movement, because the phrase compensates for a deficiency. The truth is, evangelicals have nearly always taken the side of expediency over social justice. Christians advocated gradualism and colonization during slavery. In the 20th century they tolerated segregation in opposition to civil rights. In order to gain power, Christians made themselves co-dependent with the law-and-order backlash that has imposed a regime of brutal incarceration.
John Greenleaf Whittier, who knew the difference between expedience and social justice, said:
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide
Between the right and wrong; but give the heart
The freedom of its fair inheritance;
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,
At Nature’s table feast his ear and eye
With joy and wonder; let all harmonies
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon
The princely guest, whether in soft attire
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
And lending life to the dead form of faith,
Give human nature reverence for the sake
Of One who bore it, making it divine
With the ineffable tenderness of God;
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,
The heirship of an unknown destiny,
The unsolved mystery round about us make
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir . . .
Whittier thought a prisoner was our princely guest!
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20 – Absolutely. And I agree with your statement that equity is not the same thing as equality. Social justice is wonderful when it’s God’s standard of justice and righteousness. If it’s man’s, it’s unjust and unrighteous indeed.
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#21 Scroop – John Greenleaf Whittier is one of my relatives from Haverhill, MA and one of my favorite poets. I read many of his poems to my kids as they were growing up. He spoke consistently on Social Justice and gave a good overview of social issues of his day, especially with Indians.
However, I disagree with your history of Christians and social justice. Just as much of American music finds its roots in Christian spirituals, many of the ideas of the left, including Communism finds its roots in leftist Christian social thought from the last few centuries.
I am nearly finished with a book The Conservative History of the American Left which shows that nearly all the ideas of the modern left came from Christianity – kind of like all rotten fruit comes from fresh fruit.
Social Justice is an attempt by the left to exercise the compassion of Christianity without Christ. Government becomes our provider.
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Many of the ideas of the left may have their roots in the compost of Christianity — the dead forms, in the words of your ancestor. At the time of Whittier (and his some-time roommate and colleague William Lloyd Garrison) evangelicals were not one of the groups of Americans who responded to the call for social justice, as distinct from personal moral purity and benevolence.
Maybe I’ll look at your book when I’m finished the really terrific All on Fire by Henry Mayer, which of course includes Whittier in its story.
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