Do compassion and empathy have a legitimate place in setting political policy?

Great Debates
1

A co-worker and I were talking politics: he claims to be a strict constitutionalist, and certainly questioning him on different aspects of his political ideaology leads me to believe he is what he says. In his opinion, compassion, empathy, emotion all should be completely separate from politics and policy. “Take your compassion to the charitable organizations and take your logic to policy.” I can’t say that I disagree with this statement.

Anyway, we were discussing the preamble of the Constitution, and the Federalist papers (FP), and the language skills of that era. For instance, in the FP, in the very first one, the writer uses the word “emolument” to mean the pay that is received by a person in office. That was a very precise word, that meant exactly what they wanted to convey. We then applied that concept of precise language to the Preamble of the Constitution:

So to apply this idea of precision: they wish to Establish Justice, Provide for the common defense and Promote the General Welfare. The word Promote is the key: as promote means “To forward, further, encourage”. If per the Preamble, the federal government is only to encourage general welfare, then technically (you knew this was coming) all of the social safety net is against the constitution. If they wanted to “Provide for” the general welfare, they could have said that, but they didn’t.

I can’t really say that I disagree with what he’s said - but in my gut, it “feels” wrong. But again, isn’t it in the best interests of everyone to take emotion out of policy-making decisions? That certainly rings true from a logic perspective.

I know this is really long, and my apologies for it, but its a tough question I’ve been wrestling with for a couple of days, and I figured you guys are the best debaters I’ve encountered, and with basically all sides represented on this site, I’m better able to get a thoughtful response. Is there a way to argue against his points? What am I missing that either sinks his argument or makes it unassailable?

2

A democracy is supposed to reflect the will of its citizens. If these citizens want their government to be compassionate and empathetic, then it has an obligation to be so.

3

But should the US do so via legislation, or via a constitutional amendment? And obviously, its not the will of all the citizens, cause I’m pretty confident that beyond my co-worker, someone on the Dope would agree with his position. What about when the “will of the citizens” becomes the “tyranny of the majority”?

4

Exactly - if you don’t follow the constitution, you end up with mob rule… 3 wolves and 2 sheep voting on what’s for dinner.

5

A few more thoughts here

snip

6

But that’s how democracy works, isn’t it? Some people want one thing, others want another, and in the end a compromise is reached that favors the majority opinion.

You guys think way too highly of your vaunted Constitution. They’re just laws.

7

If those wolves want to eat the sheep, no constitution in the world will protect them. Democracy can’t be enforced from above through laws; the people have to believe in it for it to work.

8

ISTM there are several issues here. The narrowest one is whether or not a strict reading of the constitution forbids the modern welfare state. A credible case can be made that it doesn’t, but the vast majority of courts, including even those judges who hold to a strict reading philosophy, have ruled that it does.

Two larger ones are

  1. Should compassion and empathy shape the laws we choose to live by (including our constitutions).

  2. Should compassion and empathy dictate the way we enforce and interpret those laws once they are written.

My own answer to the first is generally yes, and to the second generally no.
On another level, I’d suggest that compassion and logic are not necessarily at odds. One may act with compassionate motivations in a logical way, and I think we should.

Where we too often go wrong is in acting with compassionate motivations but in ways that feel good, but actually make things worse. To some of the less controversial-on-the-SDMB examples, many would argue that because drugs have ruined so many lives, making drugs illegal is the “compassionate and empathetic” policy, or that invading foreign countries to depose dictators is “compassionate and empathetic.”

9

I agree but that’s hardly a philosophy for governing a country, is it? After all, if teenage (kids, minorities, gang bangers) will kill, deal drugs, vandalize, etc, then that’s hardly an excuse to allow them to do so.

10

I understand “provide for” to mean that the federal government is responsible for the defense of the country from external enemies, whereas “promote” simply means that the federal government simply has an interest in the general welfare (the well-being of Americans collectively, as opposed to any section or interest group). Other persons and institutions will presumably be working for it too, but that doesn’t mean the federal government can’t or shouldn’t do anything in direct furtherance.

I agree with Jefferson and Madison that it’s very wrong to read the phrase as an intention or license for the government to do everything it conceivably might.

I don’t see why any of this means that “compassion and empathy” don’t have a place in making policy. I think our well-being as Americans and as human beings is best served when all institutions can operate with compassion (which is not naturally at odds with logic). That doesn’t mean that government must or should step in to alleviate any suffering anywhere. But the Constitution does call for an interest in the general welfare, which necessarily includes those who are suffering most.

11

If the destructive elements are a minority, then the responsible elements will outweigh them. If the destructive elements are the majority, then the nation is lost. A country can’t be any better than its populace.

12

Of course in any ultimate sense this is true. But I think that noble ideas can be articulated by a minority and provide ideals and aspirations for the country. Sometimes perhaps the populace can be good enough to want to make themselves better?

13

Thanks for all the good comments.

Mr. Smashy your link describes exactly the point my co-worker was making.

While I can completely understand that principle, I don’t think we should just say “well, you didn’t save enough for retirement, so tough shit for you.” Or “your employer laid you off? well sucks to be you, best crack into your savings and go get a job”. Or, “gee you have cancer and no health insurance, that’s too bad, hope you have life insurance to provide for your kids”. That’s basically how he wants things to operate. If you have needs you cannot meet, those needs must be met through charity, not through gov’t spending. Hence compassion and empathy handled by charity, and only logic in policy.

Completely accurate that compassion and logic are not necessarily opposite, but for the purposes of this political theory, it certainly seems to be. Or rather, the compassion is for the taxpayer, not for the people seeking support.

furt am I reading you correctly that the judicial system has agreed that the welfare state is unconstitutional? I was not aware of that. I’ll google it to better understand.

I guess the point is that its a false dichotomy (thank you furt and spark). The two can combine, and when they do “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. I’ll have to think about it some more, but it really shouldn’t have to be one or the other.

14

What the founders thought the federal government should do is not necessarily what they thought the states should do. So, when you ask about setting policy, are you talking about what should be done at the federal level or the state level? For example, they were firmly against the establishment of religion at the federal level, but several states had established religions. If you look at the MA constitution, there was a requirement to attend Church. It was a different mindset than we have today.

I have no doubt that the founders would be shocked at how the balance of power has shifted from the states to the feds. Then again, they wouldn’t have experienced the American Civil War, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, and the two World Wars.

15

Well I thought about this last night, and beyond it being a false dichotomy, life was just so different that the comparisons are very difficult. For instance, life expectancy was around 40 or so, plus if anyone caught pneumonia they would pretty much all die. So the very changes that we’ve seen really require the gov’t to take some action in order to “promote the general (as in for everybody) welfare”. At least that’s how I’m going to argue it. Sorry to bump it, its clearly not much of a debatable issue. :slight_smile:

16

I think the life expectancy thing is a misunderstanding of the statistics. A high childhood death rate lowers life expectancy, so what you have to look at is what is your life expectancy if you survive until adulthood. It’s not like most people were dying at 40.

17

I’m not sure if I’m tracking the OP correctly… but whatever words may be used in the preamble of the Constitution are not a very sturdy foundation upon which to build an argument that the government should or should not do its business in certain ways.

Look to the actual powers granted to each branch of government, and to the extent that each branch wishes to exercise those powers in an altruistic, evil, orderly, chaotic, conservative, or liberal way, the Constitution fully allows the government to do so. Let me explain further.

So, the preamble says that the government should provide for the common defense. The various articles also say that Congress may raise armies and declare war, and the President is commander in chief. The fact that the preamble makes reference to the “common defense” is not a limitation on the legislative and executive branches using the military for purposes other than defending our people from foreign attack.

If the Congress and President decide to invade and conquer Canada for no reason whatsoever, the preamble does not prohibit that war because it may not actually be in furtherance of the common defense of the United States. If the government wants to undertake widespread nation-building missions in Africa, there is no constitutional requirement that such missions have to be justified as being in furtherance of our common defense.

Same thing for the exercise of legislative authority. If the government wants to institute a bazillion social programs costing upteen tons of money, so long as the government has authority under Art I, Sec 8 (or whatever section may be appropriate) to carry out such programs, then whether those programs are for compassionate, logical, evil, or humorous motivations, the government can do them.

Your friend’s insistence on the precise wording of the preamble is a foolish fixation. What matters is the powers granted to each of the branches under the articles of the Constitution, not some obsession of whether “general welfare” means something different than “general well-being” or “general interest” or whether “promote” is different than “provide,” “insure,” “further,” “guarantee,” or “help out.”

18

If we admit compassion and empathy as moral obligations, politicians, singly or in bunches, are as obligated to show them as anyone else.

19

Considering that the alternative is for political policy to be implemented by psychopaths or people who act like them, definitely. People who show neither compassion nor empathy are a danger to everyone around them, and certainly shouldn’t be in any position of power.

20

Often, you can do the compassionate thing for logical, even selfish reasons. It seems to me that many on the right will ignore that logic and their own self interest if it means someone else, especially someone of a different race or religion, benefits.

For example, lifting people from poverty not only helps those people, but it also promotes “domestic tranquility” by reducing the need of those people to steal, deal drugs, reduces the spread of infections disease, etc. etc. But the righty-tightys would rather spend money building prisons than to spend the same or less money mitigating the poverty that leads to crime, because the latter is seen as rewarding the criminal class.

Same deal with publicly funded education. PLEASE give those smart minority kids Pell grants so one of them can invent me a flying car already!