Er, Spoofe, I think you missed the point of all the rolleyes.
For example, let’s say you come across someone who has no job and hence no money.
“You’re on your own, sink or swim” would be to not help the person at all, and of course there’s no compassion there.
Giving the person a weekly handout would not dictate that he take personal responsibility, and there’s no conservatism there.
Calling a press conference, talking about compassion, making a big speech about compassion and responsibility, and then making slashing cuts in unemployment benefits while dynamiting the economy with tax cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy, and giving political patronage to massive energy corporations that then self-destruct, leaving thousands unemployed and basically screwed, while launching their CEOs into a safe and wealthy retirement…
…now that’s compassionate conservatism.
You can’t either understand or refute the idea of “compassionate conservatism” with these kinds of hysterical accusations.
You simply cannot speak responsibly about George Bush or his policies. You see his name; it triggers this kind of raving, and rational people simply roll their eyes and dismiss you.
“Throw them out in the streets to die” - what a load of bullshit.
Rants belong in the Pit. Wipe the foam off your chin and speak reasonably, or spare the hamsters your foolishness.
Regards,
Shodan
Show me anything that Bush would put in place to compensate for massive cuts in social spending. His best ideas so far are school vouchers for rich kids and grossly inadequate (not to mention unconstitutional) “faith based initiatives.”
The conservative philosophy is about running away from collective social responsibilities and justifying selfishness with platitudes about fish.
Democrats believe people should pay their debts.
Oh, and, SPOOFE? What andros said.
It’s fascinating and always a difficult a question.
Philosophically, I try to look at it this way: If it’s good enough for my daughter, it’s probably good enough for society.
I, and I beleive most responsible parents raise their children with the same kind of philosophy the Op complains so bitterly about.
I like to be nice to my child and do things for her. I like to make her happy and comfortable and secure. Unfortunately for me, this is not always in her best interests.
For example, we went out to dinner a week ago and my daughter refused to eat even though we ordered food that we knew from experience that she liked.
When we got home, she was hungry. She wanted ice cream. She wanted crackers. She wanted candy. She wanted her mother to make her a hot dog.
Now any and all of these things would have been perfectly feasible and easy to do for her. She was crying. She was hungry. What kind of cruel parents would deny a child under such circumstances?
Me. And her mother.
My daughter had had the opportunity to eat. She had passed it by. Now she had to live with the consequences.
Ultimately it would have been ucompassionate of us to let her have her way.
We had to repeat this one other time. Now my daughter knows, and she takes advantage of the opportunity to eat. She no longer looks to us to bail her out from her stupidity. She does not expect it.
Because she does not expect it, we never have to who and the world is a better place for all concerned.
This is a lesson which is repeated in various permutations hundreds and hundreds of times.
In fact, I consider this lesson to be one of the four major gifts that I can give my daughter in her life. If you’re curious, they are.
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The gift of personal responsibility - being cognizant and responsible for her own actions, being aware of the consequences and rewards of her own behavior.
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The love of reading - We started with Hop on Pop at 6 months. With the world of books at her disposal as comfortable and reliable friends my daughter will never need to lack for the companionship of human thought. She will never need to be alone. Knowledge and insight will always be within her grasp.
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Physical prowess - My daughter has already learned that her body is a tool that gets better with use. She’s learned the fun of exercise and the rewards of physical skill. Exertion and even defeat are not enemies. We ran a one mile fun run last week and her three year old legs did it in 12 minutes. You should have seen the pride of accomplishment on her face as she held up her ribbon (and I have a picture.) She can catch a ball. She knows how to throw a punch, and she can swim the full length of the pool. Like her mother who’s a blackbelt in judo she’s going to be a pretty tough customer. Physically confident and able. I can give her this gift.
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Adaptability - Things are not the same twice. And, I make a point of showing her the danger of lazy expectations and observations, and we make a game of finding new solutions and solving problems. She will not fear new circumstances.
What do parents teach their kids? What do they show them? Do we reward failure and punish success? Do we encourage failure or success.
One of the finest things I can do for my daughter is to let her fail. Expecially when it’s not her fault.
I did not come running and institute justice when she was being bullied mildly bullied at the playground by a bigger boy.
“He won’t let me play! He keeps taking the toys! He pushed me!” She complained, angry with righteous rage at the injustice. After all, we always make her play nice. We always make her share.
“What are you going to do about it?” I ask. She looks at me surprised.
“Make him stop.”
“It’s your problem. You have to solve it,” I say, and she stares at me with hurt and disapointed eyes. I am her Daddy. I am supposed to fix these things.
She goes off and cries by herself for a while. It’s heartbreaking. Eventually she plays elsewhere.
Of course, there’s nothing I would have liked better than to have come down on that little shit like the RIGHT HAND OF GOD, and set about with some smiting and righting of injustices.
But, I can’t be there for her 100% of the time. I can’t make sure the world is fair. I can’t fix every wrong. My daughter has to know that the world is not always fair, and is not always right. She still has to live in it. she still has to make her way in it.
For her world to be a good world, she has to make it a good world for herself. She has to make her right and fair. She has to solve her own problems.
I do her no favors to show her otherwise.
That being said, I do a lot for my kid. I’m sure I spoil in some ways. And, in ways that I don’t think it is possible for her to do for herself I protect her to the full extent of my abilities while showing her to do it for herself.
Hopefully most will agree that this is a good and wise way to raise my daughter. Hopefuly you will agree that it is logical. It makes sense. It is in her best interests. It is compassionate.
By no logic or rationalization can I imagine that this logic does not also apply to society at large.
I cannot understand how people can beleive that the opposite is true with society.
What kind of fool believes that the more you do for somebody the more they’ll be able to do for themselves?
What compassion is it to turn people into feeble incompetant wrecks that expect everybody else to bail them out?
It doesn’t even make any sense. You can’t give society something that it doesn’t already have.
Let’s examine an extreme hypothetical.
Starting tomorrow there is no more welfare. There is no more food stamps. There is no more government housing.
First off, a lot of people are going to die. They are going to live in misery until they die. Homeless, and hungry.
I think it’s safe to say that everybody who’s faced with such a fate is going to do everything in their power to avoid it.
Some of these people will be incapable of helping themselves, and they will suffer and die.
Others will be perfectly able, but lack the opportunity or the luck to be able to do anything about their new circumstances. They will also die.
The rest through luck, skill, resolve whatever will find a way. Some will just subsist. Others will eventually thrive.
I would guess that 80% or more of the people on welfare or foodstamps would find a way to survive on their own. I would guess that most of them will do better than when they were on aid, but that it will take them a lot of hardship and suffering before it happens.
The other 20% will die.
Now here’s the interesting question: Say we were to do this thing tomorrow. On whose head would the blame lie for all the suffering and death?
I will suggest that it will bo on the heads of those that allowed that allowed such an intolerable state of affairs to occur. I believe that the suffering would rest on the consciences of those stupid and arrogant enough to beleive that the government was more capable of making decisions for people and taking care of them then those people themselves. Letting those people believe that they deserved to be taken care of and would be taken of by the government is an unforgivable crime.
Suffering is perpetuated by such compassion. Take it away, and I’d wager 10 years from now there would have been less suffering than if we let this current state of affairs in place.
Do I believe that we should do this? Of course not. It’s an extreme example to illustrate a point.
It is a crime to allow people to be dependant when they do not have to be.
Japan has a very interesting welfare system. Basically they will take care of you if you’re incapable of doing it yourself. While doing it, they’ll kick you in the ass to make you capable, and ride you the whole way. It’s no surprise that Japan has a very very low number of people on welfare.
Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese immigrants come to this country and live 20 plus in apartments. They go out during the day and run newstands, or sweep floors, bus plates, whatever job they can get, and they do for themselves.
Our very history as a country demonstrates the ability to rise out of poverty on the shoulders of inustriousness.
That opportunity exists every bit as much today as it ever did.
How dare we rob people of it.
Compassion is giving people the opportunity to do for themselves. That’s all anybody should need.
I won’t be able to help my daughter by doing her homework for her, by fighting her battles.
If I love her, I have to let her do it for herself. All I can do is give her the opportunity.
Why would anybody think it’s any different for the rest of us?
Now I’ve given an extreme example here, and I expect a bunch of the sarcastic types more interested in rhetoric and winning a point to go ahead and misapply what I’ve said:
“Scylla thinks we should help poor people by letting them die!”
I have no answer for anybody who wants to play at such a level of crap.
Helping people without helping them to help themselves does more harm than good. Everytime we do for somebody what they can do for themselves and let them rely on us to do it… we kill them a little bit.
Conservatives wouldn’t be able to earn anything without a government that provides them with security, stability, an infrastructure, an education, law enforcement economic regulations, minimum standards for any number of things relating to clean air, water, food and workplace safety, etc. I could go on and on but the point is that every cent Americans earn is dependant on strong federal, state and municipal governments and the government deserves its cut. Frankly, the corporations which take such huge advantage of the governement when it’s convenient should be paying far more taxes than they do. CEOs should also have a salary cap which prevents them from making more than about twenty times that of their lowest paid employess. I also favor a cap on personal wealth but that’s just me.
Diog:
My daughter wouldn’t be able to do anything or learn anything if I didn’t do all kinds of stuff for here either.
That we need to do things is not the issue.
What the issue is (at least as far as the OP goes with regards to CC) is that we cannot afford to do things for people that they can and should be doing for themselves.
Ya gotta love this tendency by self-described conservatives to explain the “liberal agenda” for all the rest of us poor schmucks. You know, I’ve been wracking my brains trying to remember where any so-called “liberal” ever made any of the above statements, in so many words. PerhapsShodan could point to a quote or two by a card-carrying “liberal” that supports any of them.
Wow Mr Mace…you hate everyone that doesn’t fit your mold don’t you?
Mr Mace…has Ken Lay not been prosecuted because of compassionate conservatism?
You’re assuming that everyone has the ability and oppurtunity to do things for themselves. many people don’t. This is not an egalitarian society. We do not all have the same chance at success. Working hard does not necessarily guarantee success. in fact, it usually doesn’t lead to success. Conversely many of the most privileged people in our society have never worked a day in their lives [cough…Dubya…cough].
Also, to be honest, as someone who has spent a couple of years volunteering to provide free services such as in-school tutoring and after school programs to underprivileged children, I have to say that I can’t see how society would benefit from punishing those kids for the sins of their parents. Most of those parents did work, btw, but it’s a hand to mouth, check to check existence with no health care, no college fund, terrible public school conditions, lousy and dangerous neighborhoods and often very little positive reinforcement for kids to stay out of trouble, do well in school, etc. I think these kinds of families could benefit tremendously from subsidized day care, health care and revitalized schools…not welfare but social programs which can relieve some of the crushing burdens on the working poor and give them better self-esteem.
From my perspective, Bush simply wants to slash what few social programs we do have in place and replace them with…nothing. How is that compassionate?
Diog:
I know it’s not fair. Do you actually think we can make the world perfectly fair?
Sure. Some people can’t do for themselves. No question about it. It’s not fair that their children pay. But, how are you going to fix it?
I think that trying to fix it by just giving people things is well intentioned but foolish. I think it’s actually counterproductive.
All you can give those children is an opportunity for advancement, an opportunity for education. If the door is open, some will walk through.
Some won’t.
They’ve come to terms with their existance as it is.
What do you propose to do about the people that won’t if given any other choice?
The only answer I can see is not to give them any other choice.
I can’t help it that even under such circumstances some people will try their best… and fail.
I don’t think anybody can help that.
I don’t see that as an excuse for robbing the success from those will succeed.
I gave some examples of what we can do about it. One of the biggest problems i sthat salaries for the working poor have not kept pace with inflation. Another is that many single parents are in a situation where they cannot afford child care while they work. Most minimum wage jobs do not provide health benefits. A lot of public schools are terrible learning environments and i’ve worked in some of them.
It’s not a question of not wanting to work, it’s a question of a full time job not being enough to pay the bills. Stripping what assistance these families do get does not force them to succeed, it forces them into shelters (my wife used to drive them there for her first two years as a social worker). I’d much rather pay extra in taxes to let those kids stay in their own homes and leave their working parents some dignity.
Diog:
And you may freely disagree with my concept. In fact, I think you should. It is not an absolute.
Take the case of my daughter. I would be a bad parent indeed if I forced her to fend completely for herself. I have to give her the environment to grow into self-reliance.
I must be generous and supportive as well, and there is no excuse for me not providing the things that she needs to grow into a capable self-reliant person.
I am taking issue with the claim in the OP, that Compassionate Conservatism is an excuse not to help people.
That’s the fallacy.
Compassionate conservatism means that the ability to help people do something comes with the responsibility to make sure that it’s applied only in such fashion as it actually helps those people.
The housing projects of the 60s and 70s are a good example of a “solution” that perpetuated and excacerbated a problem they were meant to solve.
Far better had we done nothing, and left a bad situation alone. Instead, we took a bad situation and made it horrific.
Fundamentally, I beleive the government cannot solve people’s problems for them. At it’s best all it can do is enable to solve them for themselves.
I’m not so much disagreeing with you, Scylla, as I am with the use of the phrase by the president. I’m not so much arguing with “compassionate conservatism” as a philosophy, per se, as much as I’m arguing that GWB has used the phrase in an insincere and shallow way. I believe that he is only paying lip service to the “compassionate” part without really following through on it. There are ways in which social programs could be administered which would not entail direct cash handouts to individual families. I feel very strongly about child care and after school supervision for children, for instance. It would be a use of public money which would show visible, substantive, qualitative benefits to poor families and would rebound or society with more working parents, safer kids, less crime and more likelihood for kids to pursue higher education. Head Start was a great program which is now being sliced without mercy. A program like that can be funded for a year with what we’re spending per week in Iraq. Cutting programs like Head Start and AmeriCorps in order to fund a dubious war and to keep some ill-considered promises to cut taxes for the wealthy does not strike me as compassionate. (I do not doubt your compassion, however, or your sincerity in your philosophy).
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I’m not sure that that’s true, but I won’t ask you to go hunt for a cite. If your point is that it’s hard and not fair in this respect, I’ll agree with you.
The instinct to want to do something about it is a fine one. Before you suggest something though or go do something about it, you need to ask some questions.
The first one is why it this way? Why is it happening?
Once we know that the next question is can we do something about it?
After that comes the question of Should we, or will it work itself out?
What I mean by this is that this could be one of two kinds of problems.
First off, it could be one of those intolerable problems that is so intolerable that it will work itself out if we do nothing. With this kind of problem if we do something we risk just making the issue tolerable enough that it stick around for a long time. We perpetuate.
The other kind of problem is the kind that we can and should do something about.
What I’m saying is that simply because their is a problem doesn’t automatically mean we should wade in and try to fix it.
Again, why? How did this become such a big problem? Before we can address it, before we can even repsonsibly try, we need to understand what is causing it, and why it is happening?
Would you want a surgeon to cut into you without understanding what was wrong? Wouldn’t you want him to know that what he was doing was going to help?
I suspect that I have a very good answer as to why this particular problem exists.
I beleive the problem exists in its current scope because we have enabled it. Should we further enable it?
The problem exists because we’ve made it feasible for a single parent who’s incapable of supporting their child to do it anyway. Since it’s feasible, people are doing it.
Do you think making it even more feasible will make it less of a problem, or more of a problem?
Do you see what I’m saying? This is a tough fucking question, and it’s a bad spot to be in. People are in this situation because through misplaced compassion we’ve rewarded it, and led them to it.
I believe that anything further we do has to change that.
Yes. Why? How do you actually fix it? Can we, or will we make things worse?
It wasn’t always this way, was it? How did it happen? What did we do wrong? We have to know for sure, before we can address it.
We can’t give people dignity. Charity doesn’t do that.
It seems to me that you think that identifying these problems is enough. All that is needed is then a generous effort and the problems will be solved.
I’m saying that that’s dangerous. Sometimes a generous well-intentioned effort makes things worse.
You can’t fix something until you know what is broken and why.
Have you ever just blindly tried to fix something without understanding it?
Did it work out, or did you really fuck it up?
I hear you. I know there are big problems.
Why? What can we do about them? Can we do anything about them?
I’d suggest that simply wading in to help without knowing the answers is worse than doing nothing.
I’d rather help first and ask questions later. I had kids coming into my after school program just to get fed. They were not officially registered with the program and were not technically supposed to be eligible to recieve the (state subsidized) meals which we provided in the program. I know that for at least a couple of those kids, the meals in that program were going to be the only thing they got to eat all day. I gave them the food. I didn’t care why they were in that situation. I didn’t take time to ponder the welfare state or the culpability of their parents. All those kids knew was that they were hungry right now and so I fed them right now.
The AmeriCorps corps that I worked in, which administered many such programs, was just eliminated from the state budget by new Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty who inherited a huge deficit but promised tax cuts to get himself elected. I would joyfully give up my own nominal gain from those tax cuts and pay even that amount more in taxes to get those programs up and running again. Somebody else can figure out how we got in this situation, meanwhile there’s nowhere for those kids to get sandwiches anymore.
I beleive you. It speaks well of you, as does what you actually do.
It’s more than I’ve done.
Hopefully you see my point. You don’t have to agree. I think that each side of the coin has something to recommend it.
Without the desire and will to act things don’t improve.
You’re in the trenches. I’m not. You’re making a difference a person at a time.
But there’s a big picture too. I’m talking about policy. I’m talking about understanding the problems and making sure that “helping first and asking questions later,” doesn’t translate into shooting first and asking questions later.
If you’re doing something you deserve to know that what you’re doing is helping in the big picture.
We have to make sure we’re solving, not enabling or perpetuating.
That’s where I’m coming from.
I see where you’re coming from but there’s a sense of urgency that becomes overwhelming when you’re face to face with those kids. It’s no longer an abstact philosophical problem it becomes emotional. I admit that my views may be greatly prejudiced by my emotional reaction to my experiences.
Diog:
I’m just talking. I’m not doing anything about it, so what do I know compared to you?
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve enjoyed this exchange between us. You don’t always respond the way you’ve responded tonight, if you know what I mean.