Coercive Compassion Knows No Party

     The greatest instances of foolishness arise from the unwillingness to look beyond the surface – to ask “Why is this so,” to understand the process involved, and to accept that the process determines the outcome. Thomas Sowell was scathing on this point:

     [I]f the temperature has risen by ten degrees since dawn today, an extrapolation will show that we will all be burned to a crisp by the end of the month if this trend continues....In the real world, everything depends on where we are now, at what rate we are moving, in what direction, and – most important of all – what is the specific process generating the numbers being extrapolated. Obviously, if the rise in temperature is being caused by the spinning of the earth taking us into the sunlight, then the continuation of that spinning will take us out of the sunlight again and cause temperatures to fall when night comes.

     “Data” divorced from the relevant processes can be tortured into supporting any imaginable argument. The processes themselves are far more resistant to such abuse.

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     This is on my mind because of yet another fatuous article about “income inequality:”

     Reactionary populism in its most dangerous form will tear at the very fabric of our society if we do not address the challenge of economic inequality. We see the scourge of authoritarian populist movements across the globe and believe there is a moral and economic imperative to reduce this widening gap.

     Note that the headline on this article is about income equality: the longstanding phenomenon of some out-earning others. Note also the use of the words “reactionary” and “authoritarian” to transform populism – majority sentiment as a force for political change – into a dark, destructive force. But note especially the deceitful use of religion as groundwork for coercive government intervention into the national economy:

     Both of our faiths teach us to care for the poor. Jesus taught us to be radical in our service. Gandhi drew inspiration from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and said his goal was to “unify the teaching of the [Bhagavad] Gita and the Sermon on the Mount.” He believed Jesus was one of the world’s greatest teachers.

     St. Peter’s recent successors call on us to focus on decreasing economic inequality. John Paul II’s encyclical, "Centesimus Annus" declared that “the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs”, but “there are many human needs which find no place on the market.” In his 2013 New Year message, Pope Benedict XVI said he was alarmed “to see hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor” and called for a new approach to the economy.

     Do you think either of the authors of this piece has ever read a basic economics textbook – or (dare I suggest such an absurdity) Henry Hazlitt’s The Conquest of Poverty?

     Nope, me neither.

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     Let us ask the question that Francis Rooney and Ro Khanna have failed to ask:

What processes lie behind income inequality?

     The answers are very well known. They start from observable differences in human beings:

1. Differences in ambition and energy;
2. Differences in creativity;
3. Differences in ability;
4. Differences in luck.

     Sometimes a single characteristic will determine the course of a man’s life. A serious enough physical handicap can do that. Yet there are cases of even the most severely afflicted persons rising to fame and fortune. Consider writer John Milton (blind), activist Helen Keller (blind and deaf), pitcher Jim Abbott (one hand), and physicist Stephen Hawking (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). So it would be a step too far to posit that such handicaps must be determinative. However, he who lacks all four of the “success characteristics” will have to win the lottery...and then be wise enough not to squander the proceeds.

     Let it be stipulated that nothing short of complete totalitarian control over all income-earning activities could possibly equalize incomes. Is that what Rooney and Khanna seek? Possibly not...but look at what they advocate:

1. “[C]reate more career and technical training (CTE) opportunities, invest in rural broadband, expand small business loans to rural entrepreneurs and fund infrastructure improvements.”
2. “[F]acilitate job creation, entrepreneurial opportunities and increased community involvement.”
3. “Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)”

     All of these things have been tried, and there has been no reduction in income differences. Are Rooney and Khanna prepared to admit that? What would their response be? Likely that “we didn’t do it right,” or alternately, “we have to do it bigger!” That’s what coercive compassionists do, you know. They never admit that their nostrums have failed; they merely agitate for more. Snake-oil salesmen did much the same, back when. So do today’s socialists.

     But we haven’t got to the fun part yet.

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     What is the relationship among:

1. Income inequality;
2. Economic inequality;
3. Inequality of well-being?

     Does any one of the three cause the other two? Do any two in concert cause the third? Has anyone bothered to ask?

     Don’t bother to put those questions to a coercive compassionist. He’ll denounce you by reflex: “You must hate the poor!” It’s a silly sort of stroke that alienates more people than it persuades, but that’s what they do. However, people who strive to understand socioeconomic processes will ask – and they’ll do their damnedest to find the answers.

     First, income inequality is only loosely coupled to overall economic inequality. What matters is the balance between income and outgo: i.e., whether the individual under consideration spends less than, as much as, or more than he gets. One who outspends his income will fall ever deeper into debt, no matter how much he earns. One who spends every cent he gets will make no economic progress. One who spends less than he gets – i.e., one who saves — will steadily rise in economic assets and the security they confer. Over time his well-being will increase.

     Op-ed writer Fred Reed once noted that among those who are economically afflicted in this era, there’s a distinct lack of what he called “the skills required to be successfully poor.” Reed was spot-on: it is possible to have a low income and yet not fear the wolf at the door. It takes self-restraint, the development of certain skills that are ever less common in our time, the readiness to capitalize on opportunities, and a grasp of the toxic power of the all-too-often misapplied word “need.”

     The successfully poor – i.e., those with a low income who nevertheless meet their actual needs and the needs of their dependents – seldom remain poor. They struggle, sometimes for decades, but they make progress. Granted that some are laid low by happenstance: accidents, diseases, other phenomena individuals can neither predict nor control – but these are a minority among the successfully poor.

     One of the scurrilities of our time is coercive compassionists’ refusal to address the economic mobility of the successfully poor. It’s understandable, as it undermines their case for government meddling in the economy, but it’s evil nonetheless. The metric of interest should be what fraction of those arbitrarily classified as currently poor are making progress, not whether they make as much money as the CEO of a Fortune 100 corporation.

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     Allow me a few words about Rooney’s and Khanna’s invocation of their respective religions as rationales for their prescriptions. Once again:

     Both of our faiths teach us to care for the poor. Jesus taught us to be radical in our service. Gandhi drew inspiration from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and said his goal was to “unify the teaching of the [Bhagavad] Gita and the Sermon on the Mount.” He believed Jesus was one of the world’s greatest teachers.

     But what did these “great teachers” teach? Individual action taken for the love of one’s neighbor. This is a far cry from the route preferred by the coercive compassionist, who would prefer to say “As long as you vote for the right social programs, you’ll go to heaven, no sweat!”

     Citing the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as a foundation for government economic meddling – a course that has always done more harm than good – is a slander against the Son of God and Savior of Mankind. I can’t think of any bigger self-indictment. If your faith has taught you to “care for the poor, Republican-Catholic Congressman Francis Rooney, are you doing so with your own assets? Actually, I’d bet that you are...but that is not a license to prescribe that others should open their wallets to Big Government’s ever-grasping hand for more programs of the sort that have already been tried and have failed.

     Here is what Jesus said about charity:

     When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
     Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
     Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
     And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
     Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
     Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
     Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

     [Matthew 25:31-45]

     Not a word about government or government programs can be found there. As for Democrat-Hindu Congressman Khanna’s faith, I shall refrain from comment.

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     No one has made the case against the coercive compassionist as well as Isabel Paterson:

     If the full roll of sincere philanthropists were called, from the beginning of time, it would be found that all of them together by their strictly philanthropic activities have never conferred upon humanity one-tenth of the benefit derived from the normally self-interested efforts of Thomas Alva Edison, to say nothing of the greater minds who worked out the scientific principles which Edison applied. Innumerable speculative thinkers, inventors, and organizers, have contributed to the comfort, health, and happiness of their fellow men—because that was not their objective....
     The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others. And the good people cannot be exonerated for supporting them. Neither can it be believed that the good people are wholly unaware of what actually happens. But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

     [From The God of the Machine]

     It cannot be put better than that. The Rooneys and Khannas should reflect on it. The rest of us should tune them out until they’ve absorbed the lesson.

I Needed This...

     ...and maybe you do, too. Hearken to the greatest of all American Catholic preachers and men of faith, the Venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen:

     Perhaps one or two of the things Bishop Sheen excoriates are obiter dicta. The rest of his Jeremiad is purest gold, as relevant today as it was in 1965 when the above broadcast first occurred. It’s what Americans need to hear in these dark times...yet too many “Americans” would condemn Bishop Sheen’s statements as “intolerant,” “unacceptable,” and of course “uncompassionate.”

     Choose for yourself.

     "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." -- Adam Smith

The “Feelings” Blob Part 2: Getting Tough

     Dystopic has continued his explorations of “weaponized empathy:”

     Today, let’s break down a very common use of it in private circles, in debates between regular folks on social media.

     The tactic looks something like this:

Conservative: I believe in [insert policy here].
Progressive: Here is a sad story about someone (or even a hypothetical someone) who would be affected by the policy. Do you want this person to suffer?
Conservative: Well, no, of course not…
Progressive: Well then, you shouldn’t believe in [the policy]. It’s immoral.

     This is an exceptionally low bar to clear for the Progressive. No matter what political positions a person might have, at least some people, somewhere, can be found who would be negatively affected by it.

     Exactly! There will always be beneficiaries of some government program, regardless of the details. That’s how Iron Triangles are formed:

• A program is proposed that transfers money from the public to the State, ostensibly to achieve some end that requires funds.
• The program quickly acquires three sorts of hangers-on:
  1. Bureaucrats who administer the program;
  2. Vendors who sell products and / or services to the program;
  3. Beneficiaries who receive benefits from the program.
• Those three form a special-interest constituency that will fight to the death to prevent the program from being rescinded or diminished, regardless of its other effects.
• Because its interests are concise and coherent, that constituency can outmaneuver politically the more diffuse group that’s being taxed to fund the program.

     The “progressive” may know this, but that’s of no true consequence. What he does know is that someone, somewhere, might find the program to be of some benefit under particular hypothesized conditions. As the “progressive” is all about “compassion,” he’ll do as Dystopic has outlined above. The conservative who opposes the program is them thrown on his mettle. To escape the trap, he must get tough:

Conservative: Does your hypothetical victim have family or friends who would help him?
Progressive: Assume that he doesn’t. [FWP: The “progressive” must say this to keep the trap armed.]
Conservative: Why not? Are you telling me there’s no one who loves him enough to help him for that reason alone?
[FWP: At this point the “progressive” might start to sputter. To make matters maximally constraining, assume he keeps cool.]
Progressive: Well, there are some people who have no friends or loved ones.
Conservative: Then yes, I do want him to suffer. He’s obviously made a lot of very bad choices. People who make bad choices should not be rescued from the consequences. That would create an incentive for other persons to emulate them.

     But very few conservatives would ever dare to say so, mainly because we’ve been “nice-guyed” out of our moral vision.

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     For the sake of brevity, let’s call the inability to allow another to suffer for his choices nice-guyism. Include in that category the inability to say you would be willing to allow such suffering. It’s at the core of Dystopic’s conception of weaponized empathy – and if you haven’t yet read his other pieces on that subject, you can’t imagine what you’re missing.

     There are varieties of nice-guyism. Some nice guys respond to sickness, others to poverty, and still others to wounded or abandoned animals. Every charitable or pseudo-charitable organization that exists (or ever has) relies upon the existence of some variety of it. Their pitches are uniform in this regard: show hardship or suffering, without any mention of how it was brought about.

     A condition severed from its causes hangs sourceless in the universe. It appears to exist de novo, such that there are no imaginable contexts in which it wouldn’t exist. But in the realm of human behavior, this is almost never the case.

     The sole categorical exception I can find to the proposition that “a man’s suffering is the consequence of his choices” is that of the inherent handicap: the infant left on the church steps by his mother; the child born horribly deformed; the congenital imbecile or idiot. There are some of each. Our sympathies for them are wholly understandable. But no one who has ever possessed a functioning mind in a reasonably sound body can plausibly claim that his hardships, whatever they may be, have nothing to do with his choices.

     If you’re not willing to let an individual suffer the consequences of his decisions and actions, the whole of Mankind becomes your charity case. The “progressive” can justify taking your money and your freedom, for any reason whatsoever, until you’re left with none of either...and that, Gentle Reader, is exactly what he intends to do.

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     In the sort of discourse Dystopic has outlined, the “progressive” is using the conservative’s feelings against him: his automatic sympathy for anyone caught in dire straits, and his desire to be seen as a “nice guy” by his conversational adversary. The sole remedy is to get tough.

     Toughness is a contextually dependent characteristic. Demanding that a healthy adult be responsible for meeting his own needs is a virtue, and an important pro-social attitude. Demanding that one’s minor child do the same is not. Between the two lie the cases the “progressive” seeks to sever from their causal roots: those whose previous choices have brought them to a sorry pass. But if we can’t insist that persons with no excuse avoid unnecessary or extreme risks and make responsible provisions for their own futures, on what civic virtue can we insist?

     Beyond that, of course, lies the realm of legitimate, defensible excuses for being in personal jeopardy, but let’s leave that for some other morning.

When Good People Do Bad Things

     Yes, it’s a play of sorts on the title of this book. It was a very popular “inspirational” when it was first published. However, as the great Robert A. Heinlein has told us (and as I fancifully exploited in this tome) the universe consists of dualities: pairs of opposed forces, tendencies, values, what-have-you. And so on this fourth Sunday of Advent in the Year of Our Lord 2016, I propose to meet Harold Kushner’s “inspirational” with its polar opposite (feel free to call it a “perspirational”).

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     As a rule, humans tend not to like being ordered around. For some, that approaches an absolute value: one offense is enough to bring us to blows. I’m one such: an anarchist from my genes to my few remaining hair follicles. My greatest sorrow was the discovery that government is inevitable. (See these books for a fictional exegesis. And before you ask: Yes, there will be at least one more volume in that series.)

     Yet there are many perfectly good-hearted people who cannot restrain their need to “fix” others’ lives. And in one of life’s more painful ironies, they have a habit of attaching themselves to nasty old bastards like me, who’d as soon shoot them as say hello.

     I’m not talking about politicians or other government functionaries. They have a disease that operates at a higher plane of abstraction. The folks I have in mind don’t seek official positions; they merely seek individual victims upon whom to establish their personal benevolent dictatorships. And they just about always succeed in finding and fastening on one of us who’d run to the ends of the Earth to avoid them.

     Good people doing bad things...out of a desire to “help.”

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     Quite a number of folks, however, do operate at that “higher plane of abstraction” without feeling any desire to attain a public office. These “There oughta be a law” types can become very well known. Some become regionally notorious and strive to capitalize on their notoriety. Others merely annoy the living daylights out of their live-and-let-live neighbors, repeatedly, over one “issue” after another.

     The creation of “issues” by such persons often remains unseen right up to the point where it evokes a town council or county legislature meeting aimed at invading someone’s rights. Moreover, all too often that meeting of officious “public servants” takes place sub rosa, such that the affected parties remain ignorant of it until it’s produced a fait accompli.

     I have in mind one such person who inflicted the Army Corps of Engineers on a neighbor who dared to dig out, line, equip, and stock a koi pond in his backyard. Apparently there are laws and associated regulations that mandate such intrusions on anyone who dares to imagine that putting such a thing on his own property is his own BLEEP!ing business and no one else’s. You can’t imagine the tumult that inflicted upon the neighborhood involved. The initiator was unmoved. “The law is the law,” he liked to say...and he sincerely believed he was helping his neighbor to stay out of trouble with the law.

     Good people doing bad things...in the name of “justice.”

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     Finally for today, let’s consider the thoughtlessly “compassionate.” In its most common form of ill thought out “generosity,” it’s produced larger social maladies than anything but warfare. Yet we are regularly bombarded with exhortations to “compassion” as if there were no imaginable way that seemingly positive attribute might go wrong.

     Most of the “charity” urged upon us today is destructive. Yet most of those who exhort us to ever greater “compassion” toward “the needy” have no stain on their souls. The defect is in their understanding.

     A brilliant essay written by a dear friend puts it beautifully:

     Help can cripple or kill you.

     There aren't many people who get that. It's so easy to allow someone else to carry your burden for you. It's so easy to allow yourself to become dependent on other people's kindness and generosity. If you're cursed with an accepting nature, you can become a charity addict as easily as breathing. It forecloses your future; everything you might have achieved slips away, forgotten in the relief of not having to work for your own security or prosperity.

     It's very important -- critical -- not to help when help is not needed, or not appreciated, or not wanted, or wanted much too much. I know, my Church says otherwise, but I have to disagree. Charity to good people in sudden, unexpected need that's not their fault, who are uncomfortable at being the objects of charity, is usually all right. Charity to people who've never shown any initiative or prudence is always wrong. Good-hearted people have done more harm through generosity than all the murderers that have ever lived. Maybe even including the government murderers.

     In 2014, the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services, supposedly chartered to alleviate poor health and material want among the less fortunate, spent $450 billion on health care for its clients and an additional $175 billion on assorted “public assistance” disbursements. In addition, private charitable organizations – firms whose nominal reason for being is to provide help to the “needy” –take in billions of dollars each year. In most cases, most of the money goes to salaries and “operating expenses,” but even what remains usually does more harm than good. Thomas Mackay put it best more than a century ago:

     ...the cause of pauperism is relief. We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief...On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for. [Thomas Mackay, “Methods of Social Reform”]

     In consequence of all this “compassion,” more persons depend on “charity” for part or all of their sustenance than ever before in American history. The “compassionate” among us claim that the trend proves that more money is urgently required. I have no doubt that most of them are sincerely well-intentioned – those not employed by a government agency, at least – but the harm they’ve done and continue to do is staggering.

     Good people doing an enormously bad thing – destroying the initiative and self-reliance of others – out of unthinking “compassion.”

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     Primum non nocere, runs the physicians’ maxim: First, do no harm. Good, sincerely well-intentioned people are not exempt from this constraint. He who does harm is responsible for that consequence even if he thought he was doing good. Yet our social devolution has gone so far that we keep silent rather than point that out to those whose good intentions come a-cropper. Indeed, it’s considered the height of rudeness to hurt such persons’ feelings.

     The New Year approaches, and with it the usual exhortations to make resolutions to improve this or that about oneself. For many of us, a resolution to mind one’s own business and trust others to mind theirs is the best one could make – a priceless if belated Christmas gift to those around them.

Choruses Of Condemnation

     If there’s anything more uniform than the disapproval one will evoke by dissenting from the Left-Right Gospel of “compassion,” my detectors can’t register it. We hear the exhortations to “compassion” from a multitude of sources: political, social, mock-charitable – I’ll get to that – and religious. Indeed, one of the priests who acts as a weekend celebrant at my parish seems unable to utter a sentence that doesn’t have the word “compassion” in it.

     I’ve never been more infuriated by any message – and this one masquerades as some sort of public-service pitch.

     “Compassion.” What does it mean, Gentle Reader? Do you know? I once thought I did:

     Compassion: n. Literally, suffering with another; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another; pity; commiseration.

     ...but the multiplicity of applications it endures today has made me wonder whether my essentially etymological approach to the meanings of words is at all relevant.

     In political usage, it seems to mean “Do what we tell you and shut up about it.” In the commonest social usage, it seems to mean “Stop having standards.” In mock-charitable usage, it seems to mean “Send us money so our huge staff won’t have to find real jobs.” And in religious usage...no, forgive me, I can’t go on; it’s too early in the morning for me to endure another attack of outrage-powered nausea. I’ll emit a tirade instead.

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     A very long time ago, at the old Palace of Reason, I posted an essay titled The Circle Of Care. The complete text follows:

     I came of age in the Sixties, a time when America was gradually being turned upside down. And that having been said, I'll spare you any soliloquy about the Sixties. It's the upside-down part that matters.

     I don't recall exactly when I learned about the duty of charity toward the less fortunate, but it was probably in my Catholic grammar school. The nuns were quite insistent about the obligation to help one's fellow man, when he was in genuine need. Every classroom had a "poor box," filled by contributions from the students. Its contents were periodically totaled and used for some charitable undertaking -- and I don't mean buying a color television for a family that didn't yet have one, or dragging a "homeless" man into a government-run shelter; I mean providing food or clothing for a struggling family that hadn't quite managed to make ends meet that month. Blauvelt parish, a blue-collar sector of Rockland County, New York, always had a few such.

     A lot of things come to mind about that poor box and its uses, but none so strongly as this: no one ever suggested that the money be sent far away, to people none of us knew personally. It was to be employed right there, in Blauvelt parish, among the people we knew. This was so obvious, so fundamental to the concept of charity, that the contrary idea was never considered.

     "Charity" derives from the Latin word "caritas," the concern for others that springs from personal connection. A related word of Greek derivation is "sympathy," the ability to "feel with" another person. These are not relations one can truly have with faceless and nameless strangers at a distance.

     True charity requires proximity, for at least two reasons. First, the necessary personal connection, the sense that one is helping one's own, fails at any great remove. Second, human fallibility and weakness guarantee that, just as some will fail to prosper on their own, others will fail to employ charity properly; indeed, to receive money from others sometimes makes one's troubles worse. When this occurs, the giver must give no further, for other measures -- criticism, instruction, discipline -- are clearly indicated. With any separation between the benefactor and his beneficiary, it becomes impossible to know whether help helps in fact, or only in theory and intention.

     Compare this ancient, common-sense approach to charity, preserved and perpetuated by all the great religious institutions of Man, to the modern concept. Today, our media would have us believe that charity is about voting for tax-funded, government-administered programs to redistribute our income to others we don't know. Some of the supposed beneficiaries are in far places where America and Americans are routinely vilified for their prosperity and derided for their generosity. Whatever rules modern charity observes are determined and enforced by salaried bureaucrats who pay no costs for any mistake. Volunteers and private institutions that attempt to take a role are tolerated, but distrusted. The apostles of modern charity would prefer that all of it be under the watchful eye of government monitors, to insure that no misleading messages about the importance of sobriety, continence, or self-reliance are packaged with the gifts.

     Obviously, there's been some change to the concept. I'd like to leave aside the political implications of this change for a moment and concentrate on the inversion of the circle of care.

     If proximity was regarded as the most important of the requirements of the old concept, it is considered no better than optional under the new one, and quite possibly a detriment. If personal concern, for both the bodies and the souls of others of one's direct acquaintance, was the fuel for the charity of old, the motive power of the new charity is rules: rules that direct the bureaucrat to shower largesse without regard for its actual effects, and rules that punish the citizen brutally if he attempts to avoid "contributing."

     The new concept of charity first rose over the old one in the late Sixties, when the American welfare state began its explosive growth. In the years since then, we've seen many other things explode as well: crime, vice, filth in the streets, and social pathologies such as fatherlessness and illegitimacy whose effects have eclipsed even the darkest predictions.

     Meanwhile, law-abiding, self-supporting Americans of the cities, they who are mulcted for the funds that support the new charity, have been drawing in upon themselves, isolating themselves as best they can from the madness that surges around them. Their circles of care have contracted to hold only themselves and their immediate families.

     Count Leo Tolstoy once spent a night wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, giving to the poor whom he encountered until his pockets were empty and his energy was spent. At the end of his sojourn, those to whom he'd given were a little better off for a short time, but he knew and admitted that he'd made no lasting difference in their lives, that as soon as they'd exhausted the night's benison, the darkness would return. He concluded that one should act with love toward those whom God has placed in his path, rather than to ride forth and scatter his substance widely and without regard for efficacy.

     Who are the needy whom God has placed in our path? Are they not our family members, neighbors and friends? Is it not these whom our circle of care should encompass?

     I meant every word. I still do.

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     My understanding of charity utterly lacks “compassion,” in the dictionary sense. It is unproductive to “suffer with” another person. If you feel charitable toward him, your appropriate response should be to relieve his suffering, if you can do so without doing harm.

     That’s not what the contemporary apostles of “compassion” appear to want, at least if we judge from what their actions have produced. They point to this or that supposedly “disadvantaged” class – perhaps the fatherless children of promiscuous and dissolute single women – say “Have you no compassion?” and demand that we fund idleness, promiscuity, disdain for the social norms, and miscellaneous forms of dissolution – today in America, with funds enough to purchase lives roughly equivalent to our own. Herbert Spencer noticed the consequences more than a century ago:

     On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how frequently the door is officiously opened by one who expects to get something for his trouble. The surprise lessens after counting the many loungers about tavern-doors, or after observing the quickness with which a street-performance, or procession, draws from neighbouring slums and stable-yards a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous they are in every small area, it becomes manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm through London. “They have no work,” you say. Say rather that they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out if it. They are simply good-for-nothings, who in one way or another live on the good-for-somethings – vagrants and sots, criminals and those on the way to crime, youths who are burdens on hard-working parents, men who appropriate the wages of their wives, fellows who share the gains of prostitutes; and then, less visible and less numerous, there is a corresponding class of women.

     Is it natural that happiness should be the lot of such? Or is it natural that they should bring unhappiness on themselves and those connected with them?...

     “But surely we are not without responsibilities, even when the suffering is that of the unworthy?”

     If the meaning of the word “we” be so expanded as to include with ourselves our ancestors, and especially our ancestral legislators, I agree. I admit that those who made, and modified, and administered the old Poor Law, were responsible for producing an appalling amount of demoralization, which it will take more than one generation to remove. I admit, too, the responsibility of recent and present lawmakers for regulations which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps, who ramble from union to union; and also their responsibility for maintaining a constant supply of felons by sending back convicts into society under such conditions that they are almost compelled again to commit crimes. Moreover, I admit that the philanthropic are not without their share of responsibility; since, that they may aid the offspring of the unworthy, they disadvantage the offspring of the worthy by burdening their parents through increased local rates. Nay, I even admit that these swarms of good-for-nothings, fostered and multiplied by public and private agencies, have, by sundry mischievous meddlings, been made to suffer more than they would otherwise have suffered. Are these the responsibilities meant? I suspect not.

     [From The Man Versus The State.]

     I maintain that every supposedly “charitable” interference in the American economy by the apostles of “compassion” has led to the same degeneration in 21st Century American society as Spencer observed so trenchantly in 19th Century England. Yet it is they who catechize us.

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     The first rule of the most interventionist of all occupations, medicine, is Primum non nocere: “First, do no harm.” An ethical physician is aware of the fragility of the human body. He knows that to toy with it casually is far more likely to do harm than good. That’s why diagnosis must precede treatment – indeed, why an ambiguous diagnosis is the most dangerous of all. Far better to observe a little longer, gather a little more data, than to administer drugs, surgery, or other treatment without firm assurance that it will conduce to the patient’s benefit and not his detriment.

     There are exceptions, of course. A man who is visibly dying before one’s eyes must be regarded as in extremis, which justifies far more risk than a largely healthy man with an ailment that’s not obviously life-threatening. But such cases are not the norm. Neither is a largely peaceful and prosperous society one that justifies dramatic invasions of its modus operandi to relieve marginal suffering. Yet governments have done exactly that. In so doing they’ve produced tragedy that threatens the bounds of description – and the tragedy has not been confined to those to whom they applied their “charity.”

     Demands for sacrifice in the name of “compassion” will naturally evoke the expectation of subsequent improvements. When the improvements never manifest – when large-scale social and economic deterioration ensue instead – we get reactions like this one:

     Yeah, if you’re a normal American, you’re pretty much the root of all evil. You’re the worst of the worst. You suck.

     Welcome to Political Three Card Monte. Whatever the issue, you lose.

     Please read it all. It isn’t meanness of spirit. It isn’t a callous disregard for others’ suffering. It’s the working out of a natural law. This year, as columnist Kurt Schlichter observes, it’s produced an “outsider revolution” – in both major parties, at that – that has the political elite quaking with fear. What was once called “compassion fatigue” is now a widespread, heartfelt rejection of the “compassion gospel.” The choruses of condemnation our “betters” have drowned us in for wanting to keep what we’ve earned, to preserve the peace of our neighborhoods, and to enjoy our traditional rights as Americans have ceased to have the desired effect. Peak “compassion” is behind us; the descent to sanity has commenced.

     The Establishmentarians might succeed in retaining their grip on the levers of power, but it’s become doubtful verging on impossible that they’ll succeed in bludgeoning us further with the “compassion” stick.