Blood from a Stone

So I read an article by Neal Gabler of the L.A. Times called "America The Stony-Hearted". Have you read this? Go ahead. I'll wait.

I'm not even sure where to begin. I guess at the beginning. I thought I could just let this go, but I can't stop thinking about it and the more I think about it the more it bothers me. So here I am, getting it off my chest.

Compassion is a good and necessary thing, but like all good things it can be taken to a point where it is no longer compassion and no longer good. Our "complex national morality" is not dual in nature. When one truly lives the "Puritan-inflected America of rugged individualism, hard work, self-reliance and personal responsibility in which you reap what you sow, God helps those who help themselves, and our highest obligation is to live righteously" one creates an "America of community, common cause, charity and collective responsibility." (Though I would like to point out a contradiction. There is no such thing as collective responsibility. All behavior comes down to individuals. Each individual is responsible for his or her own behavior, no one else's.)

Where did this idea come from that compassion's only proper channel is a government program? Compassion is not something that's done by committee. It's one person acknowledging and wishing to alleviate another person's suffering, particularly when that suffering is cause by conditions outside their control. Thus, it is best served first by one's family, then friends then larger community and then outward from there. But the farther it gets from home, the less it's compassion and the more it's a cop-out. If the government takes your money and throws it at a problem then you don't have to think about it. Oh, the government has a program for that! They're handling it. Makes me think of that line from A Christmas Carol when Scrooge asks, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

 So when people like Mr. Gabler call people like Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh on the carpet for "promulgat[ing] an individualism untempered by human decency", I get a little twitchy. Human decency?! What's indecent about wanting the government to stop taking our money only to pour it endlessly into bureaucratic black holes that wind up feeding a bloated government machine more than it actually helps anyone? What's indecent about demanding that the people who earn the money be allowed to keep it and decide where, when, how and to whom their resources are allotted? Oh, he "generously" allows that the occasional conservative demonstrates a certain kind of compassion, but then takes back that narrow compliment by implying that it's not the right kind of compassion because it's not directed at the kind of crises and suffering that he has decided are more morally valid. If it's directed more toward those who are affected by natural disasters as opposed to social disasters (what is a social disaster, anyway?! Because to me, it sounds like a birthday party or a prom date that went bad) and those whose productive, wealth-making capacity is being strangled by overzealous regulation as opposed to those who've had their feelings hurt because no one thought their idea was good enough to buy the market was too callous, somehow it doesn't really count as compassionate or generous.


Then to claim that the right has "moralized" our politics implies that our politics were, at best, amoral to begin with and should return to that level. I don't know about anyone else, but I find that kind of offensive and more than a little scary. Politics is nothing more or less than the art and science of government. Government is, at it's simplest level, direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states (Dictionary.com). Are you trying to tell me that an entity that exercises control over the actions of the members of society should NOT be moral?! 

Compassionate service is the rightful responsibility of individuals. The government is impeding our ability to fulfill that responsibility by removing the resources that make it possible, but the left still expects us to give as if we still had those resources. We're willing to give, but not to point that we become sacrificial animals. You can't squeeze blood from a stone.