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Thread 8891

Thread ID: 8891 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-08-09

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Faust [OP]

2003-08-09 09:06 | User Profile

**The GOP’s New Deal

By Timothy P. Carney

In the name of “Compassionate Conservatism,” the Bush administration is now pressing the Republican-controlled Congress to create the largest new government program in 40 years—a prescription-drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $400 billion over five years. This is only the latest of President George W. Bush’s massive additions to the federal government, and the costs will be political as well as fiscal.

Bush’s advocacy of increased spending on government schools and federal education programs, efforts to ameliorate AIDS in Africa, and the mendacity of tax “rebates” for those who pay no income tax (honest men call this scheme “income redistribution”) has some advocates of limited government complaining that the president is sacrificing conservative principles for political expediency. But this understates the hazards of the administration’s profligacy. While Bush’s largesse arguably aids his re-election efforts, the long-term political costs for the Grand Old Party will rival the fiscal and economic costs of our 43rd president’s compassion.

[url=http://www.amconmag.com/07_28_03/article.html]http://www.amconmag.com/07_28_03/article.html[/url]**

Faust

2003-08-10 03:25 | User Profile

**The Quandary of 'Compassionate Conservatism' International Politics by W. James Antle III August 6, 2003

An entry by Matt Evans at Stuart Buck's excellent Buck Stops Here blog pointed me toward an interesting article by Michael Knox Beran in the Summer 2003 issue of City Journal contrasting conservative compassion with liberal pity. My own view is that liberalism is motivated less by pity – although I do recognize that as a component – than by a presumption that everyone else lacks sufficient compassion.

Too many liberals believe in government income redistribution because they don’t believe that people will be sufficiently generous with voluntary private charitable contributions. They believe in the welfare state because they don’t believe in the adequacy of civil society. They favor strict economic regulations because they presume that capitalists will necessarily behave unethically. They support affirmative action because they presume that the American majority is intrinsically racist and engages in such systematic discrimination as to make fair competition based upon merit completely untenable. They embrace social and cultural radicalism because they presume that traditional values are rooted in ignorance and hatred.

Compassionate conservatism has the potential to transform the debate against liberals because it actively works to refute each of these myths. Or perhaps more precisely, it works to affirm certain truths: the significance of private charity, civil society, a thriving capitalist economy within the context of its larger meta-market, human equality based on the natural law recognized in the Declaration of Independence and a proper understanding of the value of our moral traditions. Liberals observe certain flaws in human nature that make them distrust the spontaneous order; compassionate conservatives recognize that these same flaws are present in political authorities and can just as easily doom government solutions to problems...

[url=http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1183]http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=Ne...rticle&sid=1183[/url]**

Edric

2003-08-10 17:08 | User Profile

"human equality based on the natural law"

Which natural law is this? There is no equality in nature. Nature involves cycles whereby the weak get weeded out by the strong and by nature itself. Only man disrupts these cycles, but eventually nature prevails.