Compassion can’t be paid for By Kenneth Mandile

This is an Op-Ed published in the T&G on Friday August 5, 2011
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110805/NEWS/108059818/-1/asiseeit

The word compassion has Greek and Latin roots meaning “to suffer with.” It is an emotion caused by awareness of someone else’s suffering. It is an emotion so strong that we actually feel another person’s pain. A compassionate person will sacrifice time, effort, goods, money, and maybe even his life to alleviate the suffering of a fellow human being.

Governments do not have emotions. They cannot share the suffering and the pleasure that make us human. Governments do not love, hate, laugh or smile, so why should we expect them to be compassionate? By pretending that we can have compassion by government proxy we are made less human. A truly compassionate society would not relinquish compassion to a soulless entity.

There is a popular television show on ABC called “What Would You Do?” It puts people in ethical situations where they witness some form of abuse or injustice. Hidden cameras record the reaction of strangers to the situations created by the show. Sometimes it is hard to watch, even knowing that the people being abused are really actors. What makes the show worth watching is that in almost every situation someone steps forward to intervene to aid the victim.

What would make a total stranger step forward to help a person who is being abused? Wouldn’t it be easier to ignore the situation and let someone else take care of the problem? Perhaps, but by personally witnessing the abuse, the good Samaritans have a tenuous, but real, relationship with the victim. Compassion is relational. Witnessing the abuse causes the witness to suffer along with the victim.

Supporters of unlimited social programs want us to have a compassionate government, but compassion is a human trait, and expecting our government to be compassionate for us is a copout. Is a tea party member less compassionate than a big government advocate? Perhaps it is the statists, who would use the government to seize the property of one person to give to another who are the ones who lack compassion.

Professor of philosophy William B. Irving of Wright State University makes an interesting analogy in his essay “The Politics of Compassion”: “... it would be absurd to take a person’s willingness to increase Federal defense spending as evidence that the person is himself brave, or to take a person’s willingness to spend government money on athletic programs as evidence that the person is himself physically fit. In the same way as it is possible for a ‘couch potato’ to favor government funding of athletic teams, it is possible for a person who lacks compassion to favor various government aid programs; and conversely, it is possible for a compassionate person to oppose these programs.”

Professor Irving differentiates between the Mother Teresa theory of compassion and the liberal theory of compassion. The first requires personal suffering and sacrifice. The second requires that a third party sacrifice to relieve suffering.

I’m sorry, but forcing someone else to pay more for government programs is not compassion. It is lazy, greedy selfishness. Perhaps you can look and feel compassionate, but you have made no sacrifice and have not shared in the pain of your fellow citizens.

I am offended when statists claim that conservatives lack compassion. I also cringe when fellow conservatives fail to show compassion toward the poor and disabled, to illegal immigrants, to gays and lesbians, the homeless and others who do not fit their concept of ordinary. Compassion is not a political philosophy, though. It is a human trait that we share and that we sometimes have trouble practicing.

Our society cannot thrive without compassion. We are all dependent upon others for survival. Witness the many volunteers who recently came out to help area tornado victims.

The role of government in a crisis of that nature is to provide emergency services. The government cannot provide a shoulder to lean on, hands to help sort through personal possessions or an ear to hear the stories of sorrow. The government cannot relieve the emotional suffering of the victims.

Instead, hundreds of people sacrificed time and energy to help strangers.

Let’s not fool ourselves into the belief that any amount of government aid could replace this kind of compassion. When we attempt to use the government as our proxy in the role of compassion, we distance ourselves from those we are trying to help, and our society is the poorer for it.

Kenneth Mandile is a resident of Webster and president of the Worcester Tea Party.

"We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish. "*

On all the TV and Radio programs as well as in every Newspaper we see stories about the debt crisis and what suffering will happen if we don’t raise the debt limit.  We are being told that we must raise the debt limit or Grandma won’t get her check and the sick will be turned out from their hospital beds.  These are the tactics our President and Treasury Secretary are using on national TV news programs.  They are learned men with degrees from the best school in our nation, I have no such degrees.  They have reached the pinnacle of their chosen professions, I have not.  What great conceit I must have to stand and shout at these two men and their hundreds of thousands of followers: “No! Stop!”  

It is because I consider myself an American Patriot that I have taken a place in the politics of our Commonwealth and Republic.  Truly, I would much prefer to anonymously toil at raising my children, being a worthy husband to my wife, and earning a wage such as I can.  But my love for my wife and children impels me to stand up.  It is my sense of duty that requires me to put my efforts at trying to correct the catastrophic problems which are endangering our Nation.  It is not hubris but humility that I am defending.  It is the prideful few who know what is better for the rest of us that I stand in opposition to. 

If we continue the status quo we are doomed.  No nation in the history of the world has ever survived the levels of borrowing that we are now talking about.  It is ludicrous that there are those that want use to follow the path of Greece.  If we allow our debts to continue to expand we are selling our children into serfdom.  They will not be able to follow their dreams but will be burdened by this mountain of debt.  If the President and the Treasury Secretary don’t see that they are blind.  If they are refusing to deal with it then they are unworthy of their offices. 

I am not alone in seeing this catastrophe coming.  Most of the people I know in the Tea Party Movement know this instinctively.  If that was all maybe we could be dismissed as a group of crackpots.  But we are not alone.  Decades before us an economist warned us:

• 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
• If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this
• Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
• To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Friedrich August von Hayek said this and more (*like the title for this post).  He is the economist in opposition to John Maynard Keynes.  Theirs has been the epic struggle for most of a century.  I urge every American to learn all that they can about these two economists.  Here is an easy way to start.  Watch both, I don’t plan on giving any pop quizzes, but it is well worth your time to be informed.