Compassion: Should private charity replace Big Government?

“Where are the compassionate conservatives?” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. Ever since the Tea Party hijacked the Republican Party, conservatives no longer accept the idea that government has at least some responsibility for caring for the old, the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate. The Right now holds a “pinched, crabby view” of government safety-net programs like food stamps and Medicaid, and regards the taxes needed to pay for them as an unfair intrusion on society’s winners. So what if cutting government to the bone costs hundreds of thousands of teachers, cops, and firefighters their jobs? So what if 50 million Americans lack health insurance? That’s their problem. For a chilling glimpse into these hardened hearts, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times, consider how the crowd reacted at last week’s Tea Party–sponsored Republican debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked libertarian Ron Paul about a hypothetical 30-year-old man without health insurance who suddenly needed six months in an intensive-care unit. Should society “just let him die?” Several Tea Partiers in the crowd shouted “yeah!” to applause and cheers. You couldn’t find a more vivid illustration of the fact that conservatism is now “a deeply radical movement” for which “a lack of compassion is now a matter of principle.”

Oh, “how dreadful we conservatives are,” said Daniel Foster in NationalReview.com. How dare we doubt that government can solve all of life’s problems? Liberals seem to think that the only legitimate way to help one’s fellow man is to “head down to the polls every couple of years, check the Big Government box, and go sleep like a baby.” Conservatives have a different view of how compassion works, said Katrina Trinko in USA Today. As Ron Paul told Blitzer at the debate, it’s better to encourage people to take responsibility for themselves, and if that fails, “our neighbors, our friends, our churches” should step in. And conservatives actually “practice what they preach.” A 2006 study found that while conservative households earn on average 6 percent less than liberal ones, they donate 30 percent more to charity. They also donate more blood, and are far more likely to volunteer. So who’s really more heartless?

How nice it would be if we could just rely on friends and neighbors to take care of the needy, said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. But private charity cannot possibly provide for the 50 million Americans who lack health insurance, the 45 million who depend on food stamps, or the 15 million who are unemployed. Since you can’t pass a hat around the neighborhood to raise a few hundred billion dollars, what should these unfortunates do? Starve? Do without doctors? Die?

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To see how this debate plays out in the real world, said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com, consider the case of Kent Snyder, who was Ron Paul’s campaign manager in 2008. Like his close friend Paul, Snyder was deeply devoted to “liberty.” But he couldn’t get health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, and he fell seriously ill at age 49 and died, leaving his family with $400,000 in medical bills. “It’s all well and good to say personal responsibility is the bedrock of liberty,” but what that really means in practice is denying people like Snyder medical treatment. The other alternative—the compassionate one—is for society as a whole to assume moral and financial responsibility for those who’d suffer or die if we didn’t. “We are a decent society.” Aren’t we?