Compassion Cannot Be Forced

The great moral argument of the left is that the government policies they advocate create a fairer and more compassionate world. Everything they advocate flows from the overt assumption that if you want a fair and compassionate society, their policies of forced fairness and compassion are for you; and, conversely, if you don't support their policies, then you by that fact itself cannot want a fair and compassionate society.

That is the logic they present us with, and many on the left go to great lengths to prevent anybody from looking into whether or not those policies actually deliver on their stated goals.

We who value our founding principles of individual liberty often focus on the policies themselves and the people who support them, attacking the communists, the socialists, the fascists, the leftists, the progressives, or the liberals because their policies serve to undermine our freedom.

But doing this just plays right into their established story line – because to them, by our very argument we are obviously more concerned with ourselves, our own petty freedom than we are concerned about the needs of the less well-off, the needs of the poor, the needs of those without health insurance, or the greater needs of humanity.

I want to suggest that we start questioning, without apology, their fundamental assumption: The truth is, their policies do not lead to greater fairness or greater compassion (nor do they lead to greater prosperity, but this is an argument that the left has largely abandoned, like the fearsome warnings of global cooling a few decades ago).

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