Some Thoughts on Compassion in Advance of the Saddleback Civil Forum

Since Pastor Rick Warren will not be asking my thoughts on compassion in politics in front of a live cable TV audience, I think I'll give them here and you can compare my thoughts to what you'll hear tonight at the Saddleback Civil Forum on Compassion and Leadership (should you have nothing better to do than to tune in).

First, let's look at the dictionary definition of "compassion":

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
com·pas·sion [kuhm-pash-uhn] –noun
1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

Now, the first thing you need to know about compassion in politics is that you can throw that dictionary definition away. There is a different definition of compassion in today's political climate. Let me see if I can capture it here:

HolyCoast Unabridged Political Dictionary
com·pas·sion [kuhm-pash-uhn] –noun
1. Attempting to alleviate suffering through the creation of massive government programs, accompanied by press conferences featuring various "victims" and measured only by intentions and billions of taxpayer dollars. Programs qualifying as compassionate are never to be judged by actual results, but only by the quality of the good intentions, and the volume of taxpayer funding.

Don't laugh - that's a pretty accurate description of how many in politics would define compassion.

Based on this definition, if Candidate A has a compassionate plan that costs $10 billion, and Candidate B has a plan that costs $15 billion, Candidate B is adjudged to be 50% more compassionate than Candidate A. Whether either candidate's plan has a chance in Hades of working is completely irrelevant. Results will never be judged.

To help cement that definition in your mind, let's look at an example of a "compassionate" government program - the War on Poverty. I don't think anyone doubts that President Johnson had nothing but the best of intentions when he declared a war on poverty and built the various social programs to support it. He wanted to alleviate suffering and thought he knew how to do it.

But while his intentions may have been noble, the practical reality of the war on poverty is that it has been an abject failure and a total disaster. Instead of alleviating suffering, it has left our inner cities crime-ridden drug-infested hellholes, has replaced fathers with government checks, and has caused young men anxious for a male role model in their lives to seek those role models in the form of local criminal street gang members. It has created an underclass of Americans dependent on government checks for their daily existence. And, when they find themselves needing more money, they just have another out-of-wedlock child to get a bump in their AFDC payments.

So, after 40 years and $3 trillion dollars, have we defeated poverty? Are things better today than they were 40 years and $3 trillion dollars ago? Can we withdraw from the war on poverty? The Democrats want us to withdraw from the war in Iraq before the job is done - can we do the same with the war on poverty?

Where's Code Pink and the anti-war left? They tell us that Iraq costs too much and has lasted too long. Why aren't they picketing outside of Congress demanding an end to the war on poverty?

Because results in compassion programs don't matter. That's why we can throw this money away and when Congress notices the program isn't working, the only solution they can come up with is to throw more money at it.

Having now discussed the definition of compassion, let's look at a compassion issue that should be discussed in the Civil Forum but likely won't be touched - energy.

I know that liberals reading this are now screaming and throwing things. "ENERGY ISN'T A COMPASSION ISSUE! REPUBLICANS JUST WANT TO MAKE THEIR GREEDY OIL BARON BUDDIES RICH AT THE EXPENSE OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE (insert spittle flecks here)".

Uh...no. Actually, Republicans would like to see everybody get rich, including our greedy oil baron buddies. The better everybody does, the less of a need there is for government "compassion". I selected energy as the issue because this is something which is hitting a lot of poor people very hard. Some people can no longer afford to drive their cars making it difficult to get to work and do their daily errands. Money for other needs has to be sacrificed to fill the gas tank.

Therefore, energy is very much a compassion issue in this political year and if a compassionate response from our candidates is important, we should analyze their plans based on how they will help "alleviate suffering". There are a lot of different solutions to high energy prices, and I'd like to look at some of them and see if you can pick out the program that would best qualify for the dictionary definition of the term, not the political definition.

Take a look at the proposals below:

1. Impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies based on your definition of "obscene" profits, the extra cost, of course, which will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy prices.
2. Take taxpayer funds and give them to people who can't afford their gas or heating bills while doing nothing to increase supply and bring down the prices for everyone.
3. Create new laws to punish oil speculators who make their money betting what congressional inaction will to do future prices.
4. Require the country to buy more and more ethanol, despite the fact that it's less efficient, difficult to store and transport, and takes corn out of the food chain thus driving up grocery prices for everyone and creating food crises in poor countries that rely on corn-based staples like tortillas.
5. Continue bans on new drilling in American waters or on American lands, thus keeping our nation dependent on oil sources which often come from countries whose idea of compassion is using a sharp knife to cut off your head.
6. Refuse to allow a vote on drilling because your side might lose.
7. While banning drilling, require taxpayers to fund every sort of unproven technology that if it ever works at all won't provide a usable or marketable energy source for another 20 years.
8. Ban offshore windfarms because you might be able to see them from your family island estate.
9. Continue to ban new nuclear power plants and clean coal power plants while we continue to burn millions of gallons of oil in oil-fired plants.
10. Continue to make it impossible for oil companies to build new refineries.
11. Require car companies to build cars nobody wants to buy.
12. Cut the national speed limit to hasten the reduction in our nation's level of productivity and increase the decline in our standard of living.
13. Do everything we can do. Open up new areas for drilling to increase our nation's homegrown oil supply and reduce the cost of energy on the world market, put funds toward technologies that have a reasonable chance of success in the shortest amount of time, build nuke power plants and clean coal power plants to replace oil-fired power plants, relax environmental restrictions on new refineries, and get the heck out of the way of the incredibly ingenious American people who if given the appropriate motivation can solve almost anything.

See if you can pick the plan that best fits the dictionary definition of "compassion". Discuss amongst yourselves. Go ahead...I'll wait.

(hmm, la, la, la...well, let's see what's going on at the Olympics. Ooo, beach volleyball! Very nice, but wait! Is that Bulgarian chick really a chick? That's one mean five o'clock shadow that brute has. It looks like heavy grit sandpaper. Scary. At least it's better than that synchronized diving crap. hmmm, la, la, la.....)

And, we're back. If you picked plan #13, you win the prize. Items #1-12 are either in place now or have been proposed by various Democrats as the "solution" to our energy situation. None of them get to the real heart of the matter which involves increasing our supply and reducing costs so that even the poor among us can still afford to drive their cars and heat their homes.

I doubt that energy will even get a mention in tonight's forum and that's too bad. Instead we'll get carefully poll-tested and focus-grouped answers which will be heavy on government spending and short on results.

If they decide to add me to the Forum at the last minute, I'm in the book.