Cents and Sensibility
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Everybody knows what that eight cents of difference is that separates the Democrats from the Republicans. The Democrats are the nice ones, while the Republicans are the sensible ones. When things are going well, what you want are the nice ones. When bad guys are just around the corner, it pays to have a grown-up on the watch. When you're having a party, better to have the Democrats around. But when a gang of Hell's Angels takes over your party, then you want some Republicans, hopefully several of those few who still support the second amendment.

Coming into the 2000 presidential race, the Republicans had both a problem and an opportunity. The sitting president, and boss of the Democratic candidate, was particularly adept at not acting like much of a grown-up. In fact, he was a whisker away from being expelled from his own house. But, times were pretty good, or so they appeared, and based on his facial expression, or lack thereof, the new guy looked like he meant business.

On the other hand, the front-runner for the Republicans actually had a problem of credibility; he lacked, the media told us, gravitas. How can you sell sensibility when the only reason you're out in front is because of your aw-shucks frat boy charm? What you do is that you remind everyone that you're a Republican, and we all know that means that you're conservative. But then they might be afraid that you're stingy. After all, good times, at the time, were still rolling. How to get over that "tight-fisted" image? And here's where the consultants really earn their pay—call yourself a compassionate conservative. What is that you ask? Well that's someone who is at the same time nice, and sensible. Someone who will nicely write you a check for whatever your heart desires, and, at the same time, sensibly keep a close and frugal eye on the checkbook.

While, however, we see the two major political parties tussling over who can lay claim to the title, "compassionate," what nobody seems to realize is that neither side is compassionate; indeed neither side can be. To be compassionate is a little more complicated than simply being nice. (Though the state cannot be nice either.) The word's root means with passion, meaning that those who have compassion feel strongly with others, typically those who are suffering. They are those who really do, and can "feel our pain." What the word has come to mean, however, is that I am willing to alleviate your pain to some degree, in such a way that it will cost me no pain at all. In other words, we allow politicians on both sides of the coin to get away with parading their compassion, while they themselves make absolutely no sacrifices to help those in distress.

The president, for instance, has recently been spreading his compassion all over the White House lawn. I suppose we're to think of how conservative he is when herding POW's about in Cuba, and how compassionate he is toward us. Well, not us, but at least some of us. First, he showed how much he felt the pain of the executives down at U.S. Steel when he signed into law a protective tariff for the steel industry. What he missed, however—I'm sure because his mind was preoccupied with bigger things—was the pain inflicted upon every consumer of steel in America, and every producer of exports to steel-exporting countries. (That, in case you're keeping score, includes everyone with the possible exception of those same executives at U.S. Steel.) This, of course, has cost the president nothing, not even his claim to the title "conservative."

Actually, I haven't given the president's compassion near enough credit. What these United States export more than anything else these days is agricultural products. It is farmers who feel the brunt of the folly of trade-war tariffs. But the president feels the farmers' pain as well. His compassion for them took the form recently of a nice $84 billion farm subsidy bill. (Keep in mind that last year, before all this new compassion, David Rockefeller was able to pocket a nice half million dollars, more than you and I will pay in federal taxes for the rest of our lives, in federal subsidy dollars for his "farm.") Isn't that sweet? Now just so you don't miss the point, remember that this bill isn't being financed by the President's profits off the Texas Rangers, that ranch of his, or from future royalties on books penned by presidential pets. No, the president is showing his compassion by demanding that $84 billion from you and me.

Are you noticing a pattern yet? Compassion, from whichever side of the aisle, always takes the form of legislation that siphons money out of my pocket to put in someone else's pocket. In short, it is no compassion. Of course, I hope you'll also notice something else conspicuous by its absence, conservative. But then I've been trying to tell you he was no conservative since before most people ever heard of him.

The lesson here, however, applies to the people who put men like President Bush, and President Clinton into office. The claims of compassion by these folks are false. But so also are the same claims by those who vote for such folly. You are not showing your compassion, or your Christian charity when you ask the state to rob others to pay for your do-gooding plan. If you want to finance it, then fine. If you want to seek to persuade others voluntarily to finance your plans, still fine. But do not claim to have a bleeding heart if you spend your time electing men and women who rob from some men before making a grand show of giving "their" alms.

One last thing. Please keep in mind that supporting this kind of "compassion" is not only not compassionate, it's not nice. And it is not only not nice, it is not biblical. In fact, doing anything other than calling it what it is, a mishmash of theft and demagoguery, is, to put it nicely, a failure to have compassion on the taxpayers, and a failure to stand with the law of God.