Compassionate Conservatism and the
Demise of Federalism

We’re All Big Government Now

by Patrick J. Shanahan
11/01/03

When George W. Bush unveiled the concept of “compassionate conservatism,” many on the right were understandably leery. Outside of the fact that the term seemed to imply that “regular” conservatism wasn’t compassionate, it made one wonder exactly what business the government had trafficking in compassion. Isn’t that an individual character trait, an individual virtue? The very idea of transforming an individual character trait into government policy seemed to smack of liberal romanticism.

President Bush has done much good since his election. He has been outstanding on issues of national defense, and has been pleasantly surprising in other areas as well. But behind the scenes compassionate conservatism has begun unfolding in all its glory. It is at least as bad as many of us feared.

The underlying concept of compassionate conservatism seems to be that there is no sense in trying to combat Big Government with limited government. No, the right approach is to use Big Government to achieve the good policy ends of conservatism, rather than the bad policy ends of the left. It is the ideology of those who would use the power that comes with leadership to achieve “national greatness” (and win elections) rather than those who would use it to maximize liberty and keep potentially oppressive government at bay. It is an ideology that envisions a country ruled by wise conservatives rather than a country ruled by independent citizens. It is an ideology that mistakenly believes that its citizens are not capable of producing greatness in the absence of government assistance and incentives.

Lest you think I overstate what is going on, here is a small list of what the President has accomplished domestically.

No Child Left Behind. The very term smacks of liberal condescension. Yeah, no child should be left behind, but isn’t that the parents' job? How did it get to be the federal government’s job? It’s hard enough to force educational change at the local level, the more it becomes nationalized the harder anything will be to change. There is much to bemoan with the current state of public education, and much that badly needs fixing. But it is not going to get fixed by further centralizing education policy and using the brute force of national government money as leverage. Like it or not, education is a state and local issue. There will always be good school systems and bad school systems. There will be good teachers and bad teachers. There will good parents, in terms of promoting learning, as well as bad parents. There is much that needs to be done, but none of it ought to be done by the federal government. We need to accelerate decentralization, not centralization. And, of course, once we use the power of big government to force “conservative-friendly” changes in education policy and outcomes, what basis will we have to protest when liberals gain control and force their agenda? It will descend into a spitting contest that does nothing to solve actual problems.

Medicare Drug Benefit. This may sound odd as I recently wrote in favor of a drug benefit for Medicare. But that was based on the premise that Medicare was politically untouchable - which it is. But watch the nature of the plan that is implemented. A liberty-loving conservative would do everything possible to ensure a drug plan that tapped into free market incentives and individual choice as much as possible. The compassionate conservative will create an expensive bureaucratic nightmare in the name of helping the old folks. Once established, this plan will play directly into the hands of the liberal public health establishment, will be taken over, perverted and turned into a monster entitlement the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Society. This is the essential practical problem with compassionate conservatism. Implementing it requires building or using the infrastructure of liberalism. When the conservatives are gone, the liberals will take it over and do their usual thing. Not a very satisfying prospect.

Partial Birth Abortion. Few can claim to be as fervid in opposition to abortion as I. Hard as I try, I simply cannot reconcile my bias for individual liberty with the fact that aborting a fetus is the destruction of a unique and innocent human life. I think it is entirely reasonable for society to place restrictions on the killing of its unborn children. For this reason it is especially painful for me to conclude that the recent Congressional legislation outlawing partial birth abortion is horribly misguided, and perhaps the ultimate example of compassionate conservatism at work. Congress has no Constitutional authority to outlaw abortion, any more than the Supreme Court had the Constitutional authority to legalize it through fanciful Constitutional contortions. In our zeal to effect a desirous policy end we seem frighteningly comfortable shredding the Constitutional processes designed to protect our liberty and our very form of government.

Rather than focus on what needs to be done to wrest the issue away from the Court and return it to the states, we have apparently decided that the policy end of stopping late term abortions is worth the destruction caused by incorrect Congressional arrogation of power. I could not disagree more. Echoes of this theme can be picked up in Florida, where the President’s brother sponsored legislation specifically designed to keep one person alive.

The application of centralized power to effect conservative policy ends is an inherently bad idea. It is the application of liberal means to achieve conservative ends. That is contradictory, ultimately irreconcilable, and a fool’s bargain that will come back to haunt us.