May 30, 2012--Compassion

"What's missing is compassion," I said to our friend Rich over coffee at Balthazar. "Remember the notion of compassionate conservatism?"

"Indeed I do. It was well expressed during the Bush presidency." Rich said, "With No Child Left Behind. Recall when George Bush said that children learning to read was a civil right?"

"At the time I was very impressed. In fact when Congress passed the law, with Ted Kennedy taking the lead in the Senate, when I was invited to the White House to attend the signing ceremony, though I had voted for poor Al Gore and am a lifelong liberal, I eagerly attended and enthusiastically applauded the president."

"With all its flaws that was the best of compassionate conservatism," Rich said.

"So what happened?"

"September 11th and all that followed from that, very much including but not unrelated, in 2008, the collapse of the economy."

"How's that?"

"Fighting two wars on borrowed money contributed to the recession and over time things got so partisan that they pushed compassion aside."

"It became." I said, "every person for himself. Or herself. Like in The Hunger Games, which I know you had a big hand in bringing to public attention."

"Yes, a dystopia emerged where scarcity--except for the top five or ten percent--caused a breakdown in the Golden Rule. Ironically while the society became more religiously fundamentalist."

"Doesn't that always happen? That compassion is harder to sustain when times are hard?"

"Usually, yes, but during the Depression Roosevelt got Congress to pass compassionate legislation--Social Security, unemployment insurance, public works."

"That was historically unusual. To be so generous when times were desperate."

"There was also a great deal of fear. Not just among individuals but also that the entire system of capitalism was threatened. That people were so despairing and hopeless that they would overthrow the economic system and bring about socialism or, worse, communism."

"But what about other times when progressive or compassionate polices were instituted?"

"Harry Truman's Fair Deal," Rich reminded me, "and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were politically possible only because the economy at the time was doing fairly well."

"But then?"

"At other times when it was doing poorly, as now, fear and self-interest took over. Another way to track this," Rich said, "is to look at public attitudes toward immigrants--legal as well as illegal. All sorts of anti-immigrant quotas became law during hard times early in the 20th century. But after Ronald Reagan embraced policies that helped bring the country out of the Carter recession he got Congress to agree to grant amnesty to undocumented people. Something Republican's today conveniently forget. And during the Clinton years, when the economy was even stronger, there were bipartisan calls to be compassionate toward all immigrants."

"True, but look at us now."

"Right," Rich said, "at the state and national levels there is a mean-spirited approach. Seal the borders, round them up, and send them home. Even during the Obama presidency, during his first three years, more undocumented immigrants have been deported than during all eight Bush years."

"Another thing Republicans pretend isn't true."

"We need a truly progressive taxation system," Rich said, even though, I knew, if we had one he personally would have to pay many thousands more in taxes, "But just as important--perhaps more important--we need a progressive compassion system."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that when things are at their worst for average Americans we should be at our most generous. Empathy should be at its height when conditions are most dire."

"Who is it who said that the measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members?"

"I don't recall," Rich said, smiling, "but I wish it had been me."

Getting up to leave, I said, "It just was."