In 1992, while a scholar
at the Heritage Foundation, Marvin Olasky wrote a book called The Tragedy of American Compassion.” His book is about how the misguided policies
of political leaders, continually trotting out the word, “compassion,”
to justify their actions, did not really help the needy to a better
life but multiplied their number. Such misguided compassion also multiplied
the tax burden on most Americans. The influence of Olasky’s book at
least slowed the growth of the Great Society Welfare State.
Compassion is an important Christian virtue,
but like any virtue, it can be applied unwisely. Biblical compassion
is not a license for permissiveness, which often makes human conditions
worse.
Thoughtless, “feel-good” compassion frequently ignores important
facts, conditions, and reality. It makes the thoughtless feel good but
blindly hurts innocent people. True compassion requires an analysis
of its likely consequences, and analysis requires facts and numbers.
It cannot be based on a few emotional anecdotes—a communication style
especially favored by demagogues. It must represent as near and objectively
as possible the total truth and must attempt to see secondary as well
as immediate consequences. Shallow, feel-good compassion has proved
one of the great failings of American politics.
Of course, feelings of compassion are by no means
exclusively Christian. However, I hear appeals to compassion addressed
specifically to Christian audiences to justify political policies and
actions that actually turn thoughtful compassion upside down.
A 1922 book by Presbyterian seminary professor
J. Gresham Machen, with the provocative title, Christianity and Liberalism,
made a strong Biblical case that Christianity and theological liberalism
are not the same thing, the big difference being liberalism’s growing
disdain for the authority of Biblical truth. Theological liberalism
has adopted humanism in place of Biblical Christianity. Machen expressed
it even more forcefully in asserting that Christianity and liberalism
are two different religions. Machen was comparing theological rather
than political liberalism with Christianity, but today the overlap between
theological liberalism and political liberalism is very great. Hence
the values of political liberalism often run counter to Biblical Christianity.
In addition, a high percentage of political conservatives base their
conservatism on a Biblical worldview.
Machen also pointed out that liberal theology
retained most of the vocabulary of traditional Christianity but with
altered meanings. This makes knowledge of facts and intellectual and
moral discernment critically important to evaluating both religious
and political persuasion.
Misguided, shallow, and feel-good compassion
are dangerous enough, but the involvement of strong economic and power-driven
partisanship magnify the danger immensely. Big money and political power
are inclined to distort and cover-up facts.
Some recent radio ads playing on Christian and
politically conservative talk-show programs have been aimed at convincing
Christian listeners that amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants is
the compassionate and therefore Christian thing to do.
The ads called
for prayer that Christian principles would be used to resolve our immigration
problems and “provide a path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants.
Amnesty was not mentioned, but amnesty is a necessary step before citizenship.
The radio ad claimed an evangelical and implied conservative identity.
It is inappropriate, however, to ask people to decide on that question
by abstractly balancing considerations of law and compassion without
the pertinent facts, numbers, and a rigorous analysis of historical
precedents and future consequences. The ad also confused individual
responsibility for a forgiving heart with government responsibility
for justice and social order.
Lets look at a few facts regarding immigration.
According to Edwin S. Rubenstein Economic Consultants,
since January 2009, when President Obama took office, foreign-born employment
increased 1.651 million or 7.6 percent, but native-born employment increased
only 20,000 or .02 percent. Essentially, approximately 1.6 million
native-born American workers were displaced by lower-paid immigrants.
Yet no one seems to have any compassion for these American workers and
their families.
A very basic rule of economics is that a shortage
of goods or labor drives prices or wages up, but that an excess supply
of goods or labor drives prices or wages down.
According to Harvard’s George Borjas, the
cost of unprecedented numbers of both legal and illegal cheap foreign
workers flooding our labor markets has been enormous to American workers.
It has accumulated to a $402 billion or $2,800 per worker annual loss.
On the other hand, the American corporate and individual users of cheap
foreign labor profit $439 billion per year. The corporate lobbyists
spend $150 million per year to sustain these cheap labor advantages.
What Americans are hurt the most? The burden falls on almost every level,
but those hardest hit are the unskilled poor, minorities, and new college
graduates, even those with technical degrees. This is scandalous cheap-labor
greed driving bad policy. Where is the compassion for these American
workers, whose living standard has not risen in over a dozen years?
According to a recent report by the Heritage
foundation, amnesty would cost $6.3 Trillion dollars added to our already
dangerous national debt of $16.5 Trillion. We are already running annual
deficits of $1.0 Trillion per year. The U.S. does not have the money.
We will have to borrow all of it, probably from the Chinese.
The average net household
debt of benefits less taxes paid for illegal immigrants is $14,387 per year. Their average education is only
10th grade. Amnesty will eventually run the cost to $28,000
due to more benefit eligibilities. States and local communities
pay most of this. It basically represents a subsidy for employers of
illegal immigrants. Cheap labor users win. Big cheap labor using corporations
win big. Taxpayers and American workers and their families lose. Compassion?
Yet the Schumer-Rubio-Obama amnesty and open
borders bill will result in 33 to 50 million more immigrant workers
over the next decade, not counting millions of “temporary” guest-workers.
Once they are made citizens, an estimated 75 percent of them will vote
for big-spending Democrats. That doesn’t look good for American workers,
their families, or taxpayers. What sort of compassion is this? Counterfeit
compassion and tyranny!
Social justice is the bastard child of the collectivist.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
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