Name that idea

Try a little social justice | Marvin Olasky

Late last month White House folks put on another big national conference on faith-based and community initiatives—and President Bush even uttered the magic words, "compassionate conservatism."

Nice try.

Sadly, compassionate conservatism is now dead as a political label. It's dead among liberals because of the war in Iraq: They equate the term with hypocrisy. It's mostly dead among conservatives because of Bush's refusal to veto any domestic spending bills for six years: They equate the term with big government.

That's ironic, because compassionate conservatism started out as an alternative to big government. Compassionate conservatism started out as the recognition that help to the poor should be challenging, personal, and often spiritual, rather than bureaucratic, enabling, and inevitably secular.