We are a compassionate society. Or at any rate, so we keep being told. Why is it, then, that as the list of those deemed worthy of our compassion grows — ever longer — we find it more difficult to overflow with it? Our human kindness comes forth, much of the time, at no more than a trickle.
I keep hearing that libertarians are unkind. That we’d starve our grandmas for a tax break, or something to that effect. But the people most inclined to exalt themselves as paragons of compassion often behave the most hard-heartedly. They say they are compassionate, so we’re supposed to believe them. Yet in their interactions with their fellow human beings, they show precious little evidence of it.
Most of us have had the bizarre experience of being informed what we believe, even before we can tell others what we think.
The genius of libertarian philosophy is that it honors the individual, even as it acknowledges the universal. We can — at least theoretically — empathize with any other person because we share a common humanity. Yet even though each of us shares in the human condition, every one of us is unique. You and I can appreciate, in those we love, that each of them is distinct from every other human being who ever has been or will be born.
It’s a privilege for me to know the people I love, and even the ones I merely like. My life would be far less meaningful if it lacked a single one of them. None of them is enough like another that I could lump them together and sum them up. Each is a beautiful stone in the mosaic of my personal world. If I saw all of them as alike, instead of seeing each of them as a unique part of a mosaic, I’d be looking at nothing but the antiseptic wall of a public bathroom.
Compassion fatigue sets in not because we’re lacking in that particular quality, but because it gets exhausted. We’re shamed into genuflecting before a political altar, but that is hardly the same as feeling solidarity with our fellow human beings. This is the bitter fruit of statism. As individuals, the state considers us useless. We matter to it only as a herd, so we’re conditioned to behave, and to treat each other, like livestock.
I happen to be something called a white Christian gay female middle-class American. That’s quite a lot to wrap my mind around. I very much prefer to think of myself as me. In any interaction that I have with each of you, I prefer to think of you as you.
When I started living as openly gay, I began to notice that instead of being recognized more fully as an individual, I’d merely joined another herd. I wasn’t even expected to have opinions or preferences of my own; they were all assigned to me by others. People with fixed opinions about gay issues are always telling me what I should believe, what I can’t believe, or what I do believe — whether I actually believe those things or not. To those who care only about power, our individuality is nothing but a nuisance.
The latter treatment is given tolibertarians in general. Most of us have had the bizarre experience of being informed what we believe, even before we can tell others what we think. Even though many of the things we’re told that “all libertarians believe” bear little or no relation to our actual convictions.
On the libertarian spectrum, I’m left of center, but center-left. I used to be much more of a statist progressive. I still care about the same issues, my concerns having changed very little. I simply no longer believe that government action is capable of making the world a better place. All I’ve seen it do is create one gigantic mess after another, and make life even worse for those it endeavors to “help.”
Were we able to give of ourselves voluntarily, without the guns of government compassion pointed at our heads, I suspect that we would prove ourselves as generous as anyone.
I’ve become something of a gadfly for better treatment of the mentally or emotionally ill. I’m also involved in work on behalf of alcoholics, drug addicts, and the homeless. Of course I care about women’s issues and gay rights. But I no longer trust in politicians to save anyone. All they do is say pretty things, while doing whatever serves their own, petty interests.
The “compassionate” left hasn’t yet figured out how to exploit people suffering from psychological disorders — beyond offering them Obamacare, which is to say, offering them no help at all. Women and gays are of interest to social justice warriors only so long as we obediently march in their army. Alcoholics, drug addicts, and the homeless tend to vote only when they’ve succeeded in freeing themselves from the curse of perceived helplessness foisted upon them by “progressive” politics. And then, they’re dangerously likely to vote for those who tell them they’re capable of running their own lives. Truth be told, no one’s plight is of much interest to the ostentatiously compassionate unless it can be exploited in one way or another.
My progressive friends fear that I’ve gone over to the dark side. I’m frequently accused of having lost my “compassion.” But when I try to interest them in actually getting off their bums and doing things to help those for whom their hearts bleed, I often get blank stares or even anger. They are afflicted with compassion fatigue.
All thatmany of them think they need to do, for those they’re officially informed they should care about, is vote for the potentates who claim they’ll accomplish what needs to be done. Thus assured, they’re likely to sit back passively and do what they’re told — to give whatever is demanded of them, without asking what’s done with it. They are always admonished to obey their self-appointed superiors — those who insist that they know best.
Given the limited view they have of the world, I can hardly blame them. They are perpetually being told to feel for this gripe-group or that one. Never are they encouraged to recognize anyone in these groups as actual, flesh-and-blood people, with names, and faces, and stories of their own. But on behalf of separate and disparate groups, victimized by the disembodied forces of evil, their compassion is milked daily. We can only take so much of that before we are milked dry.
Libertarians like to save our milk for the nourishment of those we truly care about. We recognize that it belongs to us, and that no one else has any automatic claim on it. Certainly, we know that no one else’s claim on our milk supersedes our own, or that of those to whom we choose to give it.
Were we able to give of ourselves voluntarily, without the guns of government compassion pointed at our heads, I suspect that we would prove ourselves as generous as anyone. Maybe more than most. Those who truly need our help would likely never find it lacking. What a shame it is that because it is so often squandered, when it’s actually needed and deserved we may have nothing to offer but an empty pail.
