The Republicans’ empathy is gone
In theory, liberal and conservative perspectives should better each other by making realistic demands the opposition can meet. They should use facts like ice water, dousing those who have grown too hot with their own ideology.
Facts do not dissolve under microscopes of serious scrutiny the way factoids, or half-truths, do. For years, Americans could battle with facts. We had a democratic sense of government that faced human limitations and foibles but remained focused on progress from some kind of ignorance to some kind of enlightenment. Consequently, this spirit of compromise worked past the inevitable corruption coming from the left or the right.
We have thus created a society of enormous individual freedom and success, but it has been paced by a sense of empathy.
Today, though, that sense of empathy is disappearing in the ranks of the Republican Party. For the most extreme conservatives, empathy is no more than liberal claptrap. It was Mitt Romney, after all, who said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
Even staunch conservatives like Barry Goldwater had more integrity than that. And George W. Bush popularized the term “compassionate conservatism,” even if his presidency did not put it into practice as often as he might have wanted to.
The question today is where the Republican Party stands on questions like health care, Social Security and, in general, the social safety net that is so special to the American way.
No one is above help, especially today. Enough of us have seen misfortune among our family members and friends to know that, sometimes, government can help. It is not, as the right claims, always a problem.
Admitting this is far from the kind of gullible sentimentality some stand ready to exploit.
That is why so many people fear Romney and Paul Ryan getting to the White House. They feel that Medicare will be gutted and
Romney and Ryan envision a society of pure selfishness
that the Republican administration will submit to the demands of a gang of wealthy people no more compassionate than a sack of rocks.
Yes, some programs do need to be cut and we do need to filter out as much waste as we can, but we do not need to willfully misunderstand what President Obama meant when he said that successful businesses did not get there alone. They were inspired and supported, at least in part, by public works and public programs that we should all want to stay in place — for example, the bridges and roads that Congress seems intent on either not building or keeping from being improved.
Of course, that’s not what the Republicans want you to believe. Their hustle is all about the self. Forget everyone else.
Nobody embodies this line of thinking better than Romney’s vice presidential nominee, Ryan, who was mentored intellectually by Ayn Rand, one of the most fraudulent “thinkers” of our time. Rand, however, is perfect for a GOP taken over by loudmouths and cartoon toughs who are better at callousness than anything consisting of deep meaning.
Here’s what Ryan said about Rand a few years ago: “There is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”
Rand’s entire motto can be boiled down to two words: Be selfish. But what are the ill, the poor and the otherwise unfortunate to do in the dog-eat-dog society she envisioned and the Republicans intend to put in place?
Perhaps that is one of the miracles Romney and Ryan intend to show us once they have finished brown-nosing the super-rich and the super-selfish.
We’ll see.