Clifford Asness, Ph.D. writes in Stumbling on the Truth

The Republican Way Forward

Excerpt:

We let the easy pabulum of “compassionate conservatism” blind us to the fact that even though compassion is a virtue of the first order, along with benevolence, honesty, and others, these are private not public virtues, and importantly they are not virtues, if not voluntary. When the State claims to practice any of these virtues it is always being generous with someone else’s resources, and usually most so to the constituents of whoever is currently in charge, and almost always with eyes firmly on the political advantage it will bring. When one is benevolent privately, it’s usually, well, just to be benevolent. The two are not equal, they aren’t even both virtues. We forgot this for quite a while. We are not completely responsible for the Democrats’ large majority; there was bad luck as well. But, we must acknowledge that we greatly abetted the damage they have wrought to our liberty.

Read the whole posting; it is excellent

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