What poor parent does not dread his child's birthday or Christmas, knowing that he cannot afford the fancy expensive presents he wants to give?  His compassion is limitless; unfortunately the bank account is decidedly finite.  He weeps as he imagines the disappointed look on the face of his youngster when Eddie realizes that Santa didn't bring him the bicycle after all; his heart breaks and he hopes that what he can afford will be an acceptable expression of love.

Progressives max out the credit card and crank up the basement printing press.  Anything for Eddie, consequences to family finances, and the possible spoiling of Eddie, be damned.

Conservatives look at the budget and say, I'm sorry, Eddie, times are tough and we can't afford another round of entitlements on top of all these other goodies.  We are deeply in debt as it is, and our creditors are beginning to be suspicious of the play money we're using. 

It's not that we don't care.  We do.  Don't you dare suggest that we don't.  You have no idea what we give to those in need--personally, willingly, voluntarily, and cheerfully.  It's that we recognize that caring must be constrained by reality.  And the pressing reality is, we can't afford to play sugar daddy any more.  Perhaps Eddie can get a paper route or lemonade stand?

Now, granted, this analogy is flawed.  Government is not your daddy, and should never be considered as such.  Satisfying every passing whim is not in the job description nor the contract (aka the Constitution). 

Government did not beget you and is not required, as a father might, to provide food, clothing, and shelter.  It did not bear you and cannot, as a mother, wipe away tears and offer a tender word of encouragement. 

It is not the parent of the people.  It is our creation and servant.  It is not the nanny nor the cook.  It is the estate manager and house security.  It was hired to ensure that nobody's rights are infringed--rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which involves the right to enjoy and dispense with the fruit of one's labors as one sees fit.  

It is "to provide for the common Defence" and "promote the general welfare."  Not the other way around. 

We cannot, financially and Constitutionally, provide every nicety and necessity of life for everybody.   And it is the gravest folly to make the attempt to give everybody everything. 

Nor is it always wise to give something to everybody, or everything to somebody, or something to somebody.  Somebodys and somethings have an entropic predilection of expanding into everybodys and everythings. 

Which is why socialism is said to be a stepping-stone to communism.  Said, that is, not only by those who oppose the creep of tyranny but by socialists and communists themselves.

Even good people, blinded by greed and their own self-important sense of charity, are all too easily deceived.  We have the clear warning of the ancient inhabitants of this land:

The Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations. (Hel. 6:38, emphasis added)

"The righteous" are not seduced by wonton violence and horrors, but by apparently noble false precepts--they want to be good, so evil is presented as compassion, and a toxic pride takes over from there.  So compellingly "good" is the cause that the ends come to justify the means, and the line between good and evil becomes blurred.  While they would shrink from personally picking up a gun and robbing a bank, they give assent to the wholesale slaughter of innocents while turning a permissive eye to fornication and adultery, and to the robbing of their neighbors and of future generations to fund today's noble cause. 

Reproductive choice is an absolute right, you silly old coots, and they can't really keep their virtue because of their culture; and it's better than having poor little Sally Muckenfutch living off assistance her whole life.  Or would you rather have her suffer and die, you heartless bastards?  

I would apologize for casting it in such stark terms but it's the truth.  Paul held himself in reproach for assenting to the murder of Stephen (also by people who thought they were acting for the greater good, by the way).  Are moderns who assent to these things any less guilty?  Is not the answer for them as it was for Saul?

Returning to the Nephite history, the claim of these same characters a generation or two later reveals their fraudulent self-image: "which society and the works thereof I know to be good," said their leader in his brazen demand that those not on board with his program "yield [them]selves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance" (3 Ne. 3:7,9).

I hear this language echoed from nearly every politician today, especially those on the left (though the "compassionate conservatism" of GWB's GOP is not blameless), and I shudder inside.  I want to grab them by the lapels and say "don't you know who you sound like?!"  Nevertheless, lest you think this is merely a trite or crazy Mormon proposition, Pope Benedict XVI has said much the same thing:

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.

If you want to help somebody, great; go do it, and may God smile upon your efforts.  If you want to pool resources with like-minded fellows, to help more people, so much the better!  I may even be persuaded to help if you ask nicely and prove that your organization can be trusted.

It is when you demand that everybody pitch in to your pet cause that you overstep the bounds of propriety.  Especially when your demand is not merely the petulant whine of the spoiled, but comes with the full might and power of the United States government. 

Am I incompassionate because I wish to keep the flames of that passion checked by reason?  If I am, then so was the father of our country.

Are we not told, over and over, to "bridle all our passions"?  This includes, of course, the passions associated with indignation, with competition, with sexual impulses; but what of compassion?  

I believe that compassion would have to be included within the same bounds--bounds of wisdom and propriety, bounds of order and sobriety.   It is just as injurious to accept the government-issued counterfeit expression of charity as it is to unleash unrestrained anger and call it righteous indignation, or to turn healthy sportsmanlike competition into pride, or to pervert the holy bonds of matrimony in the heat of selfish lust.

True charity, like the Godly (com)passion on which it is modeled, blesses the cheerful giver and the humble recipient; enforced charity robs the giver and enslaves the recipient.