Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, What It Does, and How It Can Transform America - Hardcover

Olasky, Marvin

3.36

42 ratings by Goodreads

9780743201315: Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, What It Does, and How It Can Transform America

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743201310 ISBN 13: 9780743201315

Publisher: Free Press, 2000

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From the "godfather of compassionate conservatism" and an influential advisor to presidential hopeful George W. Bush comes a definitive, thought-provoking blueprint of Bush's philosophy of government, one that argues that religious faith is essential to promote welfare programs.

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Review:

If 2000 Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has a catchphrase, it's "compassionate conservatism." But like so many political slogans, this term can mean very different things. Marvin Olasky--author of The Tragedy of American Compassion and an advisor to Bush--seeks to describe what he believes it is. And he must be onto something, for, as Bush writes in a brief introduction, "This book clearly summarizes the principles of compassionate conservatism." Here's the nub: "Poverty around the world is a spiritual as well as a material problem: most poor people don't have the faith that they and their situations can change.... Economic redistribution by itself cannot fight poverty effectively because it does not affect the attitudes that frequently undergird poverty." To put it more bluntly, religious faith should play a greater role in public life, especially when it comes to delivering social services to the deprived:

The major flaw of the modern welfare state is not that it is extravagant, but that it is too stingy. It gives the needy bread and tells them to be content with that alone. It gives the rest of us the opportunity to be stingy also, and to salve our consciences even as we scrimp on what many of the destitute need most--love, time, and a challenge to be "little lower than the angels" rather than one thumb up from monkeys.

The bulk of the book is given to descriptions of Olasky's travels around the country with his 10-year-old son, visiting faith-based organizations in some of America's toughest neighborhoods. These vignettes, told in the first person, recall feel-good Reader's Digest stories about ordinary men and women accomplishing extraordinary things in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Parts of the book read like a Bush campaign speech--indeed, one of the appendices is a Bush campaign speech--and Olasky goes out of his way to take a few swipes at Vice President Al Gore. If readers want to get a sense of what a Bush administration might try to accomplish, at least on the domestic front, Compassionate Conservatism is a great place to start--and miles ahead of Bush's own dull campaign biography A Charge to Keep. --John J. Miller

About the Author:

Marvin Olasky is Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a Senior Fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He is the author of more than a dozen books of history and policy analysis, and the editor of World, a weekly news magazine from a Christian perspective. He has been an adviser to George Bush since 1993.

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