God forbid we, as a nation, should ever stop caring about the children and about the poor, but real care should lead us to call a failure what it is—a failure. I’ve listened with fascination to the debate and I’ve heard the calls for compassion being handed down from politicians. Now, as a Christian, I believe in compassion—but there’s something wrong with the picture I see out there. Compassion is a singularly human emotion. The problem with the government showing compassion is that the government is not human; the state is not human. Oh, I know the goverment is composed of human beings, but the government itself is a system, and systems don’t feel anything, much less compassion. And when politicians start talking to us about compassion
and love
, what they are really talking about is political power. Don’t ever forget it. And when political power pretends it is something else, it’s starting to become dangerous.