Dr. Thomas Sowell: Who Really Cares?

Dr. Thomas Sowell examines the myths about caring. 

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate “forgiveness” of loans to Third World countries, a “living wage” for the poor and a “safety net” for all. ^[1]

But these are all government policies — not individual acts of compassion — and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. Depending on what those consequences are, there may be good reasons to oppose them, so being for or against these policies may tell us nothing about who is compassionate or caring and who is not.blockquote> ^[1]

Note that liberals tend to mistake government policy for compassion.   Conservatives define compassion as giving.   Liberals consider taking something from one to give to another as if it were compassion.