The False Morality of Compassion

Flipping channels on Wednesday night during a commercial break in the Giants-Cowboys football game, I landed on the local PBS station that was airing the speeches from the Democratic National Convention here in Charlotte. Former President Bill Clinton had just begun to give his long nomination speech:

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own." 

Who's right? . . . 

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty, and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure, and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

On the surface, this sounds good, and the delegates on the floor of the convention hall loved it. His words skewered the Republicans and at the same time reconfirmed their own political beliefs. In effect, the former President was saying that members of his party hold the moral high ground because their policies help the poor and disadvantaged and lift everyone up equally. As the more compassionate of the two parties, he implied, the Democrats have the answers to humanity's problems that will last the test of time.

Perhaps that is overstating what he meant, but he and the Democrats certainly believe that they are more compassionate than and thus morally superior to cold-hearted Republicans. As some of the campaign ads imply, Mitt Romney and his supporters want nothing more than to do away with all welfare, push Grandma and her wheelchair over a cliff, pollute America's air and water, force everyone to own a gun, and unleash unfettered greed on the nation. While these are, of course, exaggerations, they illustrate the vast gulf that many Democrats see between themselves and their rivals across the party divide.

Seeing this "compassion deficit" in the image of the Republican Party, George W. Bush and his Republican cohorts in the 2000 Presidential election coined the term "compassionate conservatism" to spotlight the fact that people on the right care too. Unfortunately, this led President Bush to compromise on several social issues, particularly education and prescription drug legislation, to prove that he and his party had soft hearts. Democrats vilified them anyway, and many conservatives threw up their hands in dismay at the undermining of their principles. Vestiges of "compassionate conservatism" still linger in the thinking of the leadership of the Republican Party, which has contributed to the rise of the Tea Party.

It is apparent that this crude dichotomy remains in people's perceptions of the two parties. Because of their advocacy of minority rights, welfare, universal healthcare, amnesty, labor unions, choice, and the like, Democrats are considered to be more compassionate than Republicans are. However, as Christians, we need to realize that compassion is not an inviolable virtue—and in fact, it is difficult to think of any virtue that cannot be abused by impure motives. Just as love can be feigned to get a spouse's money or loyalty can be faked to attain a promotion, so can compassion be put on to gain sympathy, votes, and power.

Unless a person has a heart of stone, he will feel compassion for those who are suffering, and that emotional reaction often fuels a helpful response in the form of aid, much like the Good Samaritan had compassion on the man who was wounded by thieves on the road to Jericho (Luke 10:30-37). He saw the man in his plight, sympathized with him, and selflessly cared for him at his own expense. Jesus shows that we should "go and do likewise" (verse 37), as such compassion is the mark of a true Christian. We see compassion similarly encouraged in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, where the righteous sheep help those in need, expecting no reward (Matthew 25:31-46).

It is instructive to see Jesus showing compassion in the few times it is mentioned in the gospels. The first appears in Mark 1:41, where He, "moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched [a leper], and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.'" Another time, recorded in Luke 7:13, He feels compassion for a widow who had just lost her only son, and He raises him from the dead. In Matthew 20:34, He has compassion on two blind men and heals them. Both Matthew and Mark record that Jesus had compassion on the multitude that had followed Him "because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9:36; see Mark 6:34). He also has compassion on multitudes because they had nothing left to eat (Matthew 15:32; Mark 8:2) and because many of them needed healing (Matthew 14:14).

In each of these cases, Jesus shows compassion for people whose circumstances had reached a point of dire need, and they had no ability to help themselves. He then performs a miracle that alleviates the problem. Notice, however, that, like the Good Samaritan, He asks for nothing for Himself, except perhaps that they keep the miracle to themselves. He has little or nothing to gain by helping them—and in fact, His miracles could draw the unwanted attention of the authorities—but He helps them anyway out of outgoing concern. His compassion has no ulterior motive except to draw them closer to God.

Jesus was not a politician; He never demanded a quid pro quo. True compassion, as He practiced it, is an outpouring of agape love, a selfless concern for the ultimate well-being of another expressed in sacrificial action in the other's behalf. His compassion for humanity went so far that He gave His life for us "while we were still sinners," unworthy of aid as His enemies (Romans 5:8, 10). His compassion for our weakness and suffering will ultimately lead to our eternal life in His Kingdom, for when He expresses His love for us, it never ends (I Corinthians 13:8).

Examining Christ's true empathy beside the contrived compassion of America's political parties exposes the latter as mercenary, trite, and false. Neither party has any moral high ground to stand on because both use it to curry favor and attract votes, not to solve endemic problems. As the psalmist writes, "Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. . . . Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help" (Psalm 146:3, 5).

Evil Is Real (Part One)

Back on March 8, 1983, at an Orlando, Florida, meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, the President of the United States at the time, Ronald Reagan, gave a speech amid an ongoing Congressional debate over a proposed "nuclear freeze," a policy advocated by the Soviet Union. His comments made national and international news because he had the audacity to call the Soviet Union "an evil empire," referring to communism as "the focus of evil in the modern world." Many of us whose memories stretch back that far remember the furor of the media's reaction to his statement. Because he dared to call another nation "evil," Reagan was, according to opponents, the worst person who had ever lived.

First, the press derided him for his simplicity. How could he reduce the Cold War to such black-and-white terms—to the altogether silly notion that "They" are evil and "We" are good? That is what they claimed he implied, although the text of his speech proves otherwise. Then, after deriding him, they chided him for being judgmental, saying that the U.S.S.R. was not evil, just different from America and opposed to our ideas of "good government." Then, they called him "bellicose" and "dangerous," implying that he was trying to provoke the Soviets into war. To his credit, Reagan did not back away from his remarks.

A significant criticism of liberalism is that liberals rarely consider actual outcomes—that is, they often promote a course of action without studying how such actions have worked out in the past or in similar contemporary situations. Not wanting to repeat this mistake, we should consider what resulted from Reagan's identifying the Soviet Union as "an evil empire": Ultimately, the West, led by the United States, won the Cold War! Certainly, the process was not quite as simple as that, but his speech "alarmed moderates of the West, delighted millions living under Soviet oppression and set off a global chain reaction that many believe led inexorably to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to freedom for most of Eastern Europe" (Frank Warner, "New Word Order," The [Allentown, Pennsylvania] Morning Call, March 5, 2000, p. A-1).

It was by defining the enemy in stark terms and facing the problem realistically that Reagan's America brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Berlin Wall indeed came down, and the Soviets watched helplessly as their superpower status slipped away in less than a decade. Even today, more than twenty years later, it is still desperately trying to regain its lost territories, its defanged military, and its lost influence and prestige—and it is slowly gaining them back. Nevertheless, Russia has been sidelined and diminished for a generation.

Can we Christians learn a lesson from this?

In contrast, during the 1990s, America experienced an administration that considered every matter from a post-modern viewpoint, that is, a way of looking at things in which no absolutes exist. There is no right. There is no wrong. According to this philosophy, every belief and opinion is equally valid because each person determines for himself what is true. Unlike Reagan, President Bill Clinton failed to identify and define America's enemies in realistic terms. In fact, America did not have any enemies during his administration—unless they were right-wing religious fanatics and domestic militias. These were the only people the Clinton administration dared to tar as "evil"—because conservatives and the religious right opposed nearly everything it attempted to do.

In terms of international relations, America's military activities were mere "conflicts" fought before making those on the other side our friends. So, we sent our armed forces to Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, and many other places—in fact, up to his time, Bill Clinton sent more military personnel to fight in foreign lands than any other President in history. Worse, they went to those places with few clear objectives and ended up staying for extended periods. America's military was often part of a multinational, humanitarian "Meals on Wheels" effort, a kind of foreign aid at the point of a gun. Few of those soldiers, happily, came home in body bags.

As in Reagan's example, the effects of his stance did not manifest themselves until a few years later. America did not feel the full consequences of Clinton's "conciliatory" approach until he was out of office. While America's soldiers did not return home in body bags due to Clinton's forays into international relations, ironically, the nation was less fortunate at home.

By failing to recognize and identify—and fight—evil for eight long years, the United States paid the piper when about 3,000 American civilians died in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania in the attacks of September 11, 2001. The evil that went unrecognized and unnamed was radical Islam. By failing to make a moral judgment about it, our leaders failed to anticipate how its hatred for America would reveal itself. In not taking it seriously, the nation did not have its guard up against it, did not prepare for it, and so suffered from it.

People are still grieving over this tragedy, and they will be grieving for the rest of their lives because an American administration—and, to be frank, much of the nation in support of it—would not make a judgment about evil. Regrettably, the subsequent Bush administration called for a "War on Terror," playing semantics to avoid "offending" and "radicalizing" Muslims, and the Obama administration has continued and compounded the farce by renaming the war the "Overseas Contingency Operation." The whole world still finds itself beset by radical Islam, enduring the penalty of failure to identify and eradicate the evil of Muslim terrorists.

In these examples resides a spiritual lesson for everyone who is a Christian, and a few questions can help to delineate it: Is evil real to us? Do we believe in evil? Can we recognize it? Do we know how evil works? Are we aware of the forms that it takes? Do we realize that we are in an all-out war against evil? Are we prepared to fight that war?

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist of many centuries ago, wrote a book called The Art of War. It is now frequently used as a textbook on how to fight one's way to the top of the ladder in the cutthroat business world. However, he did contribute one remarkable yet simple maxim that applies to this lesson. He wrote, "Know your enemy."

How can a person fight an enemy about which he knows nothing? He cannot—in fact, he will be slaughtered on the battlefield! For starters, he will not even realize he is in danger! Once he gets his nose bloodied, he will not know how to react to his enemy. He will not know his enemy's strategies or tactics. He will be totally ignorant of his numbers, his weaponry, and his experience. A person who does not know his enemy will quickly suffer ignominious defeat.

Do we know our enemy? Do we recognize that we are in a fight for our lives? Do we appreciate how real evil is? We will consider more on this next time.

Back to the Future

"It's like déjà vu all over again," said legendary Yankees catcher and phrase-mangler, Yogi Berra, many years ago, and how right he was.

Every few presidential administrations, the country experiences a liberal Chief Executive who promises to change America, to restore her reputation in the world, and to help the poor and the downtrodden, who have sunk to such desperate straits through the greed and unconcern of the previous President and his cronies. At first, there is public euphoria and high hopes that, given a fresh face in the White House, America will become a kinder, gentler superpower abroad and fulfill its supposed role of promoting a cradle-to-the-grave general welfare here at home. As time passes, however, a crisis—oftentimes an economic one, sometimes a military one—reveals the grim truth about liberals in high office: They do not understand basic capitalism, and they lack the stomach for international hardball.

The election of Barack Obama as the nation's forty-fourth President may have set America up for another round of the same. There is no doubt that Obama is a liberal Democrat; by any measure, he was the most liberal Senator during his short tenure in that august body. Under his soaring campaign rhetoric lurked leftist—dare we say socialist, even communist?—principles and policies to the point of Obama, when speaking with Joe the Plumber, saying he wanted to "spread the wealth around." Such a policy is reminiscent of the last half of Karl Marx's famous dictum from his Communist Manifesto: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Redistributionist economics will lead to national insolvency, just as it did in the Soviet Union.

In matters international, Obama's stated intention is to meet with world leaders—even such anti-American hotheads as Iran's President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's President Chavez—"without preconditions." It sounds as if, as President of the world's strongest nation, he would make no demands nor expect the usual quid pro quo for either American assistance or conversely, non-involvement in their parts of the world. In other words, he would go into such meetings assuming equality with and goodwill from these tyrants, which is to say that he would engage them from a position of weakness. All good negotiators know that if they have the upper hand, it is usually good policy to use it to leverage the best deal. Yet, Obama wants to come before them, hat in hand, saying, "Why can't we all just get along?"

The question is, will the Obama years be a repeat of the Clinton administration or the Carter administration? Bill Clinton campaigned as a centrist, although it was well-known that his own beliefs fell to the left on the political spectrum. In his first years as President, he tried to ram through Congress various liberal bills, and watched as most of them either failed or were stripped of most of their left-wing items. Hillarycare, his and his wife's atrocious healthcare bill, failed miserably, teaching him an important lesson: The nation was not ready for massive government involvement, especially in one of the nation's largest economic sectors. From then on, he governed from the center-left, especially in economic matters.

His foreign policy successes were few and far between. He embroiled the U.S. in places as diverse as Bosnia and Somalia, where our military was either hogtied and bogged down or slaughtered and humiliated by second- or third-rate armies or even militias. Sudanese minister of state for defense, Major General Elfatih Erwa, insists that in 1996 he offered to hand over Osama bin Laden—who was a financial backer of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993—but Clinton did nothing. His primary reaction to terrorism was to shoot off a few cruise missiles into the offending nation and consider the matter closed. While he glad-handed heads of state and mesmerized his international fans, he did little or nothing to enhance America's standing in the world. In truth, most of America's foremost enemies thought the U.S. to be weak.

Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, ran as a centrist Christian Democrat and immediately began to govern as a leftist. All too soon, the nation's economy plunged into recession, and the public began to see their savings disappear. Interest rates lurched into the high-teens and low-twenties, and American prosperity ground to a near-halt. He signed into law a heavy increase in the Social Security tax and implemented a windfall-profits tax on oil companies. He also expanded the federal bureaucracy by establishing the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. The years of his Presidency were the worst economically since the Great Depression.

In terms of foreign policy, his administration is perhaps best remembered for the Iranian hostage crisis, when Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. While he could negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt—the Camp David Accords, for which he later received a Nobel Peace Prize—he failed miserably to negotiate the hostages' release. An attempted rescue operation, on April 24, 1980, was aborted, but only after two aircraft crashed in the desert and eight soldiers died. In addition, in just his first month in office, Carter slashed the defense budget by $6 billion. He also relinquished control of the Panama Canal, one of the world's strategic sea gates, which the Panamanians have contracted the Chinese to manage. His record speaks for itself.

Which of these former Presidents will Obama resemble? It is hard to say, since so little is known about his governing style due to his lack of executive experience. However, from his rhetoric, he seems to lean toward the Carter mold rather than the Clinton one. With a majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress, he has the potential to move this country farther to the left than either. Only time will tell, of course, but the historical results of his liberal ideas presage a bleak next four years for those of a more conservative bent.

Nevertheless, the apostle Paul admonishes us, "Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence" (I Timothy 2:1-2). In these times, this is advice well worth taking.

What's Best for America?

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Not long ago, President George W. Bush made one of the most elitist, most egotistical statements in modern American political history. On Tuesday, May 19, 2007, speaking at the nation's largest law-enforcement training center in Glynco, Georgia, he said, "Those determined to find fault with this [immigration] bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don't like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don't want to do what's right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it." Essentially, he equated opposition to his and Ted Kennedy's immigration bill to wanting to destroy America.

Observers of the recent American political scene have been witnesses to many examples of such "I [or we] know better" rhetoric coming from politicians lately. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not informing us about the need for ethics reform in government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is giving us a good scolding about what is best for the United States in Iraq. Senator Trent Lott recently opined, "Talk radio is running the country, and we have to do something about that problem." And not too long thereafter, a gaggle of politicians—most of whom are admittedly left-of-center—decided that what this country needs in order to do what is best for America is to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, the law that supposedly grants "equal time" to opposing political beliefs.

Beyond the particulars of any political opinion is the underlying philosophy of the politician or citizen. Usually, with a little bit of rumination on a person's stance on an issue, one can deduce at least the outline of his or her philosophy. The philosophy itself, rather than a person's various positions on issues, is more determinative of his ideas about what is best for America. Figure out a politician's philosophy, and his aims become plain.

For instance, how about George Bush and his immigration policies? What do we know about him? What drives him? We can tick off a few points that help us to understand his position:

• He is a political blue blood, that is, his family is among America's political elite and has been since at least the Hoover Administration.
• His family is wealthy, having made its money in West Texas oil and other subsequent ventures. He and his Vice President Dick Cheney have many close ties to Big Business, to the point that they have been accused numerous times of allowing business interests to shape their policies exclusively.
• His father's politics were centrist rather than conservative, and though George W. Bush ran his political campaigns as a "compassionate conservative," he has governed very much like his centrist father. His foreign policy, overshadowed by the Iraq War and the War on Terror, has been resolutely pro-American, but his domestic policies have earned the praise of liberal Democrats.
• His career has been guided by Karl Rove, a political genius whose main idea has been to expand the Republican Party into a "big tent," that is, able to include many ideas and diverse types of people and thus expand the voter base. "Compassionate conservatism" was an idea designed to change the perception of the Republican Party from hard-line conservative, in the Ronald Reagan mode, to welcoming and sympathetic, which, frankly, is the façade of none other than former President Bill Clinton, who made such an "I feel your pain" image work twice.
• As a former governor of Texas, and having grown up in a state with a large Hispanic population, he seems to have a soft spot in his heart for their "plight."

From these few points, we can begin to understand his pro-amnesty stance. First, he thinks he knows better what is best for America because he and his family have been part of the machinery of government for nearly a hundred years. As average Americans, we do not have either the perspective or the experience to make an informed decision on such a momentous issue.

Second, developed nations everywhere are crying out for laborers, and we have a ready pool of cheap labor aching to come here and work. What businessman would not leap at such a gift?

Third, his domestic policies tell us that he believes the socialist lie that America is a tossed salad, a diverse, multicultural nation that can only be enhanced by the addition of millions of immigrants. Is that not how America became great—by the influx of millions of immigrants? So he argues that America should open its arms wide to admit this new wave from the south to enrich its culture with its vigor and dreams.

Fourth, he hopes that, in gratitude for his compassionate stand on this issue, many of these new citizens will register to vote as Republicans, giving the next generation of Bush protégés a leg up in their future elections.

Finally, he can return to Texas as a hero of Anglo-Hispanic relations after his second term, build his presidential library at the University of Texas, and become the kingmaker of the Republican Party for the next few decades. Perhaps my analysis is a bit cynical on this point, but it cannot be too far off the mark in terms of his aspirations. As for reality, the bill's defeat this week makes such a fantasy coming true less likely.

What is best for America? In terms of Constitutional government, exactly what happened this week. The Congressional switchboard had to be shut down because it was receiving too many calls from concerned citizens. Talk radio was wall-to-wall talk on the immigration issue. Pundits and bloggers all gave their opinions. The will of the people became clear, despite the machinations of politicians to ram their destructive bill through. As Abraham Lincoln said, the American government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, for the people"—not of, by, and for politicians and their elitist cabals.

Of course, what is best for America would be for all Americans to turn to the God of the Bible and begin to follow His ways (Ezekiel 33:10-11). If only they would!

Four More Years

Yesterday, January 20, 2005, witnessed the second inauguration of President George W. Bush, a costly affair to celebrate the continued, peaceful renewal of legitimate, executive power over the government of these United States. Except for a few lame and childish protests by poor-loser leftists, everything seemed to have gone without a hitch. The First Lady even received praise for her designer dresses, unlike 2001, in which the press haughtily panned her taste.

Commercials for financial services companies always include a proviso similar to, "Past performance is not an indication of future results." This is true of chief executives as well. Presidents' second terms have historically failed to live up to expectations, whether because of scandal, stiff congressional opposition, assassination or illness, or lame-duck status. Momentum is lost, "political capital" is squandered, political machinations are hatched and discovered, the President's legacy becomes all important, and soon the electorate is eager to throw him out and fill his place with someone new and different, usually from the other party.

Will Bush follow in the footsteps of other recent second-term Presidents like Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon? Or will he somehow avoid the multitude of potholes and obstacles already strewn along his path? History favors the prediction that he will stumble.

Bush and Clinton provide contrasting styles that end up remarkably similar in their effects. Clinton, a "New" Democrat, campaigned as a centrist and governed to the left. The "compassionate" Republican Bush, on the other hand, campaigned as a rightist and governed to the center. In other words, both were essentially hypocritical in their efforts to gain power, and their governance revealed them for what they are. A New Democrat is simply a Democrat who lies about his liberalism, and a compassionate conservative is a liberal Republican. Either way, America continues on the road to socialism, but with Bush, at a slower speed.

His first-term "successes" prove this to be the case. Bush adopted liberal Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy's education bill as his own, styling it the "No Child Left Behind Act," and now we have, in effect, nationalized schools. The prescription drug fiasco dragged America another step toward nationalized medicine. Finally, the Patriot Act did more to aggregate power to the federal government than any single bill or executive order in generations. These are not the accomplishments of a conservative.

Truly conservative positions on these issues would be:

• Relinquishing all federal control over public schools and returning it to the states and local municipalities.
• Getting the federal government out of the pharmaceutical industry and encouraging free-market competition to drive the price of health care down.
• Confirming and guarding the liberties delineated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Even the War on Terror is not a conservative effort. As a sovereign nation, America has the right to defend itself against aggression both at home and abroad (the conservative position), but the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq, though "noble" in its professed intentions, runs contrary to traditional American foreign policy, which leaned heavily toward non-intervention, even to a kind of isolationism. Obviously, America's status as the lone superpower has changed its abilities and responsibilities, but pre-emptive war, meddling in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations, and shaping behaviors through force are liberalism to its ultimate extent.

The next four years will tell the tale. Mr. Bush has promised to use his political capital, his mandate from the American people, to push through more conservative legislation. However, the country—and the Congress—are still divided, and his chances of ramming a truly conservative political agenda through both House and Senate are slim. The outlook appears to favor four more years of conservative talk and, after the smoke clears in the back rooms of the White House and Capitol, moderate-to-liberal action.

When Israel rejected God and asked for a king "like all the nations" (I Samuel 8:5), God inspired Samuel to "solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them" (verse 9). So Samuel said:

He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots. . . . He will appoint captains over his thousands . . . to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war. . . . He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields . . . and give them to his servants. And he will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your manservants and your maidservants and your finest young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. (verses 11-17, emphasis added)

This is the natural progression of human government. It may begin in liberty, but it ends in slavery. How far along this spectrum the U.S. is remains to be seen, but even our most "conservative" Commanders-in-Chief have only slowed the pace. Keep this in mind over the next four years.

The Victim: Truth

As the presidential campaign grinds on toward the day of the election, everyone agrees that this political season has degraded into one of the meanest in recent memory. TownHall.com quotes Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson as saying, "When I was in politics, I was accused of being Nixon's 'dirty tricks expert'—but I never rose to the heights, or rather sank to the depths, of this year's campaign." Colson writes in his column, "Campaign of Hate," on September 16, 2004:

In one sense, the degrading of political discourse is part of a broader pattern in American life: the coarsening of culture. You see it in the clothing people wear (or don't wear), the lack of manners, and the vulgar language that has become commonplace. Cultures coarsen when morality declines.

But this year there's something more to it.

We have come to expect mudslinging and attack ads, especially during the waning days of presidential campaigns. Two and a quarter centuries of such campaigns have produced mean-spirited personal attacks on candidates, from opponents calling James Madison a pygmy to Southern cartoonists depicting Abraham Lincoln as an ape. George W. Bush joins Dan Quayle and Ronald Reagan in the dunce club, while John Kerry can claim John F. Kennedy and Michael Dukakis as fellow elitist, New England liberals.

The "something more" that Colson senses consists of two elements: 1) an attitude of utter hatred behind the attacks, and 2) a fundamental disregard for the truth. The attacks are more bitter, visceral, and partisan than in former years, and the candidates and their proxies are issuing them in a game of one-upmanship with insufficient concern for their accuracy. It is almost as if both sides have determined that the campaign that strikes last before Election Day will win at the polls, and whether their punches are fair or not matters little. Anything goes for such a prize.

It is ironic that a central issue of the campaign is honesty—both sides have accused the other of lying, resulting in the suffering and death of many: Kerry about Vietnam and Bush about Iraq—yet neither side has qualms about shading the facts to its advantage or lying outright. Spin is in, and perception is everything. Truth does not even enter into this equation. If it does, it is in the form of what the recently out-of-the-closet New Jersey Governor James McGreevey calls "one's unique truth."

However, in today's political world, what is truth to one may not be truth to another. For instance, the Bush administration's truth about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is totally different from the Kerry campaign's truth. Even though major stockpiles of WMD have not been found in Iraq, enough small finds have been made to allow the Bush team to trumpet their contention that America's attack was justified. Kerry supporters, though, take the exact opposite view, arguing that the little that has been found proves America's war in Iraq was illegal, imperial, unjustified, and rash.

What is the truth? Saddam Hussein had and used WMDs both against Iran and against the Kurds in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, Hussein made it known that he still had such weapons and had no reluctance about employing them again. He publicized that his scientists were hard at work on delivery systems and new terrors. What he actually had to work with is unknown, but every nation's intelligence of the situation agreed that Iraq was a WMD threat.

Bush acted on this by going to war, believing that removing the threat was vital in winning the War on Terror. In his place, Kerry says, he would not have taken such a drastic measure, believing that further negotiation, continuing the economic embargo, and increasing pressure from a larger coalition would have solved the crisis.

The key to understanding this is that neither side is dealing with the truth but with belief. They have believed something to be true and acted on it—campaigned on it—whether it was true or not. Belief, however, has no foundation without real, authoritative truth. One can believe the moon is made of green cheese all he wants, but such belief does not make it true. In fact, this belief is really folly.

The prophet Isaiah writes concerning the Israel of his day, which parallels the societal state of modern America: "Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey" (Isaiah 59:14-15). We have come to the point that truth does not matter anymore, which means that justice, righteousness, equity, and goodness are no longer goals people strive to attain. What most people seek is whatever they believe is best for them; this is the new standard of "truth."

Truth, which has "fallen in the street," is the victim of man's human nature running roughshod over everything to get for itself. Who will brave the mean streets to revive it?