Renewing American Compassion: How Compassion for the Needy Can Turn Ordinary Citizens Into...

by Marvin Olasky

Book Overview

Offers dozens of success stories, and a summary of history's lessons, to show concrete ways for each of us to help our neighbors. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684830000
• ISBN13: 9780684830001
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 201 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Tass

Very very good book to understand why we need welfare reform in this Country (USA)

Educational but horribly biased

It is hard reviewing this book because although its message is very important it is also biased against what he calls 'liberals'. The only people I know who do volunteer work at homeless shelters are liberals yet he suggests that not only have the Democratic cabinets ruined the most unfortunate of our citizens but that liberal individuals themselves are guilty of marginalizing them and depriving them of humane treatment.The reason why the book deserves 4 stars is because it calls communities and individuals to action and no matter what one's political sentiments are they should answer that call as a human being and not as a partisan. As always, independently of the political associations the book or the author advertises, one should take things with a grain of salt and consult not only both sides of the issue but also proven factual information before making a decision on should act upon.

challenging

I've described myself as a compassionate conservative, because I am convinced a conservative philosophy is a compassionate philosophy that frees individuals to achieve their highest potential. It is conservative to cut taxes and compassionate to give people more money to spend. It is conservative to insist upon local control of schools and high standards and results; it is compassionate to make sure every child learns to read and no one is left behind. It is conservative to reform the welfare system by insisting on work; it's compassionate to free people from dependency on government. It is conservative to reform the juvenile justice code to insist on consequences for bad behavior; it is compassionate to recognize that discipline and love go hand in hand. -George W. BushWe conservatives are admittedly cranky; after all, we spend most of our days worrying that the rest of you slovenly lot are driving the country, if not the World, towards Hell just as fast as you can go. But even for folks as dour as us, the reaction to George W. Bush's use of the label "compassionate conservative" was fairly crusty. For many on the Right, it was a particularly objectionable formulation because of its implicit suggestion that normal, garden variety, conservatism lacks compassion. Meanwhile, Democrats, the Press, and the rest of the Left reacted angrily because they think the two terms are mutually exclusive. It's an article of their faith that compassion can only be demonstrated by slathering money on a problem and by absolving the downtrodden of any blame for their predicament. Conservatism, with its emphasis on limited government and personal responsibility, just doesn't fit their view of compassion.So it's helpful to refer to the man who more than anyone else was responsible for generating the focus on compassion as a conservative issue, Marvin Olasky. A professor at the University of Texas, a senior fellow at The Progress and Freedom Foundation, the editor of World Magazine, and an informal advisor to the Bush campaign, Olasky has a very specific definition in mind when he speaks of compassion, one that is very different from how modern liberalism defines it, but which also contains an important challenge to conservatives.The Democrats' definition of choice for the term would be something along the lines of the first entry at Dictionary.com : com·pas·sion (km-pshn) n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.This is the sort of wholly impersonal, but theoretically well-intentioned, caring and empathy that Bill Clinton was so good at faking. Under this definition, proper emotional response and a willingness to spend money are sufficient to demonstrate compassion.Olasky is asking for a return to an older definition, one that demands more : compassion \Com*pas"sion\, n. [F., fr. L. compassio, fr. compati to have compassion; com- + pati to