The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion

by William Voegeli

When liberals don't have reason, authority, or the American people on their side, they turn to the one thing they never run out Pity.

For decades, conservatives have chafed at being called "heartless" and "uncaring" by liberals who maintain that our essential choice as a nation is between the politics of kindness and the politics of cruelty. In The Pity Party, political scientist William Voegeli turns the tables on this argument, making the case that "compassion" is neither the essence of personal virtue nor the ultimate purpose of government.

Over the years, liberals have built a remarkable edifice of government programs that are justified by appeals to Head Start, immigration reform, gun control, affirmative action, and entitlements, to name only some. As Voegeli amply demonstrates, the liberals who promote these massive programs are weirdly indifferent as to whether they succeed. Instead, when the problems they are intended to solve fail to disappear, liberals double down, calling for yet more programs and ever greater expenditures in the name of "compassion." Meanwhile, conservatives who challenge the effectiveness of these programs are slandered as "heartless right-wingers."

Yet rather than challenge this tendentious liberal argument, the many conservatives it intimidates feel it necessary to insist that they really do "care." However, liberal compassion's good intentions consistently fail to translate into good results. Voegeli walks the reader through a plethora of programs that have become battlefields between conservatives fighting for more efficiency and liberals fighting for more budget-busting federal programs to address an ever-expanding catalog of social ills. Along the way, he explains the underpinnings of the liberal philosophy that reinforce this misapplied ideal and shows why today's self-described compassionate liberals are ultimately unfit to govern.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

325 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 4, 2014

Reviews

[p · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. In fact, I only got about 40 pages in.

I feel bad giving it only 2 stars, because the book is exactly what the title says: a mean-spirited diatribe.

However, even diatribes need standards, and in written form one has the ability to go back and make things not sound like verbal splatter. I don't have the mental energy these days to restructure Voegeli's arguments into something that actually makes sense - I figure the person writing the book should do that. I cannot imagine anyone who at first disagrees with him being persuaded by this book because it is so poorly written.

[Sheree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summed up well when he says Liberalisms greatest downfall is it's "political stances that illustrate one's heart is in the right place, combined with an indifference to whether the policies based on this stance can acheive their intended results." So many examples - ie Head Start, ADC, the Green Movement, etc

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the unfortunate subtitle, this book is frighteningly good. He tears the modern liberal mindset to shreds. And he is surprisingly deep. He doesn't merely rip stupid things Charlie Rangel or Rachel Maddow said yesterday. He goes into political and moral philosophy pretty deeply at times, without missing the nuts and bolts of formulating and implementing public policy. And it's more than just the welfare state, which one might think from the title. He tackles everything from immigration to gun "control" to green policies to diversity pursuits.

I only give four stars because he's uneven when discussing religion, and his solutions in the final chapter aren't as deep as the rest of the book (even though I prefer his main idea--a negative income tax replacing ALL forms of social welfare). All in all, though, I don't know how you can be a liberal in good conscience after reading this book.

[Jeff Jarrard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic articulation of the psychology of the modern liberal-progressive left and the basis of their political power. Since the books writing we now have President Donald J. Trump and face the 2018 election cycle. The real world in blue states outside Washington is dealing with what happens when liberal compassion is challenged in a very tactile way-deliberate attacks on law enforcement, policies that normalize and subsidize addiction, homelessness, and crime, and the anti Trump resistance from state attorneys general and federal bureaucrats installed during the Obama years. A very good primer to understand the next stage in the political wars between Western enlightenment values and the collectivist alternative.

[claudia Sheehan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in a community of compassionate progressives, and having PCism thrust down my throat every day, this book was refreshing to read. Not that I am an über conservative (rather more of a libertarian), I found the observations of the author correct, that everyone is a victim now. One cannot ask anyone to assume personal responsibility, otherwise one is labeled as being bereft of compassion. All this compassion is becoming very expensive in this country, and yet the poor and marginalized in society, remain. The author observes, but does not propose solutions for the American political morass.

[K B · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting reading at times - laborious at other times.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle is half tongue-in-cheek, half a factual assessment of the argument first used against any Conservative attempt at rational discussion of the welfare state. This book is by no means "mean-spirited" and not at all a diatribe, but the author clearly shows that this argument *is* the logical (albeit fallacious) first defense of Progressivism against a Conservative view of government.
Voegeli shows that compassion toward our fellows is a strong instinct and also that compassion, as a raison d'etre, is not bound by any logical parameters. He demonstrates fairly and unemotionally that a system which commands compassion be the Alpha and Omega of any political system is one that must ignore logical fallacy.
He spends but a trifle of his time pointing out these egregious fallacies as stated by recent political leaders - hence my statement that it is not a diatribe. And he shows that liberals really ARE compassionate, so it is not mean-spirited at all.
However, compassion as a political theory is doomed by the very emotions it relies upon.

[Paul Sand · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

This latest book by William Voegeli comes highly recommended with back-cover blurbs by William Kristol, Randy Barnett, Harvey Mansfield and Power Line's Scott Johnson. Its amusing subtitle: "A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion". I was favorably impressed with Professor Voegeli's previous book Never Enough. And this one was easily snagged via the University Near Here's membership in the Boston Library Consortium; the smart folks at MIT sent it up here with alacrity.

I was not disappointed: the book is well-written and full of insight. Voegeli is not really mean-spirited, as his subtitle claims; this is an ironic preemptive defense against one of the charges that liberals would no doubt want to wield against him.

Since full-blown socialism has been discredited on pragmatic grounds for decades, "compassion" is the strongest reed on which progressives can hang their arguments in the present day. And they have done so.

Did I mention irony? Certainly there's a lot of it inherent when "compassionate" liberals deal with their conservative/libertarian critics: then they can be unmerciful, spiteful, hate-filled, vituperative… all in the name of "compassion". This is not, we are told, something on which "reasonable and decent people can disagree". The natural conclusion: you are evil or wilfully deranged, deserving of nothing but bile. It's a funny old world.

Liberal compassion is also weirdly unconcerned with whether the numerous programs, mandates, subsidies, and regulations justified on "compassionate" grounds actually work in accomplishing their stated goals. Why, it's almost as if such measures were undertaken primarily to make their advocates feel good about themselves! Example one is Head Start, which continues to gobble up about $8 billion of spending at the Federal level without any evidence that it's "better than nothing".

In addition to being unconcerned with efficacy, "compassion"-based arguments tend to be incoherent, detached from reality. Liberal compassion springs from the natural sympathy one feels for the nearby unfortunate, and turns it into a blunt-force demand for whatever blank check strikes their current fancy, whether it's billions for stem cell research (save Christopher Reeve!) or subsidized health insurance for the middle class. But (as Voegeli points out) those arguments can't be extended logically to their obvious conclusions. When you ask why we should care much more about the medically-uncovered Betsy Morgan in Schenectady, than the desperately poor Mpinga Bombuku in Kinshasha — sorry, no answer is forthcoming.

My favorite chapter: "How Liberal Compassion Leads to Bullshit". (Yeah, he went there.) Voegeli, like me, is a fan of Frankfurt's classic work On Bullshit, and he illustrates how liberal arguments on gun control, environmentalism, and "diversity" are prime exemplars. Laugh, if you can keep from crying.

I think Voegeli is entirely on-target. I would like to think that your typical liberal could take some valuable lessons away from reading this book, too. If they can keep their heads from exploding, that is.