The Myth of the Heartless Conservative

One old political joke goes like this: Anybody under 30 who isn’t a Democrat has no heart, but anybody over 30 who isn’t a Republican has no brain. I have no quarrel with the second half of that statement (although I wish people would attain political enlightenment at a younger age). The first bit bothers me, though. It’s a perfect example of the false perception that Republicans are a cabal of heartless millionaires who don’t give a damn about anything but their bank accounts.

This joke—and the stereotype of conservatives that makes it funny—was on my mind as, last week, I watched the climax and partial resolution of two separate debates. These debates had nothing in common, save this: both were shaped, at least in part, by the myth of the heartless conservative.

One debate raged around the Progressive Student Labor Movement’s occupation of Mass. Hall, which ended last Tuesday. Progressive Student Labor Movement members told a story of administrators indifferent to the welfare of Harvard’s employees, and we were left to assume that students who opposed the sit-in were no better.

The other debate reached fever pitch last Thursday as the Senate voted to approve a federal budget that includes a $1.35 trillion tax cut. As passage of the budget became inevitable, Democratic leaders resumed chanting old mantras, insisting the tax cut favors the rich at the expense of the poor. Thanks a lot, they cried, you black-hearted Republicans!

The characterization of conservatives as uncaring is simply unfair. Among my own acquaintances, conservatives are just as likely as liberals to do volunteer work, donate money to charities and give spare change to people on the street. I know many conservatives who consider it their personal duty to help the poor. They use their time, money and energy to serve society’s least fortunate members, and in light of these efforts, the stereotype of the heartless conservative is, at its most innocuous, the gibberish of simple ignorance. At worst, it is a deep and dishonest personal insult.

What conservatives bristle at is not the idea of helping people, but the idea of forcibly taking people’s property. Admittedly, there are times when people must part with their wealth in the interest of society. As long as governments exist, someone will have to fund them. And many conservatives support a limited state welfare system to prevent people from suffering extreme deprivation.

But it is impossible to embark on a broader program of eliminating economic inequalities without a wholesale rejection of the idea that people have any right to keep what they earn. We should indeed hope that people use their wealth to help the poor. We should encourage generosity and compassion. But when we force these values upon people—when we replace charity with coercion and prod people to the donation box with a bayonet—we have committed a violation of individual liberty that conservatives find intolerable.

The bottom line is this: the decisions that shape political ideologies don’t reduce into a neat opposition of good and evil. The question is not one of kindness vs. cruelty, or of compassion vs. indifference, or of the heart vs. the wallet. It isn’t about money. It isn’t about selfishness. It is—and it always was—about freedom.

Liberals may disagree. They may argue that the needs of the poor trump individual liberty, that governments and student groups can play Robin Hood without violating property rights, that conservatives are worried about nothing. I am open to the possibility that, someday, they just might persuade me. But they will never win me over so long as they keep trying to steal the moral high ground by scaring people with the myth of the heartless conservative. So let’s wipe the slate clean and start over with a commitment to be honest about each other’s motives.

Maybe then we can sit down and talk.

—Jason L. Steorts