If you haven't read Laura's debut post, check it out now. It's an interesting one.

I have to say, it's an inspiring story. But in rereading her post, I looked at it through the lens of conservative history. While I have quite a few thoughts on it from that perspective, I'm a little limited with time right now, but I wanted to bring up one thing. At the end of her post she poses the question:

Compassionate conservatism means reforming and investing in the system so that more people can help themselves. Isn’t that something Democrats and Republicans should agree on?

I think that kind of captures the decade-long (or longer) internal debate we conservatives have been having. See, I don't think the debate is so much a Democrat v. Republican question as it is a conservative v. libertarian thing. We all know how the Democrats are going to jump on a general rhetorical like that: "What? Spend money? mmmmmmmOK!" The debate on that side isn't so much over the proposition of reforming and investing in the system, but rather the form it will take. That's a settled question as far as that quarter is concerned.

I think the more interesting debate is on the other side of the spectrum...which is whether such reform and investing in the "system" (and by extension, involvement in general) is something that government should even be doing. And this is a debate that has been going on for a very long time, and one in which the GOP has been embroiled with at least since Reagan left office. And it goes to the heart of what is really meant by "conservative."

The general description of conservatism tends to be along the lines of wanting small, limited government. But that doesn't mean functionally non-existent government (for that, you'll have to swing over to the moonbat wing of the big L Libertarian tent). The debate tends to center around how small is "small" and how limited is "limited," and this is where the debate gets most interesting.

My own personal perspective (which coincides with a couple of factions in the GOP) is that government is useful when it comes to conserving or defending those things in our society which are good and useful. In other words, I'm not on board with deep-sixing government simply because it's government. That's why there is a conservative case to be made for things traditionally considered non-conservative, with the end result tending toward (the rhetorically clumsy) "compassionate conservatism." Others disagree with what's good and/or useful. That doesn't make one faction any less "conservative" than another. It's just a question of details.

And where I start to leave the path is precisely on those details. I mean, it's indisputable that there's a rich, anecdotal archive of all the good things government assistance has done for individuals. And just as rich is the anecdotal archive of the welfare queens who exist to cash that benefit check. But I think it bears pointing out that the first welfare programs were started up with ideals that were just as noble, but they began to take a life of their own and ended up causing more problems than they solved. In the end, the trade-off just wasn't worth it. Preventing a repeat performance is something else I would hope everyone would agree on, and ought not be considered the antithesis of "compassion" in any event.