Doug Mataconis goes after Eugene Robinson and Krugman's critiques of GOP values:
Perhaps there are situations where only government action can address a situation. In this country, we’ve more or less got a social compact that accepts the existence of a basic safety net for the indigent that enjoys wide popular support. However, Robinson wants to go further than that, his basic argument that the only charity that matters is government “charity” and that opposing government action to “help” the poor is equivalent to hoping that they die. This is, with all due respect to Robinson, an utterly ridiculous example of the kind of close-minded thinking one sees far too often from political pundits. Agreeing that the poor should be helped is where the compassion comes in. Disagreeing about how that should be done does not make one uncompassionate, and it’s both insulting and stupid for Robinson to argue otherwise.
Jim Henley counters:
What the actual historical record seems to show between the early 19th to the mid-20th Century, is the actual provisioners of private charity pushing for more public, tax-funded responses to the problems the provisioners worked on. The little platoons themselves apparently felt they were not up to the task. On “conservative” Hayekian/Burkean principles, the observed pattern of private charitable providers becoming public-policy reformers should count as evidence from the slow evolution of tradition.
MoveOn ad via Harold Pollack.
The Dish 