Michael Kinsley: The Compassion Puzzle: “When Bush started calling himself a ‘compassionate conservative’ during the 2000 campaign, critics dismissed this as an oxymoron — or ‘baloney’ to use the technical term. It seemed like an especially brazen example of the near-universal politicians’ vice of trying to have it both ways (and, more important, letting the voters have it both ways).

Supporters said: No, compassionate conservatism represents a real philosophy of government. It bears some relation to ‘national-greatness conservatism,’ another concept being promoted around that time. Both terms were intended to retrofit Reagan-style conservatism (which did not turn out to be an inexorable machine of history) for political terrain transformed by Bill Clinton. The idea was that a nation is more than just a collection of individuals after all. National goals such as promoting moral values domestically and American values abroad are okay.” — Washington Post op-ed