"cjcampbell" wrote in message
ups.com...
Personally, I find it just as offensive to suggest a secret 'agenda' by
a "compassionate conservative" conspiracy as it is to suggest an
opposite 'agenda' by a "liberal media." There are conservative racists,
and there are liberal racists. I don't like and don't agree with either
kind. I don't think you can assume that someone who is a "conservative"
on some issues is a racist, any more than you can assume that someone
who is a "liberal" on some issues is not. Most people are far more
complex than that.

No argument there. I do not, by any means, simply equate conservatives with
racists (or liberals with the opposite). And yes, there are certainly many
conservatives who are compassionate. (Even the most egregiously offensive
posters here are likely compassionate in many aspects of their lives. People
are indeed complex.) But I do think "compassionate conservatism", as a
political movement, was engineered to whitewash for public consumption an
ideology whose motivations and effects are, on the whole, anything but
compassionate. (Surely it is not implausibly conspiratorial to suggest that
national political campaigns explicitly try to put an appealing spin on
their messages.)

--Gary