Dr. Joseph J. Jacobs, founder of the international corporation Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., has crafted a clever collection of rationalizations apparently meant to assuage his conscience after having lost his way.  Or, as he puts it, on his "progression from the radical activism of [my] college days to [my] more conservative positions of today."  Dr. Jacobs' book The Compassionate Conservative  (Huntington House Publishers, 1996) was also featured in the "Rising Tide" on the Republican National Committee's web site (www.rnc.org) from 1997 to 1998.  The Compassionate Conservative was updated and republished this year.  With the coming election and a new candidate raving about his compassionate conservatism, this response is all the more poignant.  This response was first written in 1998 after having read the condensed version of The Compassionate Conservative, and after having been employed by Jacobs Engineering Group during most of the 1990s.

The Compassionate Conservative represents an excellent example of how someone takes an idea, in this case "I am politically conservative," and then crafts a hypothesis to fit the most desirable conclusion.  The fact that political conservatism carries with it so much baggage of social mean-spiritedness clearly troubles Dr. Jacobs.  His hypothesis must address this dilemma, so he creates a logic to support his ego when it tells him "I'm not such a bad guy" ("I didn't really change at all, it was the definition of the terms used to describe people that changed.").  This faulty logic leads to Dr. Jacobs' pre-formed conclusion that he is both conservative and compassionate.

It is disappointing to witness someone with as rigorous an academic and business background as Dr. Jacobs fall into such a trap.  In fact, based on the fact that Dr. Jacobs has excelled so as an entrepreneur, the rationalization aspect of his essay becomes more readily transparent, leading one to believe that the logical vacuousness displayed in it is less an unconscious misstep than it is an illustration of the indefensibility inherent in the logic itself.  That is, Dr. Jacobs has made so much money that, almost inevitably, he has been transformed from the "radical activist" of his younger days to someone who is more inclined to support the conservative viewpoint that "greed is good." That obtaining and maintaining individual and organizational wealth is in and of itself not only worthwhile but laudable, and that progressive taxation, with its emphasis on resource redistribution, is unavoidably evil.

This does not even begin to mention the moral quagmire which results when an insistence on labeling oneself and one's ideological foes is pursued.  The phrase "When you label me, you negate me" is appropriate here.  By creating an "us-and-them" situation, Dr. Jacobs and the audience for whom he is writing have chosen to neglect the much more important similarities they bear to their supposed foes in favor of capturing, in his terms, the "high ground."  At times such as this, being "right" is as empty as the house-of-cards logic Dr. Jacobs has constructed to support his position.

Dr. Jacobs purports that, because some of the people who wish to support their compassion for those less fortunate do so in a means similar to some of the methods devised during the New Deal era, they are "conservative" because they are not innovative.  He goes on to point out that, because in essence conservatives seek to "liberate people from . . . an overbearing government, they are in fact liberal."  This is nonsense.  Conservatism by definition shies away from change, preferring the comfort of the familiar.  In this case, that comfort is supported by a government whose laissez-faire policies enrich those who already possess advantage, to the detriment of those less well off.  A world free of the overbearing government of Dr. Jacobs' nightmares might perhaps witness the invisible hand of the free market eliminating purveyors of unsafe products and services, leaving us free of the burden of agencies charged with protecting our environment, our transportation or our communications, among other things.  Perhaps, but doubtful.  It would, however, convey the very essence of compassion for our overburdened venture capitalists.

The fact that Dr. Jacobs goes on to note that "if conservatives could convince the public that they have a compassion equal to that of liberals, it would shake the very roots of the liberal ethic" is telling.  It would appear that, in his quest for the moral "high ground," Dr. Jacobs envisions a liberal enemy which he would seek to vanquish.  The necessity of this quest is, to say the least, on questionable moral standing.  An overarching need to be right is definitive not of a higher calling but instead bears witness to ideological zealotry.

Dr. Jacobs has every right to hold whatever feelings he wishes in his heart.  It is when his ideas are presented with the imprimatur of the Republican National Committee, with an attendant aroma of political favor-currying, that his rationale comes into question.  True compassion lies in an ability to embody the characteristics Dr. Jacobs uses when he visualizes a public free-association test describing liberals: words like "caring," "sensitive," "sympathetic," etc., and also in an ability to coexist peacefully with those who may passionately disagree with you.  The compassion described by Dr. Jacobs fails this test, and is a hollow compassion indeed.