Bush and Booker T. Washington's 'Compassionate Conservatism'

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IN 1999, a year before the last Presidential Election, George W. Bush introduced the rather novel idea of 'Compassionate Conservatism', which is based upon the profound belief of 'social progress through individual change'. Bush very much questioned the 'new culture' that states that 'every problem' such as crime and poverty requires solely a 'government solution'. After the United States Congress passed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, it made little effort to aid 'organizations with strong track records in fighting alcoholism, drug addiction, or motivating ex-convicts to avoid new trouble'. These laudable efforts are best accomplished, observed Bush, 'by churches, synagogues, and charities that warm the cold of life'.

There is a plethora of admirable precedents to this form of conservatism. Marvin Olasky, who is a staunch advocate of Compassionate Conservatism and adviser to Bush, has written much about how nineteenth-century philanthropic and spiritual organizations 'waged a war on poverty' in 'revitalizing urban communities' across the United States. Jean Bethke Elshtain contributes to the literature with a 'new interpretation' of Jane Addams' work in helping 'Chicago's needy' live up to 'their potentialities'. Bush's thinking behind the idea of Compassionate Conservatism has been adapted from the works (and writings) of Booker T. Washington. Washington, a late nineteenth-century African American social activist, contributed to the building of the Tuskegee Institute (now known as Tuskegee University) in Alabama. Under Washington's guardianship, the Tuskegee Institute perceived industrial education (coupled with the important promotion of 'social captial') to be a panacea to the economic and social plight of the average African American citizen. The more interesting point here is this. Bush's Compassionate Conservatism possesses certain interesting parallels to …