Why don conservatives care about what happens to the poor, weak, discouraged, and outcast?
Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That’s why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak, discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of habits and social relations that enable people to carry on their lives without depending on government bureaucracy. Moral community declines when people rely on government to solve their problems rather than on themselves and those they live with. It is the weak who suffer most from the resulting moral chaos. Those who think that interventionist liberalism means that the weak face fewer problems should consider the effects on women, children, and blacks of trends of the past 35 years, a period of large increases in social welfare expenditures, such as increased crime, reduced educational achievement, family instability, and an end to progress in reducing poverty.
