Okay, I’ll bite.

Ann Althouse challenges the blogosphere to answer the question Ralph Nader posed on “Crossfire” the other day: why aren’t Republicans and Democrats consistently compassionate?

Three reasons:

(1) Because they are human beings, and human beings are not consistently anything–except, perhaps, inconsistent.

(2) Because they are politicians, and many of their decisions are strategic rather than moral, designed to get themselves elected and then re-elected.

(3) Because (when they’re not following rule #2 above) they believe that adherence to certain overarching principles will lead to a greater good for all, and therefore they are ready to sacrifice compassion towards certain individual cases at the altar of this common greater good.