A few years ago, I was listening to a local conservative radio program when the host was talking about the plight of some poor people. He said, "I'm just Liberal enough to be concerned about them."

That was when it struck me, the Liberal-Left owns the word "compassion." And apparently, they own it just by the simple act of claiming it. I look around for actual acts of compassion from the LL and I am hard pressed to point any out. I ask LL people to show me examples of LL "compassion" and I get a list of causes, benefits and events that have been held to "raise awareness." Government programs -- even working to raise taxes, or preventing them from being lowered, is given as examples of LL compassion for the poor.

But who did any of these actually help and how did it help them? This question receives murkier answers when it gets answered at all. Many times the only answer is, "So all you want is for the rich to keep getting richer and to hell with the poor!"

The Liberal-Left are more compassionate to the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed minorities (there are no other kind) then the rest of us. How do we know? Because they say so. They own the word.

I can't really blame the LL. So they try to be like Humpty-Dumpty and exercise strict control over the definition of the words they use. What is frustrating is when people on the Right accept their definition. That leads to such travesties of language as the phrase, "Compassionate Conservative." What does "Compassionate Conservative" mean? It means, "You're right. We are cold, heartless, ruthless cads and we should work to win your approval. After all, you own the word."

Another word the Liberal-Left seem to own is "fair." Consider:

Situation 1: The top 1% of wage earners earn something in the neighborhood of 19% of all wages earned.

Is that fair?

Situation 2: The top 1% of wage earners pay something in the neighborhood of 35% of income taxes collected by the government.

Is that fair?

Situation 3: The rich man and the poor man walk into a corner donut shop and each buy a cup of coffee and a donut. They are both charged the same price.

Is that fair?

Using the first definition from Dictionary.com ("free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice") I would have to say that Situation 3 is fair and Situation 2 is unfair. What about Situation 1? I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings but... fair just doesn't apply to Situation 1. We go out and earn what we do based on any number of factors: talent, skill, education, drive and ambition, personal preferences. You may be currently earning less than you really want. There is nothing intrinsically unfair about that. You, me, almost everyone knows what we have to do to earn a higher income: work harder, take some night classes, advance our skill level and/or learn new skills. All this, of course, takes time and effort. Most of us just aren't willing to trade the time away from our friends and family, or the TV and the suds, to make ourselves more marketable.

There is nothing wrong with that. Everything involves a trade-off and we each draw the line somewhere between earning more money and enjoying the life we have at our current income level.

But it's just not, um, fair to complain about those who make other decisions.

Another unfairness is to try to punish those who make other decisions (less free time, more time earning money). It has risen to a kind of national pastime. The LL defines unfair as someone having more than someone else and fair as being allowed to take from someone who earns more to give to someone who earns less. It's interesting that they define greed as wanting to  keep what is yours. They don't see wanting to take what is not yours as greed. How could anyone, in the light of Situation 2 described above, go around claiming that "the rich" don't pay their fair share? I want to ask those people to define "fair." I now look askance at any use of the word in a political context.

Now enter the "Fair Tax." The fact that it is coming from the right rather than the left doesn't keep me from getting my guard up. Sure enough, this is a "fair" tax only when you accept the LL definition of the word. That is, fair means higher taxes for the "rich" and little or no taxes for the "poor". (The words "rich" and "poor" are quoted because they are also terms that have been taken over by the LL and so mean just what they want them to mean when they want them to mean it.)

One of the first absurdities about the law is the fact that each American family would receive monthly checks from the federal government. This, the claim goes, is to balance out the "regressive" nature of the tax. The poor, you see, spend a larger percentage of their income on basic necessities and -- according to the LL definition of the word -- it's just not fair that the poor should pay taxes on basic necessities.

Why not? Sure, if we only taxed basic necessities, the poor would be paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes because most of their spending is in that category. But this isn't just a tax on basic necessities. It is a tax on everything. Using a tax rate of 10% as an example (to stay out of the "embedded" argument  -- I get it, I don't like the fact that you're playing with words just like the Left does, but I get it.) then if a poor family uses 90% of its income for basic necessities and 10% on luxuries while a rich family uses only 25% of its income for basic necessities and 75% on luxuries, then they both are taxed at the 10% rate. That is because the tax is not collected just for basic necessities. Even the luxuries are taxed so the rich pay there also.

This will be called "unfair." How so? Well, the rich can afford to pay higher taxes. Yeah, but what does that have to do with being fair or unfair?

Well, the rich don't spend all their income. They save some and that won't be taxed. Yeah, but the poor can also save. Believe me, I've been poor. Actually, I'm just months into the "no longer poor" category. The poor can save also. Actually, the poor should save as much as they can. It is one of the surest ways of getting un-poor.

But even accepting for a moment that the poor shouldn't be taxed as much as the rich, that still doesn't explain the monthly checks. Why not just tax basic necessities at a lower rate? Many states already exempt food, rent, medical care and medicines (prescription and OTC) from sales taxes. If the "fair" tax exempted spending in those categories from its tax, the effect would be the same. The regressive effect of the tax would be eliminated. No monthly checks, no huge bureaucracy in charge of sending out the checks -- and in charge of determining by some arbitrary set of rules, the size of each check. Talk about power!

No, that would be unacceptable. Why? Because it would give a simple but precise definition to the concept of "fair" and nail down that definition making it impossible to change at a whim. It would seem that even the Right wants to reserve to itself the ability to define "fair" and amend the definition (and the size of the checks) whenever it feels the need. Of course, this would only be done in the name of "compassion!"