評論
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Finally, when all else fails, we resort to simple psychological denial. This is a psychic tendency that in various manifestations is common to us all. It causes us to avoid thinking about death. It causes a great many people to avoid thought of the arms race and the consequent rush toward a highly probable extinction. By the same process of psychological denial, we decline to think of the poor. Whether they be in Ethionia, the South Bronx, or even in such an Elysium as Los Angeles, we resolve to keep them off our minds. Think, we are often ad vised, of something pleasant.
最后，當一切辦法都無濟于事時，我們就干脆裝聾作啞。這是我們普遍存在的心理傾向，它有不同的表現(xiàn)形式。它使我們回避考慮死亡；它使我們回避考慮軍備競賽以及由此極有可能帶來的人類的滅絕。由于同樣的心理傾向，我們也拒絕去考慮窮人的存在，不管他們是生活在埃塞俄比亞，還是在紐約市的南布朗克斯區(qū)，甚至是在洛杉磯這樣的天堂，我們都決心不去為這些人操心。我們總是被建議去想愉快的事情。
These are the modern designs by which we escape concern for the poor. All, save perhaps the last, are in great in ventive descent from Bentham, Malthus, and Spencer. Ronald Reagan and his colleagues are clearly in a notable tradition-at the end of a long history of effort to escape responsibility for one's fellow beings. So are the philosophers now celebrated in Washington: George Gilder, a greatly favored figure of the recent past, who tells to much applause that the poor must have the cruel spur of their own suffering to ensure effort; Charles Murray, who to greater cheers, contemplates "scrapping the entire federal welfare and income-support structure for working and aged persons including A.F.D.C., Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment in surance, Workers Compensation, subsidized housing, disability insurance, and, "he adds, "the rest. Cut the knot, for there is no way to untie it." By triage, the worthy would be selected to survive: the loss of the rest is the penalty we should pay. Murray is the voice of Spencer in our time; he is enjoying, as indicated, unparalleled popularity in high Washin gton circles.
這就是我們目前躲避關心窮人的幾種方案。除了最后一種，其他的方案都是來自邊沁、馬爾薩斯和斯賓塞的極富創(chuàng)意的現(xiàn)代翻版。羅納德·里根以及他的同僚們很顯然是古老傳統(tǒng)的沿襲者——處在探求如何逃避援助自己同胞的歷史長河的一端。這些人還包括在華盛頓深受歡迎的哲學家喬治·吉爾德和查爾斯·莫瑞。最近深受歡迎的喬治·吉爾德在眾人的支持聲中宣稱窮人應該承受一定的痛苦才能受到激勵而努力改變現(xiàn)狀；而更受歡迎的查爾斯·莫瑞則考慮：“廢除一切聯(lián)邦政府對在職人員和老年人的福利和收入保障措施，包括對有未成年子女家庭的補助醫(yī)療照顧、食品券、失業(yè)保險、工人失業(yè)補助金、住房補貼、傷殘保險和所有其他的援助。這是一堆解不開的疙瘩，只能快刀斬亂麻，統(tǒng)統(tǒng)取消。”按照救治的先后原則，生存者應該是經過挑選的有價值的人，其他人的滅亡是我們必須付出的代價。莫瑞是斯賓塞在我們這個時代的代言人，如上所說，他在華盛頓高層中享有無比的威望。
Compassion, along with the associated public effort, is the least comfortable, the least convenient, course of behavior and action in our time. But it remains the only one that it compatible with a totally civilized life. Also it is, in the end, the most truly conservative course. There is no paradox here. Civil discontent and its consequences do not come from contented people-an obvious point to the extent to which we can make contentment as nearly universal as possible, we will preserve and enlarge the social and political tranquillity for which conservatives, above all, should yearn.
同情心，加上與之相關的社會努力是我們這個時代最麻煩、最令人不快的行為和行動方針。但是它卻是唯一一個與我們整個文明生活相符的方針，而且最終這無疑是最保守的路線。這并非自相矛盾。民眾的不滿及其所帶來的后果并不是來自那些滿足的人——這點很明顯。為了讓盡可能多的人達到滿足的程度，我們將保持并擴大社會的穩(wěn)定和政治的穩(wěn)定，而這也是保守者最渴望的。
