If compassion & mercy should guide our personal lives, then compassion and mercy should guide public policy too. This isn’t a lack of intelligent perspective on how we should collectively behave; it’s the intelligence of the ages & the only survivable option for the 21st-century.

Compassion and mercy by the State means it will force generosity from its subjects to fund that compassion and mercy. Coercing anyone to do anything is the opposite of compassion and mercy.