It's time to kill compassionate conservatism.

Actually, we just need to snuff out the adjective, because the modifier 'compassionate' is exactly what's killing Conservatism.

When then-Gov. George Bush popularized this phrase during his first White House run, it may have seemed to his supporters like a nice way of saying, "We're not just a party of rich, cold-hearted, saber-rattlers.

In fact, the addition of the adjective did nothing but play into the hands of those who have caricatured Conservatives as elite, aloof and ambitious. By adding 'compassionate', Mr. Bush in effect said, traditional conservatism is not naturally compassionate, but I'm going to change it to make it so.

This highly-effective misinformation campaign led us to at least two historic misappropriations of American earnings -- the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. And when Hurricane Katrina hit, the expectation of a 'compassionate' federal government inspired the victims to actually rise up and curse the entity that was pouring billions of dollars into their city, and to spew vitriol at the standard-bearer of compassionate conservatism himself.

While the president has been right about fighting Islamic terrorists overseas, a strong national defense combined with a big-spending domestic agenda deserve a more accurate slogan: Making the World Safe for Liberalism.

Perhaps ironically, unadorned Conservatism is the most compassionate, merciful, just and loving political ideology the world has yet seen. It's time for Conservatives to rise up on their hind legs, and proclaim the truth and beauty of it.

Conservatives cut government spending. They don't just reduce the projected rate of spending growth, or trim the fat from one corner as they lard up another. They actually cut spending, overall, relentlessly, continually. We do this because we believe that the people who earn the money should decide how it's spent. We trust them, on the whole, to spend it well, in ways that advance the vision of a free and moral society. Government spending, however high-minded, hinders the 'invisible hand' of capitalism -- the unseen force that drives men to altruism because it tends to their own benefit.

Conservatives reduce the size and influence of government. The weight of responsibility in most matters should be born by individuals, and by their freely-created associations. The more government does for us, the more it strips us of responsibility. Eventually, that leads to a society of passive recipients, rather than one of energetic innovators, industrious workers, and passionate transformers. Real men crave responsibility, because they're endowed by their Creator, not only with the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but with an inward desire to share the burden of accomplishment.

Conservatives cut taxes and so-called entitlement programs. When government tries to help a man, it inevitably strips him of his dignity. At the same time, it cheats another man of his opportunity for personal acts of mercy and generosity. In the hands of a bureaucrat, disbursing the redistributed wealth of others, charity is a cold, heartless program. In the hands of an individual, using his own money and time, charity becomes love again. Government's hostile takeover of the compassion industry has done immeasurable harm to the poor, and to those who would help them. When charity begins at home -- in our neighborhoods and towns -- rich and poor alike get to know each other. The helper and the helped meet each other as men, face-to-face, and work together shoulder-to-shoulder for the betterment of all. No longer are the relatively-wealthy seen as impersonal money bags. No longer are the relatively-needy seen as irresponsible sponges. We help one another to see our interdependence -- one gains in mercy, the other in responsibility. If government would divest itself of all entitlement programs, compassion would multiply at a fraction of the cost. The necessity for charity would decline with the resurgence of the dignity of man.

Conservatives take law-enforcement seriously. The spirit of the law is upheld by the letter of the law. Enforcing existing laws reduces crime and the need for additional laws. So, it enhances freedom. Piling up paragraphs in the criminal code is a waste of time without impartial arrests, speedy trials, honest judges, fair convictions, and full punishment. Criminals should fear the police. The rest of us should love them. Conservatives have a clear-eyed view of human nature, knowing that the threat of judgment for some men is the only discouragement to avarice. For a small number, that threat fails, so the punishment must swiftly and surely follow. For our protection, and for the preservation of freedom, these guilty few must leave our streets, and some must depart the land of the living.

Conservatives restore the balance of power. When the unelected usurp the rights of the people, and jeopardize their protections, Conservatives intervene for the cause of the victims. When free-speech is banned to protect incumbent lawmakers, we stand up. When collectivists in government confiscate private property for "the greater good", we rise to defend our brother's land. When law-abiding citizens are disarmed, exposed before their enemies, we gird ourselves for battle. When a woman's womb becomes a slaughterhouse, we defend the child who faces death for the sin of existing, and who suffers brutality to maintain a hazy halo of privacy. In so doing, we also defend the woman who has taken refuge in a lie promoted by people who think that earth would be a great place to live if it weren't for all of the people. Conservatives love women, and their babies; about half of whom are also female. Conservatives also love people of all kinds, and we despise the intrauterine genocide now waged against our darker-skinned brothers and sisters by liberals who demand civil rights, but only for those who escape the abortionist who lives on the payroll of liberal politicians.

Conservatives don't outsource personal protection. Much as we admire and value the police, we take personal responsibility for preemptive protection. We exercise our natural right to self-defense, and our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, as both a bulwark for our freedoms and the best crime-prevention tool yet invented. When decent men bear arms, they pose an unreasonable risk to indecent cowards, forcing the would-be criminals back toward civil society where happiness can be pursued with less danger to life and limb.

Conservatives build a strong national defense. As our own president has noted, we don't crave an inch of foreign soil. If we need foreign oil, we willingly buy it at market prices. Once upon a time, this citadel of liberty stood beyond the forbidding sea. But technology has overcome distance as a defense, and the American island no longer lies remote from our enemies. When the first jet took flight, it turned the vast ocean into a mere moat. All men hate war. All men love freedom. Yet often war is the price of freedom. American blood irrigates the fields of liberty around the world. Conservatives don't shrink from this duty, because we know that a free Iraq or Afghanistan adds more winners to the revolution which began in 1776, whose ripples of peace and prosperity will most certainly come back around to our shores. Again the Conservative's unvarnished view of human nature guides his doctrine of war and peace. As the bumper sticker says: Peace Through Superior Firepower. Weakness invites attack, strength deters it.

These are some of the core beliefs that make conservatism as glorious an ideal as fallen man can conceive.

If the ideal seems yet afar off, it's not a failure of Conservatism. It's a failure of courage, and a lack of vision. Conservative politicians, and we who support and elect them have wavered, and sometimes collapsed in the face of the vigorous onslaught of liberalism.

It's time to kill compassionate conservatism, and to call Conservatives to rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed. Under this banner we march boldly forward, with freedom as our object and compassion as the legacy of our rediscovered liberty.

Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly daily news satire site, contributing author of the forthcoming book "The New Media Frontier" (Sept. 2008, by Crossway), and a dynamic public speaker available through Premiere Speakers Bureau.