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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，当一切办法都无济于事时，我们就干脆装聋作哑。这是我们普遍存在的心理倾向，它有不同的表现形式。它使我们回避考虑死亡；它使我们回避考虑军备竞赛以及由此极有可能带来的人类的灭绝。由于同样的心理倾向，我们也拒绝去考虑穷人的存在，不管他们是生活在埃塞俄比亚，还是在纽约市的南布朗克斯区，甚至是在洛杉矶这样的天堂，我们都决心不去为这些人操心。我们总是被建议去想愉快的事情。
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.
这就是我们目前躲避关心穷人的几种方案。除了最后一种，其他的方案都是来自边沁、马尔萨斯和斯宾塞的极富创意的现代翻版。罗纳德·里根以及他的同僚们很显然是古老传统的沿袭者——处在探求如何逃避援助自己同胞的历史长河的一端。这些人还包括在华盛顿深受欢迎的哲学家乔治·吉尔德和查尔斯·莫瑞。最近深受欢迎的乔治·吉尔德在众人的支持声中宣称穷人应该承受一定的痛苦才能受到激励而努力改变现状；而更受欢迎的查尔斯·莫瑞则考虑：“废除一切联邦政府对在职人员和老年人的福利和收入保障措施，包括对有未成年子女家庭的补助医疗照顾、食品券、失业保险、工人失业补助金、住房补贴、伤残保险和所有其他的援助。这是一堆解不开的疙瘩，只能快刀斩乱麻，统统取消。”按照救治的先后原则，生存者应该是经过挑选的有价值的人，其他人的灭亡是我们必须付出的代价。莫瑞是斯宾塞在我们这个时代的代言人，如上所说，他在华盛顿高层中享有无比的威望。
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，加上与之相关的社会努力是我们这个时代最麻烦、最令人不快的行为和行动方针。但是它却是唯一一个与我们整个文明生活相符的方针，而且最终这无疑是最保守的路线。这并非自相矛盾。民众的不满及其所带来的后果并不是来自那些满足的人——这点很明显。为了让尽可能多的人达到满足的程度，我们将保持并扩大社会的稳定和政治的稳定，而这也是保守者最渴望的。
