What does the word “compassion” mean to you? The Latin root of the word literally means: “to suffer with” someone. In other words, we should be concerned about the plight of others and do something to help them. I would think most Christians would believe that means we should give of our time, our talents, or our treasure to help others. That would certainly include giving our time and money to charity.

Charity is not a government program. Charity is a voluntary gift of time and money to help those in need. Some callers to my radio program want to equate supporting a particular government program (like Obamacare or comprehensive immigration reform) to compassion. That is a misuse of the word.

Arthur Brooks in his book, Who Really Cares, documents the significant divide between liberals and conservatives and between secular people and religious people when it comes to charity. One group talks about compassion and helping the poor and downtrodden. The other group actually gives their time and money.

He found that households headed by a conservative gave on average 30 percent more money to charity than households headed by a liberal. This discrepancy was not due to income differences. It turned out that liberal families earned more each year than conservative families.

He also discovered that registered Republicans were more likely to give than registered Democrats. In his book, he shows two maps: one is the electoral map and the other is a map of charitable giving. People in red states and blue states have very different giving patterns in America.

He also found that the difference goes beyond time and money. Conservative Americans are more likely to donate blood each year. He concludes that if liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply in the United States would jump by 45 percent.

The conclusion is simple. One group may talk about charity and compassion, while the other group actually acts on it.

Should a child born in this country to parents who are here illegally be automatically granted citizenship? That has been the practice for the last century. But what was the intent of the authors of the 14th amendment?

In an article in the Texas Review of Law and Politics University of Texas law school professor Lino Graglia challenges the policy of “birthright citizenship.” He believes we are not using a proper interpretation of the 14th amendment. The amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” He argues that the authors of the amendment could not have intended birthright citizenship back in 1868 because there were and never had been illegal immigrants since no law had ever been passed restricting immigration.

In order to understand the language of the 14th amendment, you need to go back two years to the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was the basis of the language for the 14th amendment. It included phrase “not subject to any foreign power” and therefore makes it clear that it was not intended to grant citizenship to anyone with divided allegiance.

It is also worth noting that the Supreme Court in 1884 ruled that children born to Indian parents were not born “subject” to U.S. jurisdiction because the person so born could not change his status by his “own will without the action or assent of the United States.” And it added: “no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.”

The current debate about the president’s executive order assumes that children of illegal aliens who are born here should automatically be considered U.S. citizens. The law journal article challenges the practice of birthright citizenship because it is based upon an incorrect interpretation of the 14th amendment.

Although I have written and spoken about Israel many times over the last few decades, I had never been to the country until last month. My experience there and the recent killing in Israel were a reminder that a two-state solution in Israel will not work. You don’t have to take my word for it, Israel’s minister of the economy, Naftali Bennett, makes a convincing case in his op-ed “For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution.”

He reminds us of what happened last summer. “Hamas and its allies fired over 4,500 rockets and mortars at Israel, demonstrating once again what happens when we evacuate territory to the so-called 1967 lines and hand it over to our adversaries.”

Less than two weeks after Naftali Bennett wrote his piece, five Israelis were killed and several injured as two Palestinian men armed with a pistol and meat cleavers attacked a West Jerusalem synagogue. This was another reminder of the tensions in this country.

He makes the case that Israel cannot withdraw from more territory without terrible consequences. If Israel were to pull out of the West Bank, the entire country would be a target for terrorists. They could “set up rocket launchers adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem and other hills above the runways of Ben-Gurion International Airport and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.”

Nevertheless, some argue we should give peace a chance. He reminds us what has happened three times in recent history when Israel did withdraw from land. In the mid-1990s, Israel pulled out of Palestinian cities as part of the Oslo agreement. This led to a second intifada where over 1,000 Israelis were killed in attacks.

When Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah fired more than 4,300 rockets at Israeli cities. And in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and handed it over the Palestinian Authority, Hamas rockets rained down on Israel.

According to Psalm 122:6 we are to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” But that doesn’t mean that we should force Israel to give up more land for peace.

Now that Republicans will control the U.S. Senate, some senators have been debating whether to restore the 60-vote filibuster rule for confirming judicial appointments. I think that would be a very bad decision, for many reasons.

Historically the filibuster was not used to stop presidential appointments. A majority is all that is needed to pass legislation, but the Senate filibuster has been used to prevent a vote on key appointments and legislation. I have never understood why 41 members of the Senate should have the power to prevent 59 members of the Senate from voting on appointments made by the president. The U.S. Senate is given the power of advice and consent, but is not supposed to block presidential appointments by using a filibuster.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid changed the Senate rules in the last session of Congress to make it easier for President Obama get his judicial appointments on the federal bench. No longer could a filibuster be used to block presidential appointments. While we might disagree with the way he did this and even why he did it, we should welcome the change. The Democratic Senate changed the rules. I believe the new Republican Senate should follow the same rules.

The framers of the Constitution assumed that appointments would pass or fail on a majority vote. They did require a supermajority for making treaties or amending the Constitution. They did not intend that a supermajority of 60 votes would be needed to confirm a presidential appointment.

Recent political history is another reason Republicans should not change the Senate rules. Democrats used the filibuster against all sorts of nominees by President George W. Bush. Appointees like Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Charles Pickering, and others were victims of the Democratic filibuster. The Senate filibuster of presidential appointments to the federal bench has been used in the past to pursue partisan political goals. There is no need to return to a Senate filibuster of presidential appointments.

Federal welfare programs have contributed to the decline in marriage in America. Most of us have known that, but it was helpful to see the research by Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation to explain this in detail.

“How the War on Poverty Has Hurt American Marriage Rates” was the title of his article. He explains that it is no accident that the decline in marriage began with President Johnson’s War on Poverty fifty years ago. When the War on Poverty began, there was only one welfare program. Now they are dozens.

While it is true that married couples can receive some welfare from these programs, most of them are aimed at single-parent households. These means-tested programs promote single parenthood in two ways. First, they enabled single parents to survive and thus reduced the financial need for marriage. Second, these programs actually penalize low-income parents who do marry.

Robert Rector provides many examples. Here is one. A single mother with two children earning $15,000 per year would receive around $5,200 per year in food stamp benefits. If she married a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero.

The federal government has more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and other social services. Each of these programs has a marriage penalty attached to them. These programs create a significant financial disincentive to getting married.

Consider this scenario. A single mother who earns $20,000 per year marries a man who earns the same amount. The married couple will lose about $12,000 a year in welfare benefits. This makes it economically irrational for low-income couples to marry.

There are obvious solutions. Congress should begin to reduce welfare’s anti-marriage penalties incrementally. We should not penalize marriage. We should encourage it.

President Obama has been promoting the idea of net neutrality and has been pushing the idea that the Internet should be managed like a public utility. The term “net neutrality” refers to the idea that broadband networks should treat all communications on their networks in the same way.

In previous commentaries, I explained that the idea for net neutrality came from what is called the dotCommunist Manifesto. It talks about the struggle to “wrest from the bourgeoisie” the “patrimony of humankind” that has stolen intellectual property.

Those arguing for net neutrality bring out a parade of horribles. Unless the government takes control, they fear there will be higher costs, degraded service, and less innovation. Since we aren’t really seeing these threats on the horizon, it is good to ask why government needs to control the Internet when the Internet seems to be doing quite well without government interference.

Senator Ted Cruz in a recent op-ed reminds us that: “Never before has it been so easy to turn an idea into a business. With a simple Internet connection, some ingenuity and a lot of hard work, anyone today can create a new service or app to start selling products nationwide.”

Speaking of entrepreneurs, Mark Cuban has been posting comments on Twitter saying that the government push for net neutrality “is straight out of Ayn Rand.” He goes on to say that “If Ayn Rand were an up and coming author today, she wouldn’t write about steel or railroads. It would be about net neutrality.”

Some wonder if the push for net neutrality is just the beginning. For years, politicians have talked about taxing Internet access and sales. That would force online retailers to comply with the more than 9600 state and local tax jurisdictions. This would probably kill many online businesses and certainly stifle creativity and entrepreneurship.

Senator Cruz also says “we should dismiss all plans to give nations hostile to human rights and democracy control over Internet policy.” We don’t need to give this government (or any other government) more control over the Internet.