Who Gives And Who Takes - Road to the Middle Class

WHO KNEW? Back in 2006 Arthur C. Brooks published Who Really Cares? It was a study about giving to charity. Guess who gave most, as a percentage of income? Right first time. The working poor who went to church. Who gave least? Right again. Secular liberals. Conservatives? Well, conservatives give more than liberals, and not just to church, but to secular charities as well.

Now comes Peter Schweizer with Makers and Takers. It extends our understanding of Americans beyond charitable giving and paints a broader picture of conservative virtue and liberal selfishness. Dr. Paul Kengor interviewed Schweizer.

Schweizer’s idea was to find out if conservatives were really as mean-spirited as the media reports.

[T]here is a stereotype in the media about conservatives. Basically, anyone who is conservative and holds traditional values is considered greedy, angry, authoritarian, intolerant, and selfish. I wanted to look at actual research and determine whether this was true.

Short answer: it’s not true.

The research shows that conservatives are much more outward-oriented and liberals tend toward looking at themselves. There is a sense of entitlement on the left. They are concerned with rights, but not responsibilities. The data clearly shows that.

One of the things Schweizer discovered is that more liberals think it is OK to lie.

I think it goes back to the idea of absolute truth vs. relative truth. Modern liberals are much more likely to believe that truth is relative. So if you believe truth is relative, doesn’t it make sense that you would be more likely to say honesty is a subjective thing?

And of course, as we already know, conservatives give more to charity than liberals. It even applies to high-profile conservatives and liberals.

I compare the charitable giving of Rush Limbaugh with that of Nancy Pelosi. The data is quite shocking. It will surprise a lot of people to know that Rush is not only more generous but he gives to people with real needs. Pelosi gives to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and to elite prep schools.

Really though, what is so surprising? We already know all this. Still, repetition is everything. So let’s summarize all this:

I don’t believe that liberalism really does seek the collective good. I think that modern liberalism is so attractive to people because it is an emotionally satisfying belief system that really doesn’t require much from you. Modern liberalism allows you to outsource your responsibilities. The government will take care of the less fortunate. All you need to do is vote for the right candidate and support government programs. Other than that, you are off the hook.

Makes sense to me. But, excuse me for a moment while I catch up with my charitable giving!

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

What Liberals Think About Conservatives

[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists,” she offered, smiling but meaning it.
Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican

Liberal Coercion

[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State

Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture

These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

Never Trust Experts

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

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