Perhaps the most commonly uttered phrase in political discourse is the statement that 'liberals are charitable and conservatives selfish.' Too often conservatives uncritically accept this dictum by shamefacedly embracing the concept of selfishness in the name of efficiency or some other abstraction. Too rarely do conservatives employ empirical fact to prove that it just ain't so.
The bit of political ideology that presents the most confounding stumbling block to so many is the idea of the welfare state. By and large, liberals support the welfare state while conservatives oppose it. But this has nothing to do whatsoever with charity. This would be a confusion of charity with compulsion. Let's not pretend taxation is charitable.
Forcing someone else to give money -- no matter how righteous the cause -- is not charity. When a mugger robs a store and tells the clerk "your money or your life," opening the cash register is hardly a charitable act.
By definition, charity may take the form of writing a check, giving time, donating blood or contributing by means of some other resource, but it is voluntary by definition.
Some of the statistics in a recent book, "Who Really Cares," by public policy researcher Arthur Brooks, shed light on who actually gives charity in America. To answer his titular question: conservatives, especially religious conservatives.
To put these words in succinct empirical terms, the electoral map almost exactly mirrors the charity map. Of the top 25 most generous states, 24 voted for Bush in 2004. In fact, the average state percentage of household income donated to charity was closely and positively linked to the number of voters in a state that chose Bush.
Taking into account factors like race, gender, age and education, conservatives, especially religious conservatives, still give more.
They give more to religious and secular charities. They give more blood and they give more time. This includes our peer group; data over the last handful of years show that left-wingers under 30 belong to 33% fewer community organizations, are 12% less likely to donate money, 33% less likely to donate blood and even less likely to sacrifice their own happiness for friends and loved ones than conservatives of the same age.
As Brooks finds, "People in favor of forced income redistribution are privately less charitable than those who oppose it, regardless of how much money they earn." Even poor conservatives give more than their liberal counterparts.
Garth Brooks sings in his song "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association" that "We're all one big family, across the cities and the towns. We don't reach for handouts, we reach for those who are down." And conservatives agree. Or so the numbers, if not conventional wisdom, say.
Rhetoric might suggest that liberals would be more charitable than their conservative counterparts. Indeed left-wing political rhetoric seems to advocate for more government programs. The government should not be in the welfare business and it inevitably fails when it tries, which is precisely why conservatives are more charitable.
And why should charity be different than anything else? When sandwich shops compete, they deliver better sandwiches at lower prices. When charitable organizations compete -- perhaps for earthly reputation or divine approbation -- more people get better help. Government monopoly, on the other hand, leads to bureaucracy, corruption and fewer people getting the help they need.
Liberal political rhetoric postures regret at the plight of the needy, but the numbers don't add up. It is one thing to sanctimoniously proclaim that we need the government to step in and alleviate all manner of social ills, but it is quite another to write a check.
Conservatives should not put up with being labeled as selfish because it is simply false. The sheer weight of statistical fact -- too voluminous to cover in this brief column -- demonstrates that religious conservatives are the most charitable group in this country. We, unlike our political cliches, should give credit where credit is due.
We should all reach out our hands to those less fortunate than ourselves; it is our moral imperative. In doing so we should remember that sanctimony is no replacement for substance, and compulsion no substitute for charity.
