Friday, January 05, 2007

And it would be a sin if it weren't true...

This from Charles Colson. Just as most of us have thought...

Are conservatives and Christians becoming too narrow and selfish? Are we hypocritical skinflints, indifferent to the suffering of the needy?

The liberals say so. But is it true? Do conservatives and Christians really love their money more than they do the poor?

A new book by an expert on charity says: absolutely not. The real skinflints, he writes, are secular liberals.

Arthur Brooks, professor at Syracuse University, writes in his new book, titled Who Really Cares, that he grew up in a liberal home and accepted one of the liberal political nostrums: that the political left “is compassionate and charitable toward the less fortunate, but the political right is oblivious to suffering.”

“If you had asked me a few years ago to sum up the character of American conservatives,” he writes, “I would have said they were hard-headed pragmatists who were willing to throw your grandmother out into the snow to preserve some weird ideal of self-reliance.”

But his own research forced him to change his mind. Religious conservatives give more, and do more, for the poor than anyone else. By contrast, liberals, who tend both to be irreligious and to believe that government can and should redistribute income, tend to be far stingier.

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5 Comments:

At 1:24 AM, Blogger Marshall L. Daigre said...

I heard this on the radio today and thought it was quite interesting. After hearing Colson I better understand why it is that liberals would not give as much.

 
At 5:29 PM, Blogger Neil said...

It has always amazed me how liberals can give away other people's money, then chalk it up as charity and release some endorphins.

I'm looking forward to more details on the topic, though.

 
At 12:37 AM, Blogger Nicholas said...

It is also interesting that I haven't seen it in the headlines of any newspapers. And I still have to listen to libs spout out the same nonsense about caring for the poor. Can they not read? Or maybe only as well as they think.

Nicholas
http://theblackhorseinn.blogspot.com

 
At 8:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

When this report was scheduled to air on 20/20 John Stossel went on the television program "The View" (Barbara Walters daytime show) to give a preview of the findings. Joy Behar, whom I find fun while disagreeing with her opinions, gave her reasoning for the ironic contrast between the liberal worldview and real action. Unapologetically, perhaps with a bit of insolence she said, "I think it's because we expect our taxes to take care of these things."

This explains the Democratic problems with taxation.

 
At 10:33 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Even if conservatives are doing better than secular liberals, I still believe conservatives can do more.

We have so much and we waste so much.

More of that could be given away.

About that tax comment above. The reason I personally don't like the idea of more taxes is because the government is so irresponsible with the money. They can't solve the problems with taxes but donations (and time) given to these private organizations do a MUCH better job than the government ever could.

 

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