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COMMENTS:
Voted : Giving your own money and time is more compassionate
I'd say giving of your own resources is the more compassionate thing to do.
It's easy to say to someone else to go out and do nice things in my name, but it doesn't quite show the same level of interest.
Voted : Giving your own money and time is more compassionate
I'd love to know where the stat about liberal families averaging six percent higher salaries than conservatives ones comes from, because I want my extra six percent...
As for me, I've always given more of my time than my money, even back when made enough money to be able to give freely because, frankly, I have no idea how much of the money I might give gets to those in need. I know that the actual labor I did had a significant effect on lives. And I usually slipped the parents cash on the side anyway...
You are forgetting that it takes time and money itself to involve ones self in various campaign to increase aggregate charitable donations.
Whats more worthwhile, donating a proportion of your own limited income/time directly to charity (a drop in the ocean as it were), or encouraging wide ranging schemes to increase the national level of charitable donations exponentially?
Comparable example: Would you be doing more good by A) donating some of your hard earned towards a third world country by buying its villagers a couple of spades and some seeds, or B) Campaigning for a wide reaching scheme whereby millions of others are encouraged to donate alongside you, and buy that entire country the capital needed to begin industrialisation?
I also doubt whether the figures include the consumption of expensive free trade products (a primarily liberal tendency) as charity, which they should.
Wait a minute, you havent included all the facts here Herz.
The author makes the assertion that;
"RELIGIOUS conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals"
and
"If liberals persist in their antipathy to religion," Mr. Brooks writes, "the Democrats will become not only the party of secularism, but also the party of uncharity."
finally, and most damingly for this ballot
"Most of the difference in giving among conservatives and liberals gets back to religion. Religious liberals give nearly as much as religious conservatives, Mr. Brooks found. And secular conservatives are even less generous than secular liberals"
Im slightly annoyed at this, because I tend to trust your sourcing as fairly impartial, despite what various other users may assert to the contrary. In another of your ballots recently, you accused "liberal" newspapers of having an attitude of
"Find a story you don't like, scrutinize it to death. Find one you like, just don't look to in to it too carefully and you haven't technically lied."
Sound familiar?
"Rev. Jim Wallis, a Christian writer and political activist, says such comments betray a naïveté about how antipoverty programs are supported. Both philanthropy and government spending are important, he says, but the spending by government on welfare and social-service programs dwarfs the money that donors and foundations bring to the table.
"RELIGIOUS PEOPLE WHO ARE GENEROUS CAN BE USED BY THE POLITICAL RIGHT TO JUSTIFY GOVERNMENT NOT PLAYING ITS RIGHTFUL ROLE" Mr. Wallis says. "The right should not use our generosity to justify their irresponsibility"
Society as represented by government has a responsibility as well. Individual compassion, donations of time and money are not sufficient to address many problems.
Look at the homeless for example. Not enough compassion from individuals. Perhaps the government needs to take responsibility. The government are the elected representatives of the people. It is through this mechanism that people have chosen over and over to have the government address many problems.
Your choice of "forcing others" is bogus. Typical of libertarians to say to hell with people. No government. Just let the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless and other needy people fend for themselves. After all, the problems of these people would go away if we just forced the least fortunate to fend for themselves. We saw how well it worked in the Great Depression. Lots of rich people still. What did they do? We see how it works now.
Also, ballot #105404 I found the answer interesting. Who is more likely to donate to charities, religious or secular people? Religious, whether conservative or liberal. Secular liberals like to think they care more, but the facts do not support this.
DD: I didn't exclude any facts. I copied the article as it was written.
Don't conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals? I think that was sort of implied with the statement. But I didn't cut anything out that was present in the original article that I read.
^ "Find a story you don't like, scrutinize it to death. Find one you like, just don't look to in to it too carefully and you haven't technically lied"
Voted : Giving your own money and time is more compassionate
I will buy the book, if possible. Thanks !
DD: so your problem with this ballot is that it doesn't spell out that traditionally conservative values are traditionallyh held by conservatives?
My "beef" is that you have ommitted a major qualifier of the study, i.e. the emphasis on RELIGIOUS conservatives. Yes, its true to say that more conservatives than liberals are traditionally religious, and thus the intuition leads us to the conclusion that conservatives give more to charity on average. BUT, that does not mean that the fact that liberals ARE liberals makes them inherently less generous than someone who is conservative. Basically you've shown a surface correlation between political party and mean charitable donations, but not shown the deeper correlation that gives us the relevant causality, i.e. the link between religion and generousity.
Indeed, as I quoted above,
"Religious liberals give nearly as much as religious conservatives, Mr. Brooks found. And secular conservatives are even less generous than secular liberals"
This wouldnt be a problem, but the articles I found very clearly stated the importance of the religious element. If you had looked at other articles you would have seen this, which makes the statement
"Find one you like, just don't look to in to it too carefully and you haven't technically lied."
Ring true!
Im not saying you knew about the religious element of the study and ommitted it, so as to focus negative attention more clearly on liberals, or whether you genuinly didnt read about that. But if its the latter then arent you just a bit guilty of doing what you say the papers do?
^ I hope you appreciate the difficulty of articulating the point of statistical intuition I attempted to make above, I tried my best!
I read an aricle and presented it. It came from a reliable source, so I don't see the problem.
Besides which, I am not a media source. I don't have dozens of paid employees at my disposal to work 40+ hours a week researching these things. I get home after working full time and skim through the news then relate it. So I don't see it as comparable.
If I had dozens of fact checkers at my disposal and told them to not look in to this, or to ignore certain facts, then it would be comparable to our media.
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