Institutionalized Charity
Dartmouth, Politics January 26th. 2008, 6:06pm
In an effort to maintain the factual, informative nature of this forum, I will try to avoid the messiness of the political world as often as possible. However, I did read an article the other day that grabbed my attention, and I am compelled to share its substance.
The Charity Case, by Zak Moore (Dartmouth ‘09)
Zak Moore ‘09 wrote the article cited above for The Dartmouth (Dartmouth College’s daily newspaper). It was published on January 23rd. In the piece, Moore responds to the common accusation that “‘liberals are charitable and conservatives selfish.’” While I will not delve into any deep discussion of my own political persuasions (indeed, they are underdeveloped), I do find Moore’s assessment of the actual state of affairs to be spot on.
The foundation of his argument is that, in fact, young ‘conservatives,’ and especially young religious conservatives, are significantly more likely to participate in charitable activites (time, monetary donations) than their self-defined ‘liberal’ counterparts. More surprisingly, conservative philanthropy surpasses liberal philanthropy for both religious and secular organizations. He makes the subtle observation that charity, if institutionalized in the form of tax hikes and a welfare state, is not charity at all. Charity must always be a voluntary act, and Moore states that charitable organizations actually do a far better job than government bureaucracy at stretching the value of a donated dollar.
As I don’t want to merely repeat his argument, I’ll stop here, and let you read the article for yourself.
Comments welcome.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
This reminds me of the late, now admired, Ronald Reagan. The year after he spoke eloquently about how individuals should increase donations to charity and “institutionalized charity” is not the governments business, it was revealed he and Nancy gave $1,000 to charities for that tax year. Conservative Republican. I was not impressed.
If it is religious conservatives giving more than liberal types, shame on those liberals for speaking up for the poor and not doing enough to help them.
Regardless, as a whole, as a people, we should not have our children going to bed hungry or families living on the streets or in their automobiles. Whatever it is we need to do to change that, we should. Not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans working together.