Who really cares...and other liberal dogma debunked.

Thomas Sowell delves into that question in today's piece on National Review Online:

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate "forgiveness" of loans to third-world countries, a "living wage" for the poor and a "safety net" for all.

But these are all government policies — not individual acts of compassion — and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. Depending on what those consequences are, there may be good reasons to oppose them, so being for or against these policies may tell us nothing about who is compassionate or caring and who is not.

A new book, titled Who Really Cares by Arthur C. Brooks examines the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives when it comes to donating their own time, money, or blood for the benefit of others. It is remarkable that beliefs on this subject should have become conventional, if not set in concrete, for decades before anyone bothered to check these beliefs against facts.

Some interesting factoids that I knew but liberals continue to deny:

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

It is not that conservatives have more money. Liberal families average 6 percent higher incomes than conservative families. You may recall a flap during the 2000 election campaign when the fact came out that Al Gore donated a smaller percentage of his income to charity than the national average. That was perfectly consistent with his liberalism.

So is the fact that most of the states that voted for John Kerry during the 2004 election donated a lower percentage of their incomes to charity than the states that voted for George W. Bush.

Conservatives not only donate more money to charity than liberals do, conservatives volunteer more time as well. More conservatives than liberals also donate blood.

According to Professor Brooks: "If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply of the United States would jump about 45 percent."

Professor Brooks admits that the facts he uncovered were the opposite of what he expected to find — so much so that he went back and checked these facts again, to make sure there was no mistake.

Sowell has his theories of why this is so:

What is the reason why some people are liberals and others are conservatives, if it is not that liberals are more compassionate?

Fundamental differences in ideology go back to fundamental assumptions about human nature. Based on one set of assumptions, it makes perfect sense to be a liberal. Based on a different set of assumptions, it makes perfect sense to be a conservative.

The two visions are not completely symmetrical, however. For at least two centuries, the vision of the left has included a belief that those with that vision are morally superior, more caring and more compassionate.

While both sides argue that their opponents are mistaken, those on the left have declared their opponents to be not merely in error but morally flawed as well. So the idea that liberals are more caring and compassionate goes with the territory, whether or not it fits the facts.

It is my theory that liberals, being the dependency-driven people that they are, expect the government to tow the line when it comes to charity; thus easing themselves of the burden. Satisfied that "the government will provide," they are content to rely on the producers/taxpayers of this country to do the heavy lifting (as long as it isn't them, as Mark's piece on Warren Buffet, et. al, will attest). Even rich trust-fund liberals like Ted Kennedy, Al Gore and "Jon Carry" are willing to let others lift the load when it comes to assisting those who are less fortunate.

Unquestioning loyalty no longer an option
Mr. Sowell's opening line in the article says it all; not only regarding liberals and their lack of generosity, but of liberal dogma in general:

More frightening than any particular beliefs or policies is an utter lack of any sense of a need to test those beliefs and policies against hard evidence. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

Although Sowell no doubt has it correct, I would add that liberals heretofore had not felt the need to test the veracity of their dogma; for they had long had the luxury of their fellow travellers in the media unquestioningly parroting their tenets; devoid of truth as they were. So accustomed have the old guard liberals become to this past media complacency, that they make the mistake of continuing to think it exists to this day, and to the same degree.

This is more than reflected in Rangel's insistence that an overrepresented majority of soldiers joined the Armed Services due to lack of opportunity, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. Why would Rangel make such an assertion in the face of so much contradictory evidence? It is my sincere belief that Rangel and other liberal democrats, for many years assuaged in the comfort of having their dogma unquestioned by an adoring media, continue to operate in that mode; while completely forgetting and/or ignoring the presence of talk radio and the blogosphere.

They will no doubt continue to do so at their own peril.