I guess I don’t think there is.
The OP also mentions whether conservatives “hold the poor in contempt”. I don’t think donating money “proves” a lack of contempt.
:eek: Mountain Dew! The audacity!
And why don’t they deserve steaks, lobster, or Mountain Dew? If they were buying guns with food stamps, you might have a point.
I should think public statements by RW pols are more than sufficient to prove that.
I wouldn’t consider giving money to a church to be much more charitable than giving it to Pepsi or IBM. Forcing the hungry to submit to a sermon before you feed them or the thirsty to submit to a baptism before you give them water is advertising and pushing religion on people; not charity. A church is a business; its function to to protect and promote its religion, not help people. It cares about grabbing all the “souls” it can, not charity or compassion except as far as those can be made to serve its function.
Ah; the old, old conservative infatuation with the idea of the “Deserving Poor”. Help them, and let everyone else starve; of course in reality it turns out that no one actually qualifies as “the Deserving Poor”, or “deserving” is equated with “exploitable”.
“Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and quite ready to take to crime if he saw a good opportunity. He refused on principle to be thrifty. In the summer he saved nothing, spending his surplus earnings on drink, as he did not care about women. If he was penniless when winter came on, then society must look after him. He was ready to extract every penny he could from charity, provided that he was not expected to say thank you for it. He avoided religious charities, however, for he said it stuck in his throat to sing hymns for buns. He had various other points of honour; for instance, it was his boast that never in his life, even when starving, had he picked up a cigarette end. He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful.”
“Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.”
– George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
I don’t think this is particularly fair-or accurate-as far as characterizing churchs’ roles in charities. Many inner city charities; such as homeless shelters and child welfare services, are provided by churches. These services are provided because they are needed and no one else is providing them.
And because it helps pull people into the religion.
They would happily welcome these people into their religious ranks but the vast majority of those who utilize these free services aren’t going to become converts or practicing members of that religion. And they certainly don’t make anyone sit through a sermon before receiving aid.
Really? Don’t they, any more? That would be a venerable American tradition.
What do you believe is more common? Unwed mothers being frivolous in their affairs or hard working people that needed a bit of help in a job slump? Idk where you use to be a social worker at, but in SC, our social services goes after those fathers that are not paying for those children rather the mother wants them to or not (or vice versa). Parents that weren’t responsible for their children find themselves with a bill long after their child has turned 18. Also, though more work needs to be done, single mother’s living in section 8 must report all income coming into the house and all adults must be on the lease of the apartment to cut down on single parents receiving benefits and allowing a live-in boyfriend/girlfriend to free load.
Outside of my full time job, I spend 12 hours every day managing the donor rolls of the seven largest charities in the world, a different one each day, so I speak with some authority here. Each charity gets exactly the same number of donations from both liberals and conservatives, but the liberals average $1,000,000 per check they send in, while the conservatives average $1.23. The conservaties write in the memo line “Only those who deserve it, and make sure they don’t buy lobster.” They also draw a little sneer on the check.
Does anyone have any more anecdotes? If we collect them all, we might end up with actual useful data in a few centuries.
They don’t in my parish, and as far as my knowledge extends, this would be very rare in other Catholic churches as well.
First of all I said I was a caseworker; I was never a social worker although I know the terms are often used interchangeably with each other but when you get right down to it I was simply a government bureaucrat. That being said, I can only comment on what I have personally witnessed. Yes I sadly saw many people who had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own (layoffs, the spouse decided to abandon the family, the new job didn’t work out, whatever) but I regularly saw unwed mothers regularly coming in to add more children to their cases. Sometimes the child had a different father, and other times the child did not. Yes Child Support Enforcement would go after the fathers and the women usually filled out paperwork with any information they had on the guys. However that didn’t necessarily mean that those guys had jobs or a regular paycheck for that matter. And whether the absent father did or did not work does not change the fact that the unwed mothers CONTINUED having children that they could not afford to take care of. Like I wrote earlier, the stereotype of 10 kids by 10 different fathers is an extreme example often invoked by those who are not truly familiar with the welfare office, although I personally have seen such cases but they were not the “norm.” One single mother who worked at Taco Bell asked me if I had any children and I told her no. She asked me if I had any idea how difficult it was to raise four children (the number she had) with NO HELP from any of the four different fathers. I said “No, do YOU?” I then asked her that if she had such a difficult time raising ONE CHILD with no help then why in the world did she choose to have THREE ADDITIONAL CHILDREN by THREE ADDITIONAL MEN. She pondered the question briefly and replied “Yeah, I see your point.” That told me that she herself never questioned her behavior. Then she added that “Men should be more responsible for the children they have.” While I agreed with her I added that although that was true the fact of the matter is that SHE CHOSE TO HAVE more children just the same, and she should start seeing a better class of guys if she actually wants to get out of this rut she currently found herself in. Judgmental? Perhaps, but not untrue. And remember she was a WORKING PARENT but she STILL couldn’t afford to raise four children on that pay. Like I said earlier, if we want to discuss the behaviors of unwed mothers then that’s a topic for another thread, although there is definitely some overlap here. My point is that in experience there were too many people who were not INTENTIONALLY trying to commit fraud BUT they continued making poor choices just the same and that takes a toll on society. But God forbid I point that out because that would be “inappropriate and judgmental” but hey a few times it actually HELPED SOME PEOPLE GET OFF OF THAT CAROUSEL and make a decent life for themselves once they realized that they were engaging in destructive behaviors.
Can Bill Gates really be called a liberal? I thought he donated to both political parties.
Uh,… How do you know the political orientation of the donors? Or am I being Whooshed?
If conservatives are more charitable it could simply be due to the fact that conservatives are more likely to be religious, and religious people are more charitable than non-religious people, even when you include non-religious charities like blood donation.
Here’s a summary from a recent New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/opinion/the-moral-animal.html?_r=0
Whooshed. It was in response to anecdotal crap such as, as well as any other anecdotes that I missed:
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I don’t know anything about stats here just personnal experience. I have done volunteer work with homeless. addicts etc for many years. I don’t give much to charity but do help individuals on a one on one basis as do many others I know. Just an observation on my part but many liberals seem to come in with high ideals and burn out rather quickly while the more conservative types seem to have a more realistic attitude and stay in it for the long haul.
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Well? Is that not exactly what you would expect of most people who have any need of welfare?
Ah, the old “religious people are good, atheists are evil” routine.