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* Progressives have a more expansive view of the community supporting social justice through taxes, and therefore view some types of charitable giving as a weak alternative
* Some forms of charitable giving are much more self-interested than others: the liberal donating to NPR, the conservative donating to an activist church
* The tax code (including the estate tax) creates heavier incentives for the wealthier

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Pretty Much Arguing by Definition

Seems the author is defining conservatives as people who think individual charity rather than reditributive government programs should support those with less income, and then saying conservatives are more likely to participate in individual charity.

He then dismisses the things which liberals may do to rally for government poverty programs, education reform, etc. as something other than charitable.

It is, in the narrow sense that I would like to see more people have an entitlement or right to basic necessities (basic sustenance, housing, medical care, education) from the government, that they should not feel beholden or grateful to me for having received these things. I don't want access to basic services to be a matter of charity.

But on the other hand, if the author is attempting to say that my feelings or my work for better government support for low income people does not reflect altruism or community feelings on my part, he's nuts.

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But, if you want my initial gut feeling, it seems he's setting up the word "charity" to mean "giving that doesn't involve the government, because government is bad" and then using that definition to nail liberals. In my view, any fair redistribution of wealth from the haves to the have-nots is a helpful thing for society regardless of whether the Government facilitates it or not, so limiting "charity" to churches and NGOs is disingenuous.

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The conventional wisdom runs like this: Liberals are charitable because they advocate government redistribution of money in the name of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because they oppose these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending, according to this logic, is a form of charity.

Let us be clear: Government spending is not charity. It is not a voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how beneficial or humane it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing public services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues. Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs do not prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents are selfish. (On the contrary, a public attack on the integrity of those who don’t share my beliefs might more legitimately constitute evidence that I am the uncharitable one.)

To evaluate accurately the charity difference between liberals and conservatives, we must consider private, voluntary charity. How do liberals and conservatives compare in their private giving and volunteering? Beyond strident slogans and sarcastic political caricatures, what, exactly, do the data tell us?

The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most ways, political conservatives are not personally less charitable than political liberals—they are more so.

First, we must define “liberals” and “conservatives.” Most surveys ask people not just about their political party affiliation but also about their ideology. In general, about 10 percent of the population classify themselves as “very conservative”; and another 10 percent call themselves “very liberal.” About 20 percent say they are simply “liberal,” and 30 percent or so say they are “conservative.” The remaining 30 percent call themselves “moderates” or “centrists.” In this discussion, by “liberals” I mean the approximately 30 percent in the two most liberal categories, and by conservatives I mean the 40 percent or so in the two most con­servative categories.

So how do liberals and conservatives compare in their charity? When it comes to giving or not giving, conservatives and liberals look a lot alike. Conservative people are a percentage point or two more likely to give money each year than liberal people, but a percentage point or so less likely to volunteer.

But this similarity fades away when we consider average dollar amounts donated. In 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on average, 30 percent more money to charity than households headed by a liberal ($1,600 to $1,227). This discrepancy is not simply an artifact of income differences; on the contrary, liberal families earned an average of 6 percent more per year than conservative families, and conservative families gave more than liberal families within every income class, from poor to middle class to rich.

If we look at party affiliation instead of ideology, the story remains largely the same. For example, registered Republicans were seven points more likely to give at least once in 2002 than registered Democrats (90 to 83 percent).

The differences go beyond money and time. Take blood donations, for example. In 2002, conservative Americans were more likely to donate blood each year, and did so more often, than liberals. If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply in the United States would jump by about 45 percent.

The political stereotypes break down even further when we consider age: “Anyone who is not a socialist before age thirty has no heart, but anyone who is still a socialist after thirty has no head,” goes the old saying. And so we imagine crusty right-wing grandfathers socking their money away in trust funds while their liberal grandchildren work in soup kitchens and save the whales. But young liberals—perhaps the most vocally dissatisfied political constituency in America today—are one of the least generous demographic groups out there. In 2004, self-described liberals younger than thirty belonged to one-third fewer organizations in their communities than young conservatives. In 2002, they were 12 percent less likely to give money to charities, and one-third less likely to give blood. Liberal young Americans in 2004 were also significantly less likely than the young conservatives to express a willingness to sacrifice for their loved ones: A lower percentage said they would prefer to suffer than let a loved one suffer, that they are not happy unless the loved one is happy, or that they would sacrifice their own wishes for those they love.

The compassion of American conservatives becomes even clearer when we compare the results from the 2004 U.S. presidential election to data on how states address charity. Using Internal Revenue Service data on the percentage of household income given away in each state, we can see that the red states are more charitable than the blue states. For instance, of the twenty-five states that donated a portion of household income above the national average, twenty-four gave a majority of their popular votes to George W. Bush for president; only one gave the election to John F. Kerry. Of the twenty-five states below the national giving average, seventeen went for Kerry, but just seven for Bush. In other words, the electoral map and the charity map are remarkably similar.

These results are not an artifact of close elections in key states. The average percentage of household income donated to charity in each state tracked closely with the percentage of the popular vote it gave to Mr. Bush. Among the states in which 60 percent or more voted for Bush, the average portion of income donated to charity was 3.5 percent. For states giving Mr. Bush less than 40 percent of the vote, the average was 1.9 percent. The average amount given per household from the five states combined that gave Mr. Bush the highest vote percentages in 2003 was 25 percent more than that donated by the average household in the five northeastern states that gave Bush his lowest vote percentages; and the households in these liberal-leaning states earned, on average, 38 percent more than those in the five conservative states.

People living in conservative states volunteer more than people in liberal states. In 2003, the residents of the top five “Bush states” were 51 percent more likely to volunteer than those of the bottom five, and they volunteered an average of 12 percent more total hours each year. Residents of these Republican-leaning states volunteered more than twice as much for religious organizations, but also far more for secular causes. For example, they were more than twice as likely to volunteer to help the poor.

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The conventional wisdom runs like this: Liberals are charitable because they advocate government redistribution of money in the name of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because they oppose these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending, according to this logic, is a form of charity.

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Even taxes AND charity are not enough to feed nearly 35 million Americans who can't put food on the table (whom the USDA recently reclassified as "lacking food security" to try to whitewash the problem.)

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I should have known better than to think you'd last more than one post without reverting to petulant flamewar mode.

I'm not engaging in a flamewar with you. When I called some of the people at dailykos idiots, I wasn't referring to you. I apologize if it sounded that way.

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I would say it's more of a counter-argument against socialists claiming that redistribution policies are charity.

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Forcefully taking someone else's hard-earned cash and spending it for them is not charitable, and it isn't right.

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petulant flamewar mode

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Nobody starves to death in the USA, except for perhaps anorexics. And I challenge you to find one obituary from the last 50 years stating the opposite.

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A much better question to ask is whether taxation and wealth redistribution is a net benefit or net loss for society, relative to what that money might have otherwise accomplished (charity, spending, or whatever else).

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I think it's fair to say that market forces, alone, are insufficient to arrive at a modern, civil society.

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Along the same lines, it might be perfectly rational for society to create some kind of "safety net" (a.k.a., "welfare") to provide for a minimal existence, no matter what.