[StBernard] Liberals Are More Selfish Than Conservatives

[Westley Annis]

Thursday, September 17, 2009
Liberals Are More Selfish Than Conservatives
 
by Ashley Herzog at TownHall.com

For liberals, the health care debate apparently boils down to the
psychological qualities of the two sides. Nice people want socialized
medicine, and mean, selfish people don't. Last week, blogger Amanda Marcotte
declared that an individual's support for the public option-including
taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegals-depends on whether that individual
developed "a sense of empathy in early childhood." (Yes, she really said
that.)

As long as liberals are going to play psychologist and turn a serious policy
debate into petty speculation about their opponents' emotional states, they
should read "Makers and Takers" by Peter Schweizer. Afterward, they might
just shut up about liberals being nicer and more generous than the rest of
us. 

As the American Spectator's Richard Kirk wrote, Schweizer presents
"peer-reviewed sociological data that show liberals are generally more
selfish, more focused on money, less hardworking, less emotionally
satisfied, less honest, and even less knowledgeable about politics than
their conservative counterparts." 

By studying the highly regarded General Social Survey, Schweizer found that
conservatives were much more likely to say they get happiness from putting
other's needs ahead of their own (55 percent to 20 percent), and that they
would "endure all things for the one they love" (55 percent to 26 percent). 

What was that about "empathy" again? 

Conservatives also proved to be less selfish in questions relevant to the
health care debate. While 71 percent of conservatives said that they had an
obligation to care for "a seriously injured spouse or parent," only 46
percent of liberals agreed. 

No wonder they want the government to do it. 

The General Social Survey consistently finds that conservatives give more of
their time and money to the less fortunate. For example, conservatives are
more likely to volunteer for charitable activities than liberals (27 percent
to 19 percent). Arthur C. Brooks, author of "Who Really Cares?" found that
charitable donations average $2,210 for conservatives and a paltry $642 for
liberals-and that's after excluding donations to churches and other
religious organizations. 

And despite their self-righteous posturing, the people aggressively pushing
Soviet-lite policies in Congress are the least generous with their own
money. Schweizer reviewed tax forms and found that Al Gore gave $353 to
charity in 1998-or .18 percent of his income. At least Gore was slightly
less stingy than John Kerry, who didn't give a single cent to charity in
1995. As a percentage of income, left-wing villains Rush Limbaugh, Bill
O'Reilly and Dick Cheney have been more generous donors over the years than
Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Michael Moore. 

Not surprisingly, liberals score lower than conservatives when quizzed on
government and economics, which is probably why they think the health care
debate should be a question of who developed "empathy in early childhood."
(In case you had any doubts about Schweizer's research, he also found that
40 percent of liberals say they value "being popular," compared to only 26
percent of conservatives. In another column, Amanda Marcotte proved this
true when she sneered that being a young conservative "means giving up any
hope whatsoever of being cool.") 

At the end of the day, Schweizer concludes, liberals want the government to
be generous so they can avoid being generous on a personal level. Let the
taxpayers feed the poor, shelter the homeless, even take care of other
people's gravely injured parents and spouses-because they don't want to. 

Remember this the next time a liberal portrays the health care debate as a
battle between the selfish and the selfless.