For conservatives, charity's all about THEM

Rush Limbaugh's latest monologue on government assistance vs. charity is quite telling on his part.  Unintentionally so.

See, he sets up government assistance and charity in opposition to one another. That's not necessarily so, it's not a zero-sum game, but let's go with his conceit. So, which one is better?

I've settled this before.  First, look at U.S. poverty statistics pre- and post-LBJ's War on Poverty.  Presumably, America has been just as Christian and charitable all along, so the only independent variable here is government spending, which made all the difference.  Second, there is scant data on how effective charity is.  (I'm not talking about overhead rates; I mean, how well do they achieve their stated mission.)  Most charities don't seek to measure their effectiveness, and most contributors don't demand it in the first place.  So next time somebody tells you charity is more effective than government assistance, ask him to prove it.  He probably can't.  Or if he can, only anecdotally*.  Third, and perhaps most important, both charitable giving and poverty are pro-cyclical.  So as people's incomes go down in tough economic times, so does charitable giving.  As a result, charity is at its weakest when it's needed most.  Whereas government can borrow all it wants at low interest rates even during downturns -- especially during downturns, in America's case.  (Never mind, for now, the downsides to over-borrowing.)

Beyond the pre-eminent effectiveness of government aid, what's so telling about Rush and conservative's view of charity is their focus on the giver.  See, with government assistance there is no "should I/should I not donate" moment of moral decision-making for the giver.  The decision on the amount, the form, and the recipient, is decided by our elected officials. According to conservatives, government assistance "deprives" givers of the good feeling they get from giving.  And it "deprives" them of the moral opportunity to be good Christians and decide personally whom to give their money to.  You see, it's all about making them feel good and getting them into heaven, not helping the needy.  

That shouldn't surprise anybody, since their rock-bottom belief is that our world is evil and sinful; it is a "vale of soul-making" constructed as an elaborate test to separate the Saved from the Damned, like God's version of Survivor.  Therefore, by design we are not entitled to enjoy our time on Earth, they firmly believe.  Indeed we should expect pain and privation, perhaps even welcome the chance to endure it.  And if we are well off, well... according to Evangelicals at least, that's a sign of God's blessing for a righteous life.  Thus it is doubly sinful of government to "punish" the righteous with higher taxes as it "takes away" their chance to be charitable.  Rush dog whistles at this all the time.

I know too many Christian conservatives to say, as some liberals do, that this is all about their greed. For the super-rich One Percent, it certainly is about greed.  But for the GOP base it is not so simple.  Nay, there is a distinctly Evangelical Christian underpinning to all this.  (Rush acknowledged the rift among Christians by calling out the Catholic Church's consistent and principled stand for government aid to the needy.)  Nevertheless, it's all about their feelings and their salvation, not the needy.

(*The question of results/performance is all about them, too, in a way.  Monitoring and evaluation of results demands precious resources that many small charities don't possess. A possible way to overcome this is to have many small charities working very locally, where the results are "evident" to givers.  "Seeing is believing" for most conservatives who distrust statistics, especially government stats.  They may also want that good feeling of seeing the people they benefited.  But to have only micro-scale charity would not only be inefficient and duplicative, but also dangerously inadequate and unequal, because it would concentrate charitable giving around wealthy people, creating vicious cycles of local poverty and virtuous cycles of local well-being, both isolated from each other.)

It really does come down to whether or not you believe we're all in this together. Conservatives don't.  

If you do, then the question is not so much the how (the process of giving assistance), but the result (improved well-being for the needy).  To put it in ethical terms, liberal-progressives believe that one's personal moral satisfaction should not come from being a superior charitable giver (in relative or absolute terms, no matter); one's satisfaction should come from knowing that he contributes to a fair and just society that guarantees the basic needs and dignity of those who can't take care of themselves, for whatever reason.  Liberals don't want to live in God's obstacle course for human gerbils; liberals want to live in a normal, civilized country where everybody is better off.  It is well within our power to make that happen, therefore it is our moral obligation.  

If you're morally serious about that aim, then you have to look at statistics, you have to put pre-conceived notions aside, and make evidence-based decisions.  And government assistance, as mentioned above, has proven in every developed country to be the best way to achieve that aim.

Taxes and Welfare Do Not Equal Charity

September 11, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/09/11/taxes_and_welfare_do_not_equal_charity