On the Choice of Charities

My father and mother had a favorite charity:  St. Jude's Children's Hospital.  This is a choice some of my siblings have made and the choice is particularly reasonable in that St. Jude's Hospital has worked wonders to save the life of a young great nephew who had bone cancer in a leg.  My own choice of charities is different as I just explained in an e-mail to my siblings.

I wrote:

St. Jude's Hospital is a worthy cause.  However, many will give to medical institutions, while few care enough about the many and broad rights of the individual to support the think tanks that fight so hard to preserve and expand our freedom to exercise our many rights as individuals.  For this reason, I do all I can to support the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Capital Research Center, The Institute for Justice, Cato Institute, The Independent Institute, The Atlas Society, the Foundation for Economic Education, The Right to Work Committee, Judicial Watch, National Federation of Independent Businesses, The Mercatus Center of George Mason University, The Institute of Humane Studies at George Mason University, Americans for Prosperity, some very select activities of the Heritage Foundation, CFACT, and SEPP.  The last two are primarily about environmental and climate change sanity.  Because almost every educational institution and most of the press and media are advocates of ever greater collective power over the individual, these independent, pro-liberty think tanks are critically important.

It is our individual freedoms that make our standard of living possible and which allow us to choose our own values as goals in our own lives.  We must never allow anyone else to take over the management of our own lives.  Unfortunately, most Americans do want to exercise some control over the lives of other Americans, without even the obligation of knowing those they would dictate terms to and very often while knowing they are actually harming some, usually with the excuse that it is for the "greater good."  The "greater good" is always the demon that devours our individual freedoms and self-ownership.  The only greater good any of us actually share in common is our own liberty.  Other than that, we need the freedom to think and act independently and the freedom to associate with others as we choose.  It is those freedoms that then allow us the freedom to cooperate with others.  Individual freedom is not anti-social as many try to portray it.  Individual freedom is the means to make ourselves individually valuable and worthy of the respect and cooperation of others.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in admiring the work of St. Jude's Children's Hospital, aside perhaps from the religious name and the idea that by supporting it, you are doing good work that will win you the approval of the One God and a reward of Everlasting Life.  Freedom of conscience and freedom of association allow one to make this choice to support St. Jude's Hospital for Children.

Without them, one might be forced to instead support the Institute for Xi Thought, as a Red Chinese propagandist recently insisted when I refused to entertain a delegation from Red China at my laboratory.  Yes, the Chinese will impose Xi Thought upon us, he insists.  Given the weakness of our educational system and the collectivist ideology of the schools, many young Americans who embrace socialism, the media, the governments, and many other institutions in America, this is a possibility, though probably under some future Chinese Great Leader.

Is the Clinton Foundation a Charity?

It is widely being said that the Clinton Foundation gives only about 15% of its income to charity, with the rest going to administrative costs. The truth is actually worse than the unbelievably low 15% pass-through rate. Out of $140 million of donations, the Clinton Foundation has only delivered about $9 million to direct charity work. That is 6.4% or only 43% of the widely stated 15% pass-through rate. It is usually held that a decent charity foundation has a pass-through rate of at least 75%. To be sure, one may make charitable donations to a think tank, where one expects most of the money to go to organization employee salaries, office expenses, and travel to meetings. But, the Clinton Foundation claims to be a charity devoted to women's rights, environmentalism, and mitigating harm caused by catastrophic man-made global warming.

The Clinton Foundation has large contributors from Ukraine, Russia, Saudia Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. In view of the following observations, why are wealthy people from these countries giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

• These countries are not very keen on women's rights, environmentalism, or catastrophic man-made global warming.

• There is so much need for charity in work within these countries that they ought to donate their money locally.

• Large donors do their homework to find out what the charity pass-through rate is. If they are really interested in doing charity work, they will not accept a 6.4% pass-through rate to actual charitable aid.

So how else can one provide a motive for the large contributions to the Clinton Foundation coming from nations such as Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern nations? It is very clear that the donations were motivated by a desire to influence Hillary Clinton's decisions as Secretary of State and perhaps after she might become President. Given this clear motivation, Hillary Clinton had to know she had a very serious conflict of interest problem. Yet, the Foundation took the money and hid the fact that it was being given to the Foundation for such purposes.

Then Hillary compounded the bad perception by actually approving the take-over of a company that provides 20% of the U.S. uranium needs by Russian interests with close ties to Putin.  Our extensive aid to Ukraine is now subject to being questioned as the result of bribes, rather than as a result of our national interest as well.  I expect we will learn about many other questionable decisions now that this Clinton Foundation is in the spotlight.

Any rational individual will be greatly influenced by the past history of immorality exhibited by the Clintons in assessing the likelihood that they were actually influenced by these bribes to make decisions that might be contrary to the national interest of the United States.

Davy Crockett Learned Constitutional Limits on Government

A friend, Paul Cohen, drew my attention to an interesting story about how Davy Crockett, while a Representative from Tennessee, came to learn that the federal government did not have among its enumerated powers the power to provide charity. He learned this from a very wise and thoughtful constituent named Horatio Bunce. More than that, the lesson is also about how we should hold the Constitution sacred.

A Response to an "Obligated to Give Back" Commenter

Back in my post of 28 March 2009, I wrote about how hard my daughter Katie had worked as a biotechnology major in the Honors Program at Rochester Institute of Technology. Today I received a comment which I posted. If I only did that, few will see my response, so I am going to give it here. The comment was this:

Obviously Katie has done alright by herself...but what has she done for those less fortunate.
Does she tutor, mentor act as a big sister?
As a father you measure your daughter by what she has accomplished...why not add a little of "what she has given back."
Quite possible, she has learned with "me" behavior from her objectivist father.

If you ask these questions from the viewpoint that Katie or I or anyone is obliged to do things for the "less fortunate" then I completely deny your premise. Katie might not do so as completely, but she fully understands that her success has been the result of some very dedicated work on her part. Nobody gave her the knowledge she has acquired. She made a huge effort, which she might have chosen not to make, just as most people do choose not to make it.

However, Katie happens to like helping other people. She has tutored, been a notetaker for classes, collected money and gave time to a number of charities, and she worked very hard as President of the Habitat Club at RIT to build homes for people. I certainly have no problem with this as long as Katie has chosen to do these things because she enjoys doing them, rather than because she feels obliged or forced to do them while feeling little but pain. No one is obliged to feel pain for the sake of others, though they may choose to take it on for a friend or someone of great value to them.

It is a sad mistake that many people believe that the choice one faces in life is either one of only I matter or one of I am but dirt and only others matter. Only the person who knows he is very worthy of life is able to respect and care for others. We cannot help but assess others from the viewpoint of our own introspection. We are only really familiar with our own mind. If your mind is not respected and valued enough by you, you will not be able to perceive anything in others which is worthy of respect and to be valued. I believe that, like me, Katie really is able to see value in others because she sees value in herself.

You and many others make the false assumption that Objectivists cannot care much about others. This is not true about me and it was not true about Ayn Rand. She was personally a very charitable woman. I know the roommate of a man, to whom she was not related, whose B.S. degree in engineering she paid for just because he otherwise was not going to be able to go to college and she wanted him to. She was in many other ways a very caring and generous person, unlike such pretenders as Obama, Biden, and Gore who claim that their lives are dedicated to the good of others. These pretenders instead simply use force to make others give to the less fortunate through governments as the enforcer and conduit. These governments, in turn, provide the Obamas, Bidens, and Gores with power, the lust for which existed among the worst men long before money was invented.

Let me point out one more thing about Katie. Katie is extremely dedicated to doing medical research. She is at this time particularly interested in the study of immunology. She finds the field fascinating and she is looking forward to solving some very real problems so that many will live healthier and richer lives. The altruist who has not done alright by himself and chooses to tackle less arduous studies and to work at a minimally demanding job, is probably going to be objectively of less value to other human beings than Katie is likely to be. If you care so much about others, then you should have no objection to Katie's becoming a great medical researcher, even if she were never to give to charities or to never "give back" in any other way.

There is a terrible sense of the thug in this demand that others serve him or that others should be bowed down before an obligation to serve others. We should resist this by all means at our disposal. There is nothing wrong with exercising the choice to perform an act of charity for someone you care about or even for those who have met misfortune through no or little fault of their own, provided it is your free choice. But, do not attempt to force me to give up my values and adopt your values. Do not attempt to force me to live my life in accordance with your values. I am proud to manage my own life in accordance with the values I choose.

What we are obligated to give back to others is agreement to the principle that our relationships are voluntary and none of us, not even a majority, are to initiate the use of force to make others do our will. I am not to force you to live for me and you are not to force me to live for you. This principle then allows us a wide range of mutually beneficial interactions and trades of values, while yet respecting each other's life and the values we have each chosen as goals in our living.

Edward Hudgins: Uncharitable Attack on Charity

Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society wrote an interesting article on a group called the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) which is the kind of organization Ellsworth Toohey would have encouraged. While in general Ayn Rand's novels are dramatizations of the conflicts between an individualistic, rational, life-centered morality and philosophy and collectivist, irrational, and anti-life moralities, the real world really does have evil-doers who are perfectly capable of replicating a stark dramatization of evil and irrationality from an Ayn Rand novel.

This charitable watchdog group is headed up by a former ACORN organizer. This group issued a report saying

Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.

It adds that a well-managed charity must:

Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and other marginal groups…
Provide at least 25 percent of its dollars for advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equality, opportunity and justice in our society.

Ed Hudgins points out that this is nonsense, which it most certainly is. Charity at its best serves the purposes of the voluntary contributor and does so in a manner which does not use force to impede others in living their lives. Period. There is nothing wrong with giving to a charity that supports the Classical Music station of WBJC in Baltimore even though few people living in the often rich poverty of today in America choose to listen to it. In fact, doing so may help to preserve a rich heritage in intelligent music and be a very decent thing to do. Or, one might choose to give money to The Atlas Society, which directs its programs and education efforts at everyone about equally. There is no reason why they should target their message to groups defined by race or income. And, of course, as Ed points out, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy should probably give as much of its money as possible to medical researchers without regard to the 50% and 25% rules produced by NCRP.

Ed also quotes Xavier Becerra (CA Democrat) as saying

“Taxpayers have rewarded [foundations] for being there for America.” But, he added: “At the same time, those of us at Congress have an obligation as the representatives of the people to make sure that their money—taxpayer money—is being well invested.”

Ah....so Congress has the right to redirect the money that individuals give to charities to see to it that Congress believes the money is being well-used. In fact, he twists the individual into being a taxpayer, uses that to say the money given to charity is taxpayer money, and then claims the usual power to spend taxpayer money that he would have for government revenue from taxes. One would think anyone would see through this extremely faulty argument, but surprisingly many do not.

Ed also noted that there was a move afoot in the Obama despotism to tax the charity gifts of the so-called wealthy, before many howls forced them to back down. Clearly they wanted to remove capable and wealthy people from the boards of charitable organizations and keep them from having a role in directing the purpose of those organizations. This would also make charities more dependent upon government grants, which would let the government re-direct their purposes.

It is clear that the so-called Progressives want total government control over charity in America and want it used for their agenda only. Of course, if you recognize that the Progressives have an agenda of mixed fascist and communist goals, control of all charity is readily recognized as being essential for the purposes of their total control of the American people. Individual choices even in charitable giving will not be allowed. This is the Totalitarian Dream, that Obama oulined in his acceptance speech before the Democrat Convention in Denver, CO.

On Fairness Claims that Social Force is Necessary

The principle argument for socialism is that life is not fair and society must try to make it more fair. To do this, society must have a government which forces people to act so that life becomes more fair. Usually, those ways in which life is not spiritually fair are too complicated for anyone to imagine that governments can do much to make life more spiritually fair, so they concentrate on what they consider the material measures of fairness. This is further simplified to become material equality.

It is true that life is not fair. Some have a genetic intelligence factor which is greater than that of others. Some are tall, while some are short. Some are beautiful and some are not. Some are genetically disposed to be too skinny and some to being too fat. Some are born to good parents and some to bad parents. Some are born to wealth and some to poverty. Some are genetically prone to early cancers and heart problems, while some are not. Some are caught up in a plague or some other epidemic, while others escape. Some are ruined or killed by vicious criminals, or by robber barons or migrating tribes, or by the local despot. Some may invest years in a company only to see it strangled by a labor union which takes it over. Life is not fair.

We all know this. There are different ways to respond to this fact of life. The socialist says we should use the force of government to make life more fair. Unfortunately, this does violence to the idea that we should not initiate the use of force against others. The socialist claims that initiating the use of violence against others is justified if some of the imbalances of genetic values and chance in life can be lessened. Of course, when selling this idea, he or she almost always pretends that the desired lessening of unfairness can be achieved at little cost and refuses to address the high cost of creating a society in which a philosopher ruler or a democratic plurality of voters imposes their will by force upon others in their quest for what they think is fairness for everyone. Of course, their idea of everyone is always oversimplified to become some groups of people who will be favored in the adjustments, while others will be disfavored due to some combination of having more of what is being adjusted or having less political power.

Because life is complicated and life is not fair, the effort to adjust it for fairness for all people or more practically, some people, is a never-ending and evolving quest. The sets of people being helped and the sets of people who are forced to help are ever-changing. There is no way to establish the rule of known law or of intelligible law. Today, one must adjust the social consequences of differing intelligence, tomorrow the differing activity levels, the day after the different eating habits, the day after that the different sexualities, the day after that the differing mental healths, the day after that the differing ideas of climate control or stasis, then the income due to investors must be lowered so it is not so great compared to a migrant farm worker's income, and on and on. What measure of well-being is to be adjusted and what group is to be helped at the expense of what other group is an ever-evolving matter of fashion. It is also inherently a brutal game of political power. It is a recipe for chaos.

Frankly, women are more impressed by the argument from fairness for socialism than are men. There are many more women in the Democrat or Socialist Party than there are men. As with women's clothing fashions, what they take to be the fashionable measure of fairness of the day requiring governmental adjustment is constantly changing and it changes with as little rational reason as their clothing fashions change.

Many believe it possible to somehow use social force to rationally adjust the many factors of life to make life more fair for at least the average person or for those who are sub-average. There are many problems with this idea. First, there is no such thing as the average person. Second, it is harmful to anyone to have government designating them as sub-average, or even for that matter as average. The minute some socialist points at you and says life has not been fair to you and you are in such need of their help as to justify their using force to rob someone else of something you need to give it to you, you should be very indignant. Even it they try to disguise the robbery of someone else so you can receive the stolen goods by claiming those goods are yours by right, you should see this as a medical gown exposing your rear side. This is a flimsy costume designed only to fool the most simple-minded. You may look at me and think I am average, but I do not think I am average. Indeed, no one should think they are average. We should all be thinking of how we are going to make the most of whatever it is that we have that gives us our best chance to achieve our values. Most people really do have some things that they are truly good at. If they can identify those things or in some cases even just have the dedication to the idea of having some such traits, they can often translate that into an enhanced ability to achieve their values and to become happy.

Because life is complicated and the forces of politics are not capable of reconciling themselves with complexity, the government will always fumble about and create some new unfairness even as it attempts to reduce some perceived unfairness. Fairness cannot be achieve in the politicians' culture of sound bites. Government cannot recognize individuals as such. It can only recognize fairly large groups or occasionally the small group with much political power. Government is always a bull in a china shop. It is always a fire in a hay barn. All the dreams of rationally managing government with a wide agenda and scope have proven that this cannot be done. Government cannot even get good and affordable toothpaste to the right people at the right time. How often does this need to be proven before socialists will acknowledge its truth? If it cannot deliver toothpaste, how can it deliver more complicated values such as equal substantial wealth, equal quality education, equal security against criminals, equal quality housing, and equally interesting work? Governments have tried to deliver all of these goods or services on an equal and "fair" basis, but have never succeeded in doing so.

It is highly irrational not to learn from history. History has many lessons about what governments can and cannot do. History is not devoid of governments which tried to produce equality among its people for some brief part of the history of this nation or that. But, that history was always short and always followed by an orgy of force against the people that made them most miserable. Oftentimes, the carrot of equality was only held out so those claiming to offer it could acquire power and then yank the carrot away and replace it with the whip or the gun to the head.

Can it not be argued that it is unfair for government to use more force against one person than another? If equality were a value which every person should be committed to pursuing, then surely we should be as adamant that there be equality in the actions that government takes in its dealings with each of us. If government takes a bauble from me, should it not also give me a bauble of equal value? If it does not, it is violating the principle of equality. This, by the fairness principle, should mean that we are all in a zero-sum game with government, so what is the point of playing this game? Especially given that it is a game involving deadly force. If I object that the bauble taken from me was worth more to me than the bauble given me, the government will require that I shut up and live with it, or else. But of course, I know that equality is not really a principle of broad applicability, so there is no intention that the actions of government will be fair to each and every individual. Yet, does this not show the unsuitability of even trying to make equality a goal of government action? It is not an achievable goal by its very nature.

Wisely, the American Founders and the Framers of the Constitution recognized that government was force and a crude instrument for managing society. They saw that it had always been necessary, but also a huge danger in its own right. The government powerful enough to give you what you want, was seen as powerful enough to take all that you want away from you. Historically, governments very commonly did just this. So, government was not to give us all we want and it was also not to be made strong enough to pretend to be pursuing equality for all of us except for our equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution made no pretense of giving us equal happiness. It only said government should not block our efforts to personally achieve our happiness. This formula proved incredibly successful. Individuals could truly manage their own lives, identify their own values, and act to acquire the values they had identified. Man prospered as never before and man became happier, healthier, and more secure than ever before in history.

As men pursued their happiness, they were aware that some among them had been dealt unfair hands by chance. These same Americans who had no governmentally imposed requirement to be charitable or to rob one another so some could receive the stolen goods and services to be elevated to a more "equal" status in some sense, became the most charitable people on earth. They still are today. We are not unaware that bad hands are dealt some people at some point in their lives, or even for their entire life. We help, but we do this on the moral basis of voluntary action, not on the immoral basis of forced action.

Socialist government does not like competition. When government becomes the agency of charity, if it can be called charity when it is carried out by theft by organized gangs of thugs, it acts to squelch competition. This is exactly what Obama tried to do when the charitable deductions of wealthy people were to be given lower levels of deductability than were those of people with less income.

There is nothing more unfair than to have the value you have poured the hours of your life into achieving taken from you by force. If you were a farmer in the Dark Ages and a gang of cutthroats poured over the hill on horses, armed with steel swords, covered with body armor and possessing shields, and carried away your wife, your child, your only pig, all the loaves of bread your wife had baked, and trampled your wheat field, you understood that the most important thing you could ask of others was that they not use force in dealing with you. If you were strong enough to oppose that gang of cutthroats you would surely do so. Now, multiply that gang of cutthroats by a hundred or a thousand and arm them with machine guns, scoped rifles, tanks, and helicopters and have them take 44% of whatever you have invested the many hours of your working life into making and you have the unfairness of today in America. They still swoop down on you, the individual, in massive force and demand what you have produced by your own effort and take what they want. You do not know when they will come and you do not know what they will steal from you tomorrow. You know only that you are their slave, at least 44% of the working hours of your life.

We no longer have the rule of law, we have instead the rule of the momentary fashion, as Obama showed by forcing banks to keep money they do not want, by forcing the GM CEO to give up his position, and by giving the assets of Chrysler not to the lawful highest priority investors, but to the labor union. This is a system which has pretended to be justified by seeking fairness for the average guy and the downtrodden, but makes its livelihood by preying on the rich and setting up the average guy with the carrot to be yanked away and replaced by the whip. The average guy will soon become aware of the huge indebtedness that he will have to help pay off with higher taxes and/or by suffering at the hands of inflation as we did in the 1970s. Of course many of Obama's followers do not remember the 1970s or know any history. Some of those who do are too power-hungry to be detered by such knowledge. Some wish to see equal poverty for everyone, no matter if this means that everyone will be made worse off in terms of their options to manage their own lives and their health, security, and prosperity. Others are drawn in with simple-minded ideas of fairness. Together, there could be no more effective a crew of cutthroats swooping over the hill and descending like locusts striping the land of all value in the act of ultimate unfairness, the act of taking what they want by force from those who produced it by pouring their own lives into the effort.

Larry Elder: In Defense of "The Rich"

Larry Elder wrote an excellent article entitled "In Defense of 'The Rich'". Now, in recommending this article, I will make full disclosure: I have two sisters whose family income certainly puts them in the top 5 percent of incomes and may even be eligible for Obama's soak the rich taxes supposedly only to be directed at those with incomes above $250,000/year. Of course, I fully expect him and the Democrats already in complete control of Congress to plead that circumstances have changed after the election and that they have no choice but to soak those with incomes above $150,000 or above $120,000/year. Biden has already floated the $150,000 boundary and other prominent Democrats favor the $120,000 limit.

So, what are the main points that Larry Elder makes?

• The top 5% of income-earners (those making $153,542/year or more) pay 60% of all federal income taxes. The top 1% of earners (those making more than $388,806/year) pay 40% of all income taxes.
• A poll found that 36% of the people thought the rich pay 10% or less, 15% thought they paid between 10 and 20%, and 10% thought they paid between 20 and 30% of income taxes. Only 12% thought the rich paid 40% or more of income taxes.
• A poll of Democratic National Convention delegates found that the average of what they wanted the rich to pay was 25.6% of their income. (The tax rate for income above $32,551 is already 25% in 2008 and it is higher than 25.6% for income above $78,851 which is taxed at a 28% rate. Above $357,701 the tax rate is 35%. Obama promises to raise the rate for those above $250,000/year.)
• Those who do not now pay federal income taxes, tend to favor large federal programs which will help them, while those who pay income taxes tend to oppose those programs even when they will receive some benefits from them. Specifically, non-payers favor Obama's health plan, favor raising federal income taxes in the highest tax bracket from 35% to 54%, and want to raise Social Security taxes by 4% for any individual or business making more than $250,000/year.
• Liberal families earn about 6% more than conservative families, but conservative families donate about 30% more to charity than do liberal families. Even removing that part of conservative charity giving for religion, they give much more to charity in money and their time than do liberals.
• President Bush and VP Cheney give 18% and 5.5% of their income to charities. Between 2000 and 2004, when Obama and his wife made between $200,000 and $300,000 they gave less than 1% to charity. In 2007, with an income of $4.2 million, they gave 5% to charity. Biden and his wife made $319,853 in 2007 and gave 0.3% of their income to charity. Over the past 10 years, the Bidens gave only 0.1% of their income to charities.

So, a myth is widely believed that the rich pay little in income taxes. Democratic National Convention delegates believe tax rates are much lower than they are. Those making no contribution to the cost of federal programs tend to favor more programs that benefit them. Compassionate liberals give little to charities, while mean conservatives give much more to charities.

Do reality and the truth matter at all to people, especially Democrats? Apparently those who are ignorant or so immersed in dogma that they cannot see the truth are determined to wipe out individual choice to be productive and to give to charities. They wish to replace them with government mandates, backed of course with the liberal use of force. We have a society where much of our activity is still lightly pressed under the boot of government, but in the name of claims of neighborliness (Obama) and patriotism (Biden), our freely chosen actitivities are to be more and more subject to the brutal force of government edicts. When enough people are no longer paying income taxes and hence no longer have a stake in whether the money is well-spent or not, each additional dollar earned by some will only leave them with $0.46 apparently. Such a socialist paradise will give those among us who are most productive every reason to do less work and retire early. Atlas will shrug.

Do You Beat Your Neighbor?

In America today we have a great many citizens who either believe the government should enforce Christian Bible morality or that the leaders of the Nanny State should see to it that the helpless masses are taken care of. These people are now being joined by some who say that American law must be determined by Sharia Law, which is the only true law, the law of Allah. All of these people believe that they are good and kind-hearted people who care greatly about their fellow man, while those who believe in Constitutionally limited government, individual rights, and laissez faire capitalism are monsters who do not give a fig for their fellow man.

I have had this charge leveled against me since I was a teenager. The equation is simple: If you think you know how your neighbor should live his life and you think you can make his life choices better than he can, then you try to gain a democratic majority and impose your way to live his life upon him. If you try to do this, whether you succeed or not, you are a very virtuous person who cares about his neighbor, his fellow man. Those who resist you are bad guys. The resisters are bad whether they think that they want simply to manage their own lives or because they think that most other people are better qualified to manage their own lives than the resister is or than the government life management service is.

Of course there are some people who wish that others would manage their lives for them. There are not very many, but there are many elitists who think that there are many people who need to have them provide life-management services to the needy and unable. As I have often observed, it is a funny thing to consult with those whom the elite think are the dependent ones. Most of them think that they themselves are not dependent, but that there are others who are. Talk to the others who are and you find the story repeating itself in most cases. Strangely, most people would rather run their own lives, but they think that there are many more people who want help via a one-size fits all government mechanism than there actually are. But believing this and wanting to care about their fellow man, they push for laws to provide government programs to compel people to contribute their time and income to the needy recipients of the law.

The needy have a very special status. They are to be treated well and provided for. This is the means by which those who favor the laws to help them become virtuous. Meanwhile, the fact that the law requires that individuals give up their rights to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness does not make the law proponent feel like a bad person. The fact that the law requires that if any particular individual does not provide the tax money to be used or does not provide the service free or at below market cost, then government force will be used to see that he does, does not make the law proponent feel bad. Government employees will be dispatched to seize the resisters property or to garnish his wages. If the recalcitrant individual is so foolish as to try to defend his individual rights, well, shoot him! He obviously did not care about the community enough. He was obviously suffering from a severe mental illness, social Darwinism or is an anti-social sociopath.

Would anyone even think to look into this individual's life to see how charitably he treated people that he knew and cared for? Very unlikely. Almost everyone would simply say he broke the law and he had to be compelled to submit or to be put away. So, our good people who care so much for their fellow man are now fully prepared to kill their fellow man and their neighbor in the interest of The Law, despite the fact that the law was not Constitutional and was not necessary to accomplish the mission it supposedly had. After all, the mission could have been accomplished very well by private charity. Any private charity with the enthusiastic support of a majority of the voters should be able to care for a great many needy people.

So why must the people who wish to help the needy use the force of law to do so? Why do they not put their money and time into what they themselves say they believe in? Doesn't one have to conclude that they do not really believe in helping the needy enough to put much effort into it? Don't we have to deduce that they are eager to gain their virtue on the cheap? But, it is a virtue that threatens any individual who believes that he has an individual right to choose his charitable acts himself with death. How do these people who claim they are virtuous for caring about their fellow man square this with hiring government law enforcers and sending them off to kill the individualists among them. Why do they want to beat their neighbor? Why are they so violent? Yet they pretend to be good and to care. Is this not transparently false? Are these not clearly evil-doers?

If you want to help the needy, by all means go and do it. Just have the common civility not to force everyone else to commit their lives to your charity. They may not have any charity they wish to commit to. If so, that is their right. On the other hand, they may be very committed to charitable acts which are simply different from those which you have a commitment to. If you really have a commitment to helping others, then put your money and your time where your mouth is. Don't shove a gun down someone else's throat to make them give their money and their lives to your value. They have the right to choose their own values. It is by choosing our own values that we develop and manage our own lives. Without that freedom, there is a clear violation of a man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness.

Charity Stronger Among Republicans

George Will, in a commentary called Conservatives More Liberal Givers, discusses a book by Professor Authur C. Brooks of Syracuse University entitled Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. This author may have been surprised by his results, but I have long argued that this appeared to be the case. Some key findings were:

• Conservative-headed households gave 30% more to charity than liberal families, despite the fact that liberal families had incomes 6% higher.
• Conservatives donate more blood and more time to charities.
• Bush carried 24 of 25 states against Kerry where charitable giving was above average.
• Those who reject the idea that government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality, give 4 times more to charity than those who agree with that idea.

The article then goes into a discussion of the influence of religion and the role of government and how this affects people's charitable giving. On the issue of the role of government, I have long argued that the most people's attitude about that comes from an examination of themselves. It is their own character which is projected onto others or their desire for power that drives them into believing either in a limited role for government or for a broad and activist role for government. Consequently, while a strong correlation with charitable giving exists, the cause and the effect have been interchanged in the discussion in Will's commentary.

Essentially, most conservatives believe in individual rights and that individuals are generally capable of managing their own lives and choosing their own values. They believe that a man can live in liberty and pursue his own happiness without using force to wrest what he wants from his neighbor. He believes that with hard work, rational thinking, and the right values, he will likely be able to define and secure his own happiness. Admittedly, there are some conservatives also who have a low opinion of many of their fellow men, but they are a minority.

Liberals are more bifurcated. Most believe that many of their fellow men are not capable of managing their own lives rationally. Interestingly enough, even though they are better educated and wealthier on average, they have a rather low opinion of themselves. They are rather appalled that they have such materialistic values and feel guilty for their wealth. Some feel guilty because they believe they are the oppressors who hold the poor in subjugation. Some actually feel guilt for using the power of government to shift wealth from others to themselves. Some feel guilty because they have such a low opinion of so many others, which is something that those with a low opinion of themselves are inclined toward. It makes them feel that they are better in comparison. They are especially inclined to have a low opinion of blacks and Hispanics, because they view them as such helpless victims. Those who accept victimhood and those who project it upon others are the worst racists.

Yet despite all this guilt, they are not inclined toward personal acts of charity and this conflicts with their conviction that they should feel more maternally for the many they think are not able to adequately care for themselves. They see many of their neighbors, or at least those living in the poorer neighborhoods, as victims and as helpless. So how do they resolve this conflict between having materialistic values and feeling guilty for doing so little to help the many victims they see around them? Well, they toss this burden onto everyone's shoulders by claiming it is the role of government to care for the needy and the victims. Of course, there are also some liberals who love being victims and using that to put a claim on the products of the hard work of others and using it as an excuse for not having proven to be very productive members of society.

Those in favor of maternalistic government feel very good about themselves, even as they put zoning requirements in place that make it difficult for the poorer folks to own decent homes and as they slap high taxes on gasoline to make it harder for the poorer folks to get to work or to take vacations. Yes they love themselves for being enlightened liberals even as they use eminent domain to take the apartments of the poor and turn them into upscale shopping malls or apartments. They feel the cheap thrill of giving the poor a living wage, even as the minimum wages prices those with poor educations and no work experience out of the market. They love themselves even more as they boost the cost of cars with requirements for higher fuel efficiency and more safety features. They feel so morally superior as they use the force of government to maintain the social security system to transfer wealth from the young to the old, who are usually actually wealthier, despite the popular mythology. They bask in their own sunlight as they dictate to health care professionals how they will deliver health care to those on Medicare. They buy carbon credits as the poor do without energy or pay much more for it than they should in the name of preventing greenhouse gas emissions.

It makes them feel great that they can use their vote, rather more than their own money or time, to alleviate their guilt. It is also very important to them that with their maternalistic or paternalistic desires, they also become the intellectual and caring elite who set the direction of government programs. Since they already suffer from a low self-esteem and have a generally low opinion of others, when they are put in charge of government programs, they find myriad ways to direct the money to other liberals who are already well-off. But little actually goes to those the laws intend it to go to. See for instance the huge sums that go into the Washington, DC public schools for the education of children and how ineffectively the money is used. Or see how effective the huge sums of money directed at government programs for the development of alternative energy sources have been. See how many liberals favor high taxes, but prove to be the best at using deductions so they pay little of the taxes. Isn't it incongruous that those who favor high taxes should be so diligent in seeking to reduce their own tax payments?

The conservative is more likely to have a core respect for other humans and to believe that when someone is briefly down in their luck, that they are worthy of help. But they do not believe in helping people who are chronically down on their luck. They are inclined to believe that that is likely to be due to a defect of character, unless their is a severe illness. The defects of another's character are not their responsibility. Thus, they reject the idea that every black or Hispanic or poor person deserves special help. No, they, like everyone else, are capable of managing their own lives. They deserve to be treated equally before the law, but they are not to be given special condescending privileges. It is reasonable to expect them to think for themselves and to work as hard as anyone else. This expectation is the foundation of the respect for others that limited government presupposes. The conservative does not boost his own self-esteem by looking down on others. He also does not wallow in envy of others.

The modern progressive or liberal is a person of a different character from most conservatives and it is not at all surprising how this relates to how they assess others and any charitable relationships they may have. The conservative gives of himself and does not presume to use force to take from others and then claim that as his act of charity. Unfortunately, the fascist liberals do just that. Charity does not really consist of stealing from some to give the stolen goods to others one does not respect. Charity is the act of voluntarily helping someone that one has reason to believe is worthy of respect as a human being. It is an act directed at those we believe to share our fundamental value of life itself. One cannot share that value if one does not generally use one's rational faculty to identify the nature of reality and one's relationship with it. Man must act purposefully to achieve the value of his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. When he does these things, he is worthy of respect and worthy of our help when he suffers one of the set-backs that life can bring on unexpectedly. Of course, most such set-backs are handled by the rational individual by himself, but some we can all understand can be overwhelming and we may choose to help when we can. This is a matter of personal choice, however, and not a universal dictate to be imposed by government wielding a gun, as the liberals would have it.