Take that, self-satisfied liberals! A central trope in liberal political discourse is that conservatives are selfish guardians of their own wealth and privilege. But according to "Who Really Cares," a new book by the Syracuse University public-policy specialist Arthur C. Brooks, it is liberals (especially the nonreligious sort), not conservatives, who are less likely to open their wallets to make charitable donations.
Consider two people, Brooks suggests in his book: One goes to church every week and believes it's not the government's job to reduce the amount of inequality in America. The other doesn't attend church and believes the government must rectify economic injustice. Similar in every other way, which of these people gives more to charity?
The churchgoer, Brooks concludes, is twice as likely to give money. What's more, she will give 100 times as much. And not just to her house of worship: She will give 50 times more to nonreligious charities, too. Brooks's book is filled with statistics like these. It "really obliterates the stereotypes about who is philanthropic," says Peter Schuck, a professor at Yale Law School, who read the book in manuscript.
If we want to improve America's already impressive record of charitable giving -- as much as $250 billion annually, including an average of $1,800 per family, a figure that dwarfs that of any other country -- one important step would be "to work for cultural change on the secular left," Brooks said last week at a forum on the book at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
