Most of my very best friends are Liberals mostly because we have the ability to agree to disagree on most things.
While discussing many issues, I have found them to be compassionate and caring about our fellow man kind. Actually, I agree in principle with many of their concepts but where we part company is how we actually accomplish these noble ideals.
Many of my answers come from the same sources which is the rich need to pony up the resources. I want folks to give freely in the private sector where they like to tax the rich while side stepping any responsibility for themselves.
Why is it most Liberals do not contribute as much to charities as their counterparts do? When I say as much, I mean a percentage of their income.
While I believe to much is given much is expected, I also believe we all need to contribute a portion of our bounty to the less fortunate.
Why is it Liberals support the wasteful government taking on these challenges and turn a blind eye to fraud and abuse?
It is one thing to want everyone to have something, it is another thing to figure out how we are going to pay for it.
With all due respect, I'm not sure this is an entirely fair summary, Rick. I would certainly count myself and most of my friends as "liberals," (though we usually call ourselves "progressives"), and we all give as much as we can. And not only to charities and institutions: for example, I personally make it a point to only carry as much cash as I can afford to give away if asked for it, because if someone asks me for money, I will always give them everything I have on me (that being based on the rules of giving taught by Maimonides).
What I would say about liberals is that we really want the poor taken care of and the helpless helped, and we simply don't trust that this will ever happen if doing so is left entirely voluntary. And we feel justified in that distrust, in part because it has never worked that way in the past, and in part because the ones with the most money don't seem to be particularly interested in giving any of it to the ones with none.
You understand that I don't mean this personally to you, or to my own conservative friends, whom I know to be caring and generous-- I just disagree with them about politics-- and I am sure you are the same. But you folks seem to be the exceptions to the rule about conservatives in America, not the norm.
I don't know that the poor have ever complained about who fed them and clothed them and raised them up when they were hungry, ragged, and oppressed. The important thing is that those in need be aided. So I suppose the liberal attitude is that since government is how we, as a society, make sweeping decisions and take broad actions for the public good, that's how we should first and foremost help out those in need of helping.
I can't speak for my Christian friends, but for me and my Jewish friends, this is usually very straightforward because we think about helping the poor in a very different way. I have noted on a number of occasions that Christian thought about charity seems deeply influenced by the conception of the word itself-- charity coming from the Latin
caritas, meaning "compassion." In other words, in that view, charity is what one does as a good deed if one is compassionate. But in Hebrew, the word usually translated as "charity" is
tzedakah, which comes from the root
tzedek, meaning "justice." In other words, in that view,
tzedakah is what one does because not to give money and resources to aid the poor and the hungry is simply unjust.
So, if one believes that giving aid to those in need is a fundamental matter of justice, rather than merely an act of personal compassion, it makes nothing but sense to presume that it should be communally directed and organized (and, indeed, Jewish Law teaches that when Jews go to a new place, and form a Jewish community there for the first time, the first thing that they must do-- before even the construction of a synagogue or the assemblage of a rabbinical court-- is to arrange for the collection of
tzedakah and the establishment of a food pantry for the poor and hungry).
As a Jew, that's how I see it. As an American, I feel that it is my great good fortune to live in a country that sees fit to (at least in theory) protect my rights, present opportunities for me to enrich myself, and give me and others a fair shake in making the most of our lives. Plenty of other places don't do those things. The fair price that we owe in return for the freedom our government protects and the privileges and opportunities given us by the American way of life is that we give something back to the American people, in the form of tax monies we should expect the government to spend on making everyone's lives better and ensuring that everyone does, in fact, get a fair shake to make the most of their lives. And the more we benefit from America, the more successful we are, the more we ought to give back.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be rich. Or even super-rich, if they can manage it. But I am saying that I believe that part of the social contract in a civil society is that there is give and take, and that everyone, ideally should both give and take. If people are in a position where they are unable to give because they are poor, we should help them get themselves in a position where they are able to give; and if people are in a position where they don't need to take, because they are rich, we should expect them to give more as a consequence.
I would never expect that some people only give and some people only take. I think we all should pay what we can, as long as we can pay at all; but part of the responsibility of success is the duty to share one's good fortune-- not to give everything away or to dispossess oneself: it's fine to be rich-- but to share a meaningful portion, which should be proportional to one's success.
I give to charities. Nearly everyone I know gives substantially to charities. But many people in the country don't, and I don't think those who don't give are proportionally more liberal or more conservative: I think it's just most people. If everyone really gave to the best of their abilities and resources, problems in this country would be far improved from where they stand. But it is because most people don't, and won't, that I, and those liberals who think like me, are unwilling to let the lives and safety of poor people hang in the balance while those who have try to find their conscience: instead, we say let it happen mandatorily, through government, and once the issues have been addressed that way, if it looks feasible to move to a private rather than public model, we can discuss it.
Couldn't put a number on that, honestly. Then again, whatever numbers you are looking at would hardly be telling anyways.
