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Townhall…
Depending
on Dependency
by Thomas Sowell
Sep 12, 2012
The
theme that most seemed to rouse
the enthusiasm of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in
Charlotte
was that we are all responsible for one another -- and that Republicans
don't
want to help the poor, the sick and the helpless.
All
of us should be on guard
against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should
check such
beliefs against facts.
Yet
the notion that people who prefer
economic decisions to be made by individuals in the market are not as
compassionate as people who prefer those decisions to be made
collectively by
politicians is seldom even thought of as a belief that should be
checked
against facts.
Nor
is this notion confined to
Democrats in America today. Belief in the superior compassion of the
political
left is a worldwide phenomenon that goes back at least as far as the
18th
century. But in all that time, and in all those places, there has been
little,
if any, effort on the left to check this crucial assumption against
facts.
When
an empirical study of the
actual behavior of American conservatives and liberals was published in
2006,
it turned out that conservatives donated a larger amount of money, and
a higher
percentage of their incomes (which were slightly lower than liberal
incomes) to
philanthropic activities.
Conservatives
also donated more of
their time to philanthropic activities and donated far more blood than
liberals. What is most remarkable about this study are not just its
results.
What is even more remarkable is how long it took before anyone even
bothered to
ask the questions. It was just assumed, for centuries, that the left
was more
compassionate.
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall…
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