I am not a good person, or an idealist, or anything like that.

Hence my charity is very limited and targeted.

I give to my local synagogue, more than the membership fee. This is simply because of the services I receive in exchange and for the fact that the synagogue provided an instant community for me when I arrived back in Dublin after five years of absense and does so to other newcomers, Jewish and not, as well.

I try to give to Damanga every month. This is simply because they need help and came to synagogues to ask for help and explained why they need help. Sudanese refugees also arrived in Israel and asked for help. And if somebody asks me or mine for help and explains why he needs help, I give.

The third "charity" I give is the occasional hundred euros for open source software projects I use.

I also give the odd euro to charities collecting money at my workplace or in shops, IF the charity is validated by the Irish government.

Other than that I tend to spend more on Israeli products or in Israel than on other products or in other countries. That is, I pay less attention to getting the best deal when the profit caused supports Israel or Israelis in some way.

I can imagine. I think I should get the book. However, I am curious how liberal secular Jews fare according to the statistics.

But I know the problem you are talking about. I ran into the issue in this blog discussion here:

http://www.sudanesethinker.com/2008/11/01/is-obama-a-socialist/#comments

Someone quoted a comment from Youtube (and we all know how clever those people are):

“you’re socialist if you want the rich to give to the poor and a good Christian patriot if you want the poor to give to the rich.”

I assume this was meant to be sarcastic. I replied:

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Christians are very much into the rich giving to the poor, not vice versa. In fact, I believe in America Christians give far more to charities than non-Christians (I may be wrong).

The difference to socialism is that socialists want OTHER people to give to the poor. It’s a form of projected idealism (which also exists in Christianity).

And I was told:

Ever heard of irony? The commentator clearly pokes at the contrast between Christian rules and the embarrassment after the “spread the wealth around” quote. In fact what Jesus preached was not far from socialism, but conservatives tend to see a stark contrast between them two.

So I finally replied:

Yes, I have “heard of irony”. The statement doesn’t make sense to me because there is no irony in it.

American Christians already do give to charity and do believe that the rich should give to the poor. And they are doing it.

I suppose there would be irony if American Christians were known to be stingy. But they are not. They are in fact among the biggest givers in the world.

I may be wrong, but I did hear that Obama is known to have given very little to charity before this year. You want irony? Think of a presidential candidate who speaks of sharing the wealth and doesn’t. (I don’t know how much McCain gave but he did adopt an orphan from Bangladesh.)

But making fun of Christians because they prefer giving their own money to the poor rather than others’ is very low. Where in the Bible does it say to take somebody else’s money and give it to the poor?

The point is that American Christians are all sorts of things, but do not appear to be famous for their stingyness. And apparently some people so much want to make fun of them as a group that they cannot even be bothered to make fun of one of their real attributes. Instead they translate "do not support stealing money" into "do not support giving to the poor"; despite the fact that American Christians, of all groups, are among those that give the most to the poor in charity and probably in taxes too.

I myself compare badly with that group, as I explained above. And I know that American Christians' charity is a major source of funds for the very community I myself support and need.

As for you, Brad, I guess "Fences" is something great you have given to me. I wonder how many of those criticising you for your evil capitalist behaviour have even given that much to anyone, let alone me. My life is not even a bit better because of those people, but Stardock's free stuff makes it a little bit better.

Would it be better for the world if he started "caring" and stopped giving?

"Compassion", whatever is is today, is not as good as actual help. "Bitterness" is better than knowing what others must do. And "hatred" is likely better than the love of someone who cares but doesn't do anything out of principle.

How would that help? Perhaps the world needs fewer people who know how to better themselves and more people who actually help. And "Who Really Cares" is about those people. They are the ones who keep humanity alive. A bigoted ignoramus who actually gives to charity is better than ten really smart people who know the meaning of life but wouldn't lift a finger to help anybody else (except by selling them books).

This whole discussion reminds me of a famous quote from "Yes Minister":

"We offer every possible assistance short of actual help."

The difference is between compassion and actually doing something, between words and action.

Bitter, hateful, and uncompassionate; those are words to describe others. What do YOU actually do?

I can see where she could have inferred that.  

Why, because he said he actually donates to charity rather than simply declaring that he cares?

You have made a critial error here... allow me to correct it:

They feel it is the RICH's tax dollars job to help "the poor", to which they belong.

This reminds me, Bioware made a game called jade empire... in one town you have a dam being opened to excavate a magical artifact, the open dam causes the river to flow too fast, cutting the town off from fishing and trading and putting everyone in risk...

Anyways I was just reading some in their forums when I came agross a thread where liberals were explaining that the closed fist (dark side of the force) option (destroy the dam, condemning the town, but allowing the wine merchant to rake in more profits from the pirates, and get paid for it) is ragen's "trickle down prosperity" the "conservatives" beleive in... which is "take from the poor and give to the rich" (in their words)... and thus conservatives are... well, evil.

By the standards of this site I'm a liberal, and I don't give much to charity. Partly because those same people begging for change in the bus interchanges are provided a living wage by fiat of the state, but also because I studied development and political science long enough to know that aid is almost completely ineffective in improving a situation. It's a bandaid that only makes things worse in the long run.

Instead I'm a huge fan of microcredit schemes, which reward the motivated with access to capital. Kiva is a great one operating in the 3rd world that you can loan to yourself (google it for the details).

I wouldn't call it giving though when there's the expectation that the givee will give something back.

My wife and tithe at our church, which goes to fund several other charities and missions throughout our local area. We always try to donate goods or money to help in disasters such as katrina or the tsunami. We also send care packages to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often include items intended for the indigenous children and such.

I do not, however, give handouts to bums on the street; the government extorts enough money from me to help the "poor", many, many, many of whom do not really deserve it. See "octomom", for example.

Drop the booze or needle, get a shower and get a job. My church uses my tithe for organizations that can help them do just that. That's good enough.

I feel that this is a very unfair characterization by Draginol. The evidence is anecdotal at best, with nothing to back it up. One thing he does not consider is time. Many people who cannot afford to give monitarily contribute via time and effort. Maybe you cannot write a check to a soup kitchen but you can help out twice a month. That is just as important if not more so. I would say that a giving person can be from any political persuasion, and I know many giving lefties and righties. I will agree that just giving money to homeless is pretty pointless, you are much better off going through a local soup kitchen.

For the record I am a 28 pear old Presbyterian, one of those old mainline churches that contains liberals as well as conservatives, and actually invites and embraces diversity of ideas, unlike many "Christian" churches today. My wife and I are VERY active Christians, she teaches at a Christian school (effectivly taking a 20K a year paycut to work in a Christian environment), and I serve as an Elder for our 1200 member church (First Pres. of Plymouth, MI). We tithe, and give money to several local Detroit organizations and also support Campus Crusade for Christ. I say all this not to brag, but to show you that there are giving people of ALL political persuasions.

jdkeepsmiling, you are too innocent... just because you are generous, giving, and volunteering doesn't mean others do, specifically, others who think that its the government job to tax the "wealthy" (middle class) to give to the "poor". (not soup kitchen/homeless poor, but checks to people who don't really need them)

The question is, are religious donations charity or should they simply be considered social club dues.

But even granting religious donations as charity, the book is more an argument for the differences between charitable donations by the religious versus the non-religious, as opposed to showing much, if any, difference between conservative and liberal charity. And since conservatives are more likely to be religious than liberals that results in the mistaken conclusion that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, all due to the afore mentioned collection plate.

His data is arguable as well. I'm not a statistician but it’s been pointed out that there were a number of liberties taken by requiring significantly different confidence factors in certain sets of data versus others. This is indicative that the results were “massaged”. As a side note his results also concluded that liberals have on average a 6% higher income than conservatives which is counter to most widely accepted data and casts further doubt on his results. Also the source of his data was a survey and not a scientifically conducted poll.

The following is excerpt from Who Really Cares about Arthur Brooks, http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-really-cares-about-arthur-brooks.html.

“So I checked the General Social Survey [http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss04] one of his sources, to see if the raw data do indeed fit his thesis. What a surprise, they don't. In nearly every case, the GSS data show that liberals contribute more and volunteer more than do conservatives.”

Also this from Compassionate Hackery, http://biobrain.blogspot.com/2008/04/compassionate-hackery.html.

“Because as it turns out, while religious conservatives are more likely to give to charity than secular liberals, they give only slightly more than religious liberals. And while both religious groups gave more than non-religious liberals, all three groups gave more than non-religious conservatives; who were apparently the most stingy.”

I also have been unable to access any of Mr. Brooks data and since I'm unwilling to give him money by buying his book perhaps you could be so kind as to provide the source for his conclusions.

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I also referenced an article by Jim Lindgren, Concerns About Arthur Brooks's "Who Really Cares", http://www.volokh.com/posts/1164012942.shtml. Somewhere within the two articles referenced above and this one is where I got the comment that the differences between conservative and liberal charitable giving disappear once religious donations are excluded.

Also it does seem a bit disingenuous to only request sources for contrary opinion and basically accept the synopsis conclusion of a book on faith.

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