"What we really need is compassionate liberalism..."

The effective title of a blog entry from Elephants in the Bluegrass covering some of Arthur Brooks' research on the behavior of self-styled liberals and conservatives...

(I've blogged a number of times about his work; if you're interested in seeing the other stuff, just search for Brooks within my blog)

Sloane Graff's summary:

NEWSFLASH! Conservatives are more charitable than liberals. In his book Who Really Cares, Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks provides detailed data and statistical analysis which shows that conservatives give away much more, in terms of money and volunteer time, than liberals.

And then he makes this provocative point:

The term "compassionate conservative" is an unfortunate one because it infers that somehow compassion is a term not normally associated with conservatism. Brooks proves that this is absolutely not true. It is compassion that is foreign to liberalism, at least as measured by generosity and volunteerism.

I'm a bit torn here. I'm not surprised by Brooks' data. But I also observe that "conservatives" have less verbal concern about the poor and "economic justice" sorts of issues. At the end of the day, I'm not impressed by (most) conservatives in this realm either.

Two thoughts, then, to wrap up:

First, liberals are even less impressive as a group

Second, the probable explanation is that liberals defer/look to govt to solve these things (the nice way of saying it) or are much more eager to spend others' money than their own.