Do Conservatives Hate Poor People
12/05/2012
I am so tired of the tripe. One of my peers posted a picture that mocks conservatives by claiming that we care about the unborn, but that we neglect poor people. In other words, we fight to protect the lives of the unborn, but we could care less for children and adults who are suffering. What amazes me most is that people buy this stuff hook, line, and sinker. So let's amicably and logically discuss what conservatives actually believe.
Arguments from the left rest on one important crux: conservatives are greedy people who do not want to pay taxes. You see, the problem is that Liberals are trapped in a dichotomous world view that limits political issues to binary oppositions like the following. A. You care about poor people, so you believe that it is the government's job to use tax dollars to help them B. You do not care about poor people, so you do not want the government to use taxes to help them.
Liberals tend to only hear these two views. Well, in all reality, the second view is a straw man- and poorly constructed one- that blatantly misrepresents conservatives like myself. The truth is that there is a third option: Since it is not the government's job to help poor people (read John Locke's Second Treatise of Government and the American Declaration of Independence), it is OUR job help poor people voluntarily.
The government's job is to protect life, liberty, and private property. It is not the government's job to level the socioeconomic playing field, to provide healthcare, or even to eliminate poverty. Once we start whimsically using the American government to accomplish our myriad of wants and needs, we bastardize it and transform it into nothing more than a blank sheet of paper. It gets even better, studies show that those evil Conservatives donate more money than Liberals (Kristof,2008). Thomas Sowell, the Conservative economist further elaborates, "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" (2012). The liberal counter argument is bunk, but I will have to comment on it in a future blog. To sum it up, one can certainly disagree with the Conservative laissez faire, free market capitalistic approach, but he is showcasing his ignorance if he derides Conservatives as haters for simply disagreeing with his stance that it is the government's job to help poor people. Get your wallet out and put your money where your mouth is!
Nicholas D. Kristof. (2008). Bleeding Heart Tightwads. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=0
Thomas Sowell. (2012). Conservatives Donate more than Liberals. Newsmax. Retrieved from: http://www.newsmax.com/ThomasSowell/Conservatives-Donate-Liberals-compassion/2012/09/10/id/451295
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