THE EMOTIONAL JOYS OF LEFTISM - Part Two - CONTROLLING OTHERS

In a previous post, I gave an example of how expropriating the private property earned by others is one of the major emotional bases of modern leftism.

Another joy in which leftists revel is controlling other people.

Rather than improve the world by modifying their own behavior, leftists seek to "improve" the world by controlling the behavior of other people.

For ongoing discussions of this sort of psychology, I recommend regularly reading the weblogs of several thoughtful psychiatrists: Dr. Sanity and Sigmund, Carl & Alfred.

The theme is also regularly discussed in my fellow Astute Blogger JR's weblog, Dissecting Leftism.

Today, I want to offer one example.

In his book, "Who Really Cares,"Arthur Brooks shows that leftists are much less likely to donate to charity than so-called "conservatives."

In his review of the book Professor Wilfred McClay describes his own experience:

Back in my misspent youth, I helped manage a political campaign. My candidate was, like myself, an energetic liberal Democrat, and we ran a summer-long door-to-door campaign throughout the sprawling district. I accompanied the candidate on his daily outings, recording data about each visit on 3 x 5 cards that had been prepared in advance. They included the party registration of the voters, as gathered from Board of Elections printouts.

After a number of weeks of this ceaseless contact with our would-be constituents, both of us noticed something disturbing. There was a consistent disparity between what we expected and what we found in the people we met. Self-labeled liberals would, at most, dutifully proclaim their support for our candidacy, but they were often curt and ungenerous with their time and money. Conservatives, who looked upon our ideas with suspicion, nevertheless were quite willing to talk with us about them, not to mention offering us glasses of water, inviting us onto their porches and into their homes, and otherwise treating us with courtesy and respect.

The candidate himself mused to me one day, as we sat on a curb together, "If I'm ever hit by a car, I sure as hell hope that the next guy to come along will be a conservative." I asked him why. "Simple. A liberal will blame the unsafe conditions of the highways, blame budget cuts and keep driving. A conservative will get out of his car and help."

These observations highlight, I think, one of the most important psychological differences between leftists and conservatives: conservatives expect to address the world's problems by acting themselves, and adjusting their actions and behavior, whereas leftists expect to solve the world's problems by controlling the behavior of other people.

In other words, conservatives want to help the poor by donating their own money and time to the effort, leftists claim to help the poor by taxing other people and using other people's money to fund programs.

As Jonathan Rosenblum noted in his review of the book:

My youthful equation of liberal politics and good character has long since been consigned to the dustbin. When the tax return of Al Gore Jr., multimillionaire avatar of the common man, revealed an annual charitable contribution of $250, I was not surprised. Every poor kollel student I know gives many times that to tzedaka in a year. Indeed I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the average charitable contributions of kollel students exceed those of our enlightened Supreme Court justices, despite the latter’s vastly greater wealth.

THOSE SUSPICIONS find confirmation in a recent book by Syracuse University Prof. Albert Brooks, Who Really Gives: America’s Charity Divide. Brooks set out expecting to confirm the “children of light” hypothesis, and came away after 10 years of research proving the opposite. For example, 24 of the 25 states with above average rates of charitable giving were red states in 2004. In states in which President George W. Bush won more than 60 percent of the vote in 2004, the average family gave 3.5% of its income to charity; in states where John Kerry took more than 60% of the vote, the comparable figure was 1.9%.

Brooks found that such factors as political conservatism and having children are positively correlated with generosity and volunteerism. And interestingly, wealth does not predict generosity. Brooks discovered that the working poor are the most generous class. They give far more than middle-class people, and even give 30% more than the rich as a percentage of their income.

Thus the leftists take money away from other people to fund programs that keep the poor in a state of helpless dependency, while failing to do anything themselves to ameliorate the conditions in which the poor actually live.

The emotional joy for leftists lies not in actually helping other people, but in forcing other people to obey leftist dictates.