In a recent sermon delivered by Harvey C. Mansfield at Appleton Chapel in Memorial Church, Harvard University, we are reminded of the admonition of St. Thomas Aquinas that charity is the chief of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and that charity is the common form of all the virtues because all depend on the love of God.  But people have developed different perspectives on the real world implementation of charity and how it should be properly manifested in this life.

Two recent books have surveyed the various attitudes of Americans as they pertain to charitable giving and related sentiments and instincts and have produced instructive results.  One of them, to which Mansfield alludes in his sermon, is by economist (and registered independent) Arthur C. Brooks who, in his book Who Really Cares?, notes first of all that no developed country approaches American giving.  Based on the most recent data, Americans gave, per capita, amounts ranging from 3.5 to 14 times as much as citizens of other nations, and were more likely to volunteer their time by percentages ranging from 15 to 32.  However, the most interesting aspect of his research shows that, by significant margins, self-described “conservatives” in America are more likely to give than self-described “liberals”.  In the year 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on average, 30% more dollars to charity than households headed by a liberal, and this difference is not a factor of income differential; in fact, the liberal families in the survey earned an average of 6% more than the conservative families.  And the trend was consistent in areas other than cash contributions.  For example, in the Brooks survey, conservative Americans were much more likely to donate blood and did so more often than liberals.  

The other recent survey is the subject of a new book by Peter Schweizer, Makers and Takers, the subtitle of which tells it all: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less, and Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals.  The survey results highlighted here are obviously more comprehensive, but here are a few findings that have a direct bearing on charitable attitudes: 71% of conservatives say they have an obligation to care for a seriously injured spouse or parent, compared with 46% of liberals; 55% of conservatives say they would endure all things for the one they love, compared to 26% of liberals; liberals are much more likely to say that money is more important to them; they are 2.5 times more likely to be resentful of the success of others and 50% more likely to be jealous of the good fortune of others; and conservatives are much more likely to donate money and time to charitable causes.

Interestingly, while the single biggest determinant of one’s altruism is religion, the significant differences outlined in these surveys are not simply a function of religious people’s charitable giving to their churches.  People of faith are clearly more charitable with secular causes as well and this is demonstrated by the Brooks surveys in particular, which found that religious people were 10 percentage points more likely than secularists to give money to explicity non-religious charities and 21 points more likely to volunteer their time.  And the value of the average religious household’s gifts to non-religious charities was 14% higher after correcting for income differences.

In short, it is clear that there are undeniably significant charitable attitudes prevalent as one moves along the American political spectrum.  What gives?  Mansfield believes that the reason liberals are less personally charitable is that they believe in justice more than generosity, because the latter is “hit-or-miss”, whereas justice covers everyone, at least in principle.  In other words, to make sure that everyone is covered they are willing to sacrifice the voluntary aspect of virtue and go for taxes that compel everyone to be charitable.  To me, the most telling survey result was the Brooks finding that people who reject the idea that”government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition!  This is the lesson learned — to most liberals, particularly those in public office, the definition of charity is redistribution funded through government programs with other peoples’ money.   

The previous essay glides readily into the central theme of Amity Shlaes’s book, The Forgotten Man, which I recommend as a thoroughly engrossing history of the Great Depression.  The connection to the charity analogy is with the image of ”the forgotten man” created by the architects of the Franklin Roosevelt election campaign and the New Deal.  This adaptation was a distortion of its original concept, which had been developed fifty years before by William Graham Sumner to describe the victim in a paradigm where social reformer A cooperates with politician B to apply government resources to resolve the problems of person X.  For Sumner, the forgotten man in the diagram is C, the man who must pay for such programs through taxation.  Of course, he gets lost in the Roosevelt version, in which the primary beneficiary is the “forgotten” man, political constituent X.  And the rest, as they say, is history–the sense of entitlement of Roosevelt’s forgotten man in the form of interest groups and various special pleaders have been subsidized by Sumner’s forgotten man ever since, right down to the Congressional earmarks of today. 

Shlaes’s book is a great story about how the constant experimentation and inconsistency of policy, together with several blunders by both Hoover and Roosevelt, prolonged the depression to the point where Roosevelt was compelled to introduce a new kind of politics for the election of 1936 and,  in the process, ended American federalism as we had known it and created the “pork barrel” and other interest group constituencies and their dependencies that have so dominated our policy and our politics since that time.  

So now we have a nominee of the Democratic Party and the main event can proceed.  The most hotly contested primary in electoral memory, which was destined to produce at least one of two history-making results, produced the one that almost no one would have predicted as recently as six months ago, and the Clintons, despite their half-hearted attempts to put on a game face, will be in a state of shock, disbelief, and a fair amount of resentment for years to come.  But make no mistake–she and Bill have a plan, and look for it to begin to unfold even before their party’s convention.

Meanwhile, what really happened here?  The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has the best summation–Obama’s “identity” beat Hillary’s “identity”–and he poses the critical question of the end game: Did the Clinton supporters and senior party officials ever believe that the 794 superdelegates would decide that of the two candidates’ constituencies–Hillary’s women and white working class voters and Barack’s black voters–they would stiff Sen. Obama’s 90% black base?  Not a chance, even if he led by just one delegate vote.  Obama’s identity politics trumped Clinton’s identity politics.

However badly the Obama people want to deny this or attempt to continue with his core message of “unity”, it won’t sell, because his constitution is of, by, and for group identity, and this fact is manifest in the identification of his key support base, his messages over the years, and his policy prescriptions on the campaign circuit–much of which is replete with identity politics and its handmaiden, the politics of grievance and victimization.  If you doubt this, read and listen to the words.

On to the question to which we will return many times between now and November–can he win?  Commentator Chris Matthews had a very interesting take on this as it pertains to whether or not Obama can capture the large majority of Hillary Clinton’s base of white working class Democrats.  He said that this question boils down to the degree to which he can relate to the one thing that is embedded in the psyche of this voting bloc–Americanism.  This he describes as a difficult to define innate cultural loyalty to this one thing that cannot be taken from people, however dispossessed they might feel or how alienated from ”the system” they have become.  And it’s not overtly racist, but rather an evaluation as to what degree he is “one of us”.   Matthews believes that Truman, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 43 could all connect on this, and even Kennedy and Roosevelt could to a large extent.  Can Obama do this?

Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia has a similar message, much deeper and better developed because he has written widely about it.  In an interview in May, he reminded his audience of his essay, “Secret GOP Weapon”, writtten just weeks before the 2004 election, and issued a warning to Obama for 2008.  What is the secret weapon?  The Scots-Irish vote.  Why was and is it threatening to the Democratic Party?  Because, as Webb writes, “few key Democrats seem even to know that the Scots-Irish exist, as this culture is so individualistic that it will never overtly form into one of the many interest groups that dominate Democratic Party politics”.  True American-style democracy had its origins in this culture and it is the dominant culture of the South and much of the Midwest.  It is steeped in what Chris Matthews is calling Americanism–it is populist and inclusive, it is family-oriented, it is values-based more than economics-based, it is deeply patriotic,  it has a centuries old military tradition, and it comprised a large percentage of Reagan Democrats.  Webb further warns that the Republican Party strategy is heavily directed toward keeping peace with this culture; by contrast, over the past generation the Democrats have consistently alienated this group, to their detriment.

In the end, in order to win, Obama must heed Webb’s warning and craft a strategy that will capture the core of this vote.  I believe, however, that this is McCain’s vote to lose, and that Obama can capture enough of it to be successful only if the McCain campaign is ineffective in defining Obama’s true character and ideology, which are totally alien to this culture.