One Minute Book: Give give give til it hurts? The answer may surprise you!

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Today's tome: Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism by Arthur C. Brooks:

Epigraph:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Foreword by James Q. Wilson, page viii

…Brooks suggests a different and more fascinating possibility: it may be that charitable giving helps improve the economy.

Page 1:

"Regime Change Starts at Home," read one sign, overtly comparing President George W. Bush to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had recently been ousted by American forces under a policy dubbed "regime change."

Page 2:

These are, perhaps, the most common stereotypes in our modern American political discourse: The political left is compassionate and charitable toward the less fortunate, while the political right is oblivious to suffering.

Page 4:

"The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind."

Page 8:

If we look at party affiliation instead of ideology, the story remains largely the same—if anything, it makes the political left look less charitable, not more so.

Page 16:

Conservatives think that donations to the Heritage Foundation are better than those to the American Civil Liberties Union; atheists believe donations to churches are a waste of money (or worse), and so on.

Page 32:

But is it true that the religious right is an unparalleled force in American politics?

Page 64:

The unexpected part of Mr. Dawson's story is this: He gave nearly all his money away.

Page 128:

We have already discussed the effects of the European "baby bust" on the financing of pension systems, but the economic maladies go deeper than just this.

Last page (180):

There should not be "two Americas" when it comes to charity.

Appendix:

Percentage who believe that we have become a society of haves and have-nots:
Liberals 92% | Conservatives 51%