John H Armstrong

Who Really Cares for the Poor?

Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks challenges perceived mainstream social orthodoxy in his new book, Who Really Cares: Who Gives, Who Doesn’t and Why It Matters. For generations it has been assumed that political and social liberals are generous towards the poor while conservatives are proverbial tightwads. At least since the days of Charles Dickens’ Scrooge this has been the popular view. Liberals continually remind us that they are the ones who really care about welfare since they promote the grandiose government solutions to the problem.

No one should doubt that government has a role to play in finding solutions. Private charity cannot do it all. But the question has always been what role government should have and how the solutions it creates should be paid for and then properly delivered. I believe government does best in this area when it administers welfare at the local level, where people know people and thus get involved with them personally. When welfare comes from a large bureaucratic government trickling downward through numerous agencies it repeatedly fails to accomplish what is promised. This is one reason why the Clinton reforms worked so well, even though there are still problems to solve.

Brooks challenges conventional wisdom about who really cares for the poor, showing that it is conservatives who give more to the needy. Each year, he notes, conservatives give 30% more to charity than liberals. And the more religious people are the more charitable they are likely to be. Believers are actually 57% more likely to help the homeless, for example, than secularists.

All of this leads me back to my observation above. Modern liberalism has come to equate compassion with large-scale federal solutions through government run programs. This has eroded a sense of personal responsibility and leaves many liberals out of touch with the truly poor and weak among us. (There are numerous exceptions thus I say “many” and not all.) We will have no sense of responsibility for our neighbor if the government is to do the job for us by using taxpayer money. And, as the National Review recently noted, “When conservatives say that low taxes and spending should be supplemented by a safety net that is privately funded, they put their money where their mouth is.”

In short, this research by Arthur Brooks underscores why I am repeatedly unimpressed with the solutions offered by Sojourners and Christians like Jim Wallis. Their heart is in the right place for sure. And they rightly remind us that the prophetic witness of Scripture matters profoundly to serious Christians. But what they mistakenly do is equate larger government involvement with actual solutions to the problem. I suggest a great gathering of religious conservatives and progressives might go a long way to airing out these differences for much good. I would love to see the good folks at Sojourners, and parallel conservative groups, stage such a meeting. The present stalemate, between the ideologies of the two political parties and their advocates, has created a false sense that each side clearly knows the real answers to these complex social and economic problems. I believe that we can have both free markets and morality. In fact, I believe this is the only way that we can retain personal freedom and social justice joined with real compassion and concern for the poor that will make a long term difference. Christians can do better and leaders ought to seek such solutions.

You Can't Trust the Government to Solve the Poverty Problem

If you wish to get a heated discussion going among serious Christians suggest that it is our divinely given responsibility to care for the poor. Then suggest that we ought to do something, anything is better than nothing, in the name of Christ to direclty alleviate hunger and to address poverty with real Christian solutions. Few will disagree with you a this point and all will agree that something ought to be done. But no two people are likely to come up the same solution for the problem at the end of the day. Conservatives will appeal to private charity as the best approach to the problem and liberals will suggest that government must get even more involved. And both will appeal to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, the kingdom sayings of Jesus, and the need to demonstrate that the gospel we preach must show itself in tangible ways that really care for people in both body and soul.

Father Robert Sirico, president of Acton Institute, recently suggested in an editorial (Acton Notes, March 2006) that appeared originally in the Detroit News that Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical argued correctly that “the attempt to create a loving state actually results in extinguishing the possibility for the exercise of love of neighbor.” For me this is the nub of the issue and why Christians so often debate the hows of addressing hunger and poverty without much agreement.

In Deus Caritas Est Benedict XVI actually wrote: “We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State [that] . . . combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need" (emphasis mine).

This is precisely what the last forty-plus years of social welfare in the United States has demonstrated through the failed “war on poverty” which began in the 1960s. And this is why I am strongly inclined against more of this same approach in the future. Decades of experience prove that giving money to the poor through poverty-related government programming destroys both morals and motivation. It doesn't lead to better education and it actually breaks down real family life. The argument, says columnist George Will, has been that the poor are just like everyone else, except they don’t have enough goods and services to succeed. And, it has been assumed on the left for an entire generation, the government really knows best how to provide these resources for the poor. But George Will correctly argues: “The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores—punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc.—that are not developed in disorganized homes.”

What is really needed is a truly free society where we can pursue virtue in both the private and public sectors. When our models of response to the problem of poverty are rooted in a deep respect for catholic Christianity, i.e., basic Christian orthodoxy, and then joined with creative social ideas that eschew the easy solutions of top-heavy governmental involvement, we will again foster an environment where the well-to-do can practice proper charity and the poor can be helped without destroying their families and personal character. This is not to say that government has no role at all or that government should not care what happens to its poorest citizens. Read Benedict’s words again. When government is involved, and involved at its very best, it will be involved by combining “spontaneity with closeness to those in need.” This means the best efforts to deal with poverty and crisis are usually locally based and involve those who are actually closest to the real problems. This way the right people are truly helped and the criminal element is not given more FEMA cash to spend on lotto tickets and booze, as we have seen so blatantly illustrated in the tragedy following Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. It is time for Christians to get involved in addressing poverty with new solutions. Really, the best solutions are not new at all but are the older ones rooted in compassionate Christianity, not in the social welfare state as we have known it in the modern era.

How Should Government Deal with Poverty?

A regular argument made, at least from some evangelical political voices from the political left, is to cite numerous Old Testament texts about poverty and then suggest that one of the central concerns of a just government is to solve the problems associated with poverty. Republicans are heartless promoters of bigger business while Democrats care deeply about the little guy and people's needs.

No one who has an ounce of compassion disagrees that Christians should care about poverty and its associated social ills. The issue here is not "Should we care about poverty and the problems related to it?" Rather, the question is, "What is the best way to respond to poverty?" The evangelical left, expressed through voices like that of Jim Wallis of Sojourners, often acts as if they alone hold the high ground in this debate. They care deeply about the poor and conservatives do not. Frankly, I believe it is time that we smoke this myth out into the open for what it is, nonsense.

I confess that Ronald Reagan, and what he stood for, has had a profound impact upon my life and political thought. Reagan once said, about his own Illinois childhood, "We were poor when I was young, but the difference then was that the government didn't come around telling you you were poor." How true.

I most assuredly do not want to make light of real poverity in America, or of the need to address this problem with compassion, but anyone who has really seen the rest of the world, as I have in places like India and South American, knows that America's poverty is a small thing when compared to that elsewhere. Here the poor can and do buy stereos, televisions, cigarettes and alcohol. There they hope for food and water in order to live another day.

I believe Ronald Reagan got it right when, in a speech as governor of California in 1972, he said: "Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats." The bottom line answer to poverty in America is not more social programs devised and run by the government. Personally, I want more Christians to understand that they should not feel guilty about the blessings this system has given to them materially. They should, however, learn generosity and much broader giving with true joy. "Unto whom much is given much is required" still holds true.

Reagan, once again, understood all of this so beautifully. He said in his State of the Union address in 1988: "My friends, some years ago the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won!" The solutions to poverty are to be found in the free enterprise system and the sooner we stop bashing business and wealth making enterprises the better will be our overall response to poverty in America. And you can tell the Christian left I said so!