THE ONE LEGITIMATE COMPLAINT ABOUT HIS NEOLOGISM--REDUNDANCY:

The compassionate ones (Arthur C Brooks, 8 August 2006, Online Opinion)

For evidence, one can turn to the 2002 General Social Survey, a large survey of Americans conducted every other year or so by researchers at the University of Chicago. The survey is structured in such a way that it is possible to break down respondents along party and religious lines, as well as gauging their level of compassion (by asking, for example, whether respondents feel "tender, concerned feelings" for the less fortunate - which 72 per cent of Americans say they do).

According to these data, much conventional wisdom about uncompassionate conservatives is off base. Indeed, conservatives have slightly more compassionate attitudes than liberals; for example, they are three percentage points more likely to say they have tender, concerned feelings for the less fortunate.

Far more important than politics, however, is religion: people who attend their house of worship nearly every week are 15 points more likely to say they have tender feelings toward the less fortunate than people who never attend worship services (or attend less than once a year). That difference persists even when grouping people by their demographic characteristics, such as age, race, education, sex, marital status, and income.

As we all know, talk is cheap. So even if religious people say they feel more compassionate, do they also act more compassionately?

They do. Religious people of all political persuasions are 40 per cent more likely to donate to charities each year than secular people, and more than twice as likely to volunteer. They are also more than three times more likely than secular people to give each month, and three and one-half times as likely to volunteer that often.

And those religious believers aren't just giving to their churches, either. Research on volunteerism and philanthropy shows clearly that people who give and volunteer for religious organisations are far more likely than others to donate time and money to secular charities as well. For example, a 2000 survey of 30,000 people around the United States shows that religious people are 10 percentage points more likely than secularists to give (and 21 points more likely to volunteer) to explicitly nonreligious causes and charities.

Conservatives can hardly blame selfish genes, the way brights can.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2006 8:47 PM