Where is a Good Liberal when You Need One?

All my life I have heard about how compassionate liberals are and how greedy conservatives are. I have spent years looking for compassionate liberals. I am here to tell you that they are hard to find. Yet everywhere I turn I find compassionate conservatives. In fact it seems that almost every greedy person I meet is a liberal. It seems that the definition that the media and liberal organizations for compassion is the willingness to force other people to give. They are compassionate because they support higher taxes from everyone to do those jobs that they are not willing to do themselves. I have a different idea of compassion. I believe compassion is a desire to help other people that is so overwhelming that you cannot help but go and help yourself.

Where is a good liberal when it comes to helping a sick child?

To hear liberals talk, you would think that if there were one place where they would be motivated to action it would be helping sick children. Of course they are willing to use our money to help them but if they were truly compassionate wouldn't they be out helping sick children themselves. I have spent a lot of time working with sick children and I can to tell you that it is hard to find a good liberal who takes their time to work with sick children. Here are some examples.

My little brother, John, was born with maximum brain damage. When John was two they started working with this program to try and teach the part of the brain that was there to do the things that the things that the part that was not their was supposed to do. The program needed 20 volunteers. So my parents wrote the local newspaper that wrote an article about John and the need for volunteers. The response was great and they had enough volunteers to run the program. Before I get to the punch line let me explain something about where we live. We live in the great state of Washington. On of the most liberal states in America. It is also one of the most unchurched states in America with less than one out of ten people going to church on a regular basis. So it would figure that most of the volunteers would be secular liberals. That was not the case. Not only were the majority of the volunteers conservative Christian, but rather all of the volunteers were conservative Christians. Yes, not one single liberal person responded to this article in a liberal newspaper in a liberal area.

I found the same thing when I was a volunteer at a children's hospital. I knew several of the paid staff who considered themselves liberal. It is one thing to get paid well to do something compassionate but I think the real compassion is shown by those people who are so driven to help that they are willing to do it on a volunteer basis. This children's hospital was located in one of the most liberal areas of our liberal state. Here I found the same thing. Almost all the volunteers I met along the way were not only politically conservative they were Christians as well. Hmm, is there a pattern here?

My wife and I did respite care for years. For those of you who are not familiar with this, respite care is state program where you take severely disabled children for a certain amount of days a month to give the parents a break. These were children like my brother, John, who need 24 hour care. Over the years we got to know many other people who did respite care. By now you can guess it. Most of the people we met were conservatives.

Where is a good liberal when it comes to working with the elderly and the poor?

Currently my job is as an Activities Director at a local senior center. We are unique in that not only do we work with the seniors in our area but we also have one of the largest food banks in our area. We have over 30 volunteers who work at the center. When I started this position at a community senior center filled with retired seniors from a liberal community I thought that I would find different results. Well, I was wrong. Even here almost every single volunteer we have is a conservative. I know the people who at several other senior centers and food banks. It seems that that is the pattern here is this liberal state. Conservatives do the giving and liberals do the taking.

It is also interesting to note that of all the major relief agencies around the world they were all started and are run by conservative Christians. With the exception of the Red Cross, by the way, is an organization that was started by Christians. The nations largest food supplier for food banks is Second Harvest, which happens to be another Christian organization. I can not speak for other states but it happens to be that the majority of the food banks in our state are run by conservative Churches.

Where is a good liberal when it comes to taking care of AIDS patients?

When you listen to the media talk about AIDS, you would think that this is a place where only a liberal would tread. One of the charities I give to is one that works with children who were orphaned by the AIDS crisis in Africa. Many of whom were born with AIDS themselves. As with most of us, I have been concerned about the millions of people in Africa who are dying of AIDS. So when I was introduced to this organization I jumped on the opportunity to support it. I assumed that it was one of the few Christian organizations doing this kind of work in Africa. I was wrong. The people with the mission tell me that most of the organizations across Southern Africa that are working with AIDS victims are Christian organizations. In preparing for this article I did some research and I found that almost all the organizations that are working with AIDS in Africa are sponsored by Conservative Churches.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is not to suggest that liberals do not have compassion. It is to dispel the commonly held notion that conservatives are not. In fact the most conservative person running for President in the next presidential election is Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a MD who has gone to Africa each year for many years to provide free medical services for the poor of that continent. Still the truth is, if you need help sometime in your life it will probably come from the hands of a conservative and in site of what the liberals in the media tell us each day, Christian conservatives are most likely to show compassion.