The article was predictable Hoover Institution piffle, but one thing that struck me was this familiar trope: Convervatives give more to charity than liberals.

I haven’t looked into this, but I’d be willing to bet a donation to Doctors Without Borders that the “charity” in question consists overwhelmingly of donations to churches.

As far as I’m concerned, giving money to your church is more in the nature of a membership fee than a charitable donation. Just because something is tax-deductible doesn’t make it a charity.

Lying to yourself can help. I do have a problem though with the idea that many people can be trusted to honestly report their level of satisfaction in life… especially in America, where pronouncing yourself “happy” and having a “positive outlook” is just short of being required by law.

And where being “optimistic” is considered a qualification for public office.

George W., of course, has always been very anxious to let us know how cheerful and serenely confident he is in his role as the Great, and one-day-vindicated-by-history Leader. Which he why, of course, he’s chosen to spend his Presidency hiding in a personal bunker, and clinging to obviously false versions of reality like pieces of driftwood in a hurricane.

“Which he why…”?

Which IS why…

Joanna Lumley has always had a deft hand at comedy.  Just dig out an episode of the old “New Avengers” and watch her somewhat half-smiling delivery and one realizes that.  (On tapping a steel wall that looks like oak paneling but gives a very metallic sound: “Ah. Your decorator must be the same one who does Steed’s hats.”  Moderately funny line, very funnily delivered.)

Whoops.  Repeat after me:  I shall not have two threads open in different tabs!

As for this thread, ask yourself a simple question: as a general rule, were you happier and more content as a child?  Yes.  No worries!  No need to make things right.  You weren’t the one responsible.  Well, being religious means selling yourself that same drug when you really should be going into rationalist rehab to be a functional adult.

And I am SO with Bitter Scribe on wanting to see the charity figures with the churches taken out.  Problem is, that may not provide an answer any more accurate.  If Jimmy and Janie Fundamentalist give $2000 to their Church, how do we allocate which part went to fixing the roof, which part went to the missionary efforts in Africa and which part went to the bus that goes out to help street kids?  In order to get a valid comparison we’d not want to count the first, definitely want to count the third and have a hell of a time figuring out how much time was spent in chapel and how much time digging wells and building houses.

The comments on those links are out. there.

It only took a few to say “well, it was done by NYU professors so it has to be biased in favor of liberals to have rationalizations like that.”

Dave_in_VA’s denial of getting “lucky breaks” also stands out.

Also, on p.6 note the “feminist vs. equalist” stuff again.

No one asks you to mark your church donation or your Salvation Army clothes with your political affiliation, so the charity stuff is questionable (remember McCain’s recent sham charity?)

Also, what ever happened to Matthew 6:16?  Conservatives boasting openly about charity defeats the purpose of it.

Well, being religious means selling yourself that same drug when you really should be going into rationalist rehab to be a functional adult.

OK, OK, we get it, atheists are smarter and better in every way than people who believe in god.

Can we please stop with the “all theists are pathological” stuff?

It’s possible to believe in god, even to be “religious”, without being a fundamentalist asshole.  Or even a sanctimonious dipshit who thinks that tithing to support a community they themselves reap the benefits from counts as “giving to charity”. 

I’m borderline “religious” myself (not within Christianity, though), and I manage to self-describe this way without absolving myself of any responsibility in life, without losing touch with the real world, and without being some sort of psychological child-woman who can’t relate in a healthy adult manner to the people around me.

A great many believers are able to respect the atheists in our lives.  Can’t you guys even pretend to do the same?

you know, you really shouldn’t read the Daily Mail. I mean really, really, you really shouldn’t read the Daily Mail.

For the first few paragraphs, I was sure this was a satirical ‘onion-style’ article. Yes, being aware that we have fucked up (and continue to) our entire planet, that our country now acts like an angry, drunken superpower stumbling about and picking fights with anyone in the bar, and that an improbable amount of people on the ‘right’ are delusional at best about our nation’s and the world’s condition - this knowledge doesn’t make one happy. So many on the left walk that DMZ of depression between anger and apathy. Fighting for the rights of individuals over the corporate-feudal-fascist state has always been and will always be a struggle. Ignorance is bliss.

A great many believers are able to respect the atheists in our lives.  Can’t you guys even pretend to do the same?

I do.  It’s called tact.  But you’re not in my life; you to me—like me to you—are just some person on the internet.  As for these discussions I use the internet to engage both in unfettered honesty, and sometimes to push the boundaries of what I believe and how I express it.  I believe in courtesy within the Pandagon community but not to the point where I am going to engage in the damned-near-obligatory pussyfooting around Faith that seems to be the starting point requirement placed on every single secular humanist out there. 

I dislike sloppy writing, though, and plead guilty to failing to phrase it “being religious in that way” (ie: linking to the rationalizations, etc.) to distinguish them from rationalists who have a spiritual element in their lives.

What nauseates me about this article is the “Lefties, prove me wrong!!” caption situated immediately above the picture.  (The rest of the article, I agree, is the kind of whipped cream which breathes out a suspicious fishy odor which argues that it’s been left too long in the fridge.)  What’s wrong with the caption?  Let’s see. 

Here is a man who has written an article in which his (clearly stated) views are made plain.  According to those views (views the article claims can be backed up with Science) Righties are the chemically assayable Salt Of The Earth, wholesome family men and women one and all, good mixers, back-slappers, who hug their kids and don’t hug trees.  Lefties, on the other hand, are narcissistic and mean.  They are, paradoxically, both prudish and debauched, and they neglect their own kids while showering unwonted attention on trees and ferns and wildlife (and on their social and economic inferiors: IOW, on the lesser forms of creation in general).  And it’s just these deficient, deceptive types who, due to some horrendous moment of inattention on God’s part, forcibly wrenched the world aside from the irreproachable track it had been pursuing throughout history up ‘till the advent of the Sixties—-when, as we all know, all hell broke loose for the very first time, and who’s to blame for all of it?  That’s right—-Lefties. 

(Remember, our author chortles jovially, these opinions are not merely my own; they are shored up by a Higher Source.  That’s right: I am in this case the means by which you, the humble reader, have been granted unwarranted access to the dread pronoucements of—-Science.)  Cue muted roll of thunder in the background.

So we are left in no doubt about the way in which this author divvies up the realm of human worth; Righties = Good and Lefties = Bad.  But it’s these very same Bad People, the ones who fail to hug their kids, fail to give to charity, fail to see that President Bush is among the finest of men, and fail to acknowledge the existence of the Great Chain Of Being as a pertinent fact—-and not only that, they can be convicted (scientifically, don’t forget) of the sin of not being happy enough—-it’s these very same Bad People, I repeat, whom our author expects will be delighted to get back to him, to schmooze with him, to swap anecdotes with him, to slap his back and chew the fat and attempt to acquaint him with The Error Of His Ways.*

You gotta be kidding me.

Evidently our author hasn’t been keeping up recently with his reading of the Evil Overlord’s Manual—-otherwise he’d know that not only Evil Overlords, but the Minions of Evil Overlords, do not habitually communicate all their heinous plans to their foes.  Think about it.  Just imagine Darth Vader e-mailing Obi-wan Kenobi: “Old teacher, I’ve been troubled by an urge to blow up Alderan for some time now, and dashed if I don’t think I’ll get around to it one of these days.  But my mind’s not fully made up.  What would you advise?”  Nope, I can’t see it.  Can you?

Here’s an off-the-cuff suggestion for any Righties who may be reading this: Do not insult people, gratuitously and at length, if you expect to engage in small talk with them afterward.  In fact, it would be better if you didn’t insult people gratuitously and at length if you expect to engage in any sort of conversation with them afterward which does not threaten to degenerate into further unpleasantness.  People are like that, weak creatures as they are: they don’t respond to dislike with devotion—-not even when Science implies that they should.

*I know, there’s an incentive attached: a bottle of booze and a contribution toward the relief of cyclone victims.  Here’s the problem: most of the Lefties I know would, were this proposition to be made to them, send an equivalent contribution off themselves and consider it a fair price for not having to talk to this guy.

And Lefties are willing to buy their own booze.

As for these discussions I use the internet to engage both in unfettered honesty, and sometimes to push the boundaries of what I believe and how I express it. 

Shorter Seeker:  “My favorite part about the internet is how you don’t have to be polite or respectful to others if you don’t happen to feel like it.”

I believe in courtesy within the Pandagon community but not to the point where I am going to engage in the damned-near-obligatory pussyfooting around Faith that seems to be the starting point requirement placed on every single secular humanist out there.

I hardly think asking people not to cast everyone different from them as pathological mental defectives who are no better than a bunch of derelict crackheads is requiring you to pussyfoot around my beliefs.  All I would ask is that you not be directly insulting.

Actually, Opoponax, one of the things that I have always considered rude was people who take what you didn’t say, rephrase it to be inaccurate or more rude, and then cover their rudeness by saying “shorter [etc.] “.  You qualify.  A typical exchange with you often goes something like this:

X: “I’m not sure that soda pop is good for kids”
Opoponax: “Why do you hate people enjoying something?  Why do you hate kids?!”

It’s a pretty consistent “debating” tactic with you.  When I typed in my reply I actually sat back to wait for it from you and you didn’t disappoint.  I notice also that that you ignored my rephrasing of my point to remove the problem and insult which you pointed out.  You just tearass off as if I restated or amplified it, and you did so using hypercritical and hyperbolic language (“derelict crackheads”).  Inaccurate rephrasing is not argument.  Amplification is not argument. 

You’ll pardon me if I don’t take lessons in equanimity and good manners from someone so patently unqualified to give them.

Studies also indicate that those on the Left are less likely to give to charity or to volunteer their time to charity. When they do support charity, it is often less the sort of organisation that helps people and more one that advocates political action.

I’ve heard this before, and I really wish that the people who make this point would actually provide references to these studies.  I’d be interested to see if they take into account people who get paid to help people.  The programs where I do volunteer work also have paid employees, who seem to express liberal points of views during everyday conversation (but, technically, I don’t grill them about their voting history).  The same is true of students I’ve met who want to become social workers, but maybe that wouldn’t count because it involves “political action”.  Admittedly, I’m speaking about a relatively liberal part of the country (the Northeast), but if there’s information out there connecting charity donations to political party, surely there’s something to connect occupation to political party.

I also wonder how these numbers, being self-reported, might be affected by attitudes toward mental health.  If you believe that being unhappy or depressed is for emo teenagers and girly-men, how likely are you to admit to yourself or a pollster that you are unhappy yourself? 

I suspect conservatives (especially men) are more likely than liberals to not want to admit to unhappiness.

I also wonder how these numbers, being self-reported, might be affected by attitudes toward mental health.  If you believe that being unhappy or depressed is for emo teenagers and girly-men, how likely are you to admit to yourself or a pollster that you are unhappy yourself?

Agreed.  I would also wonder how they factor in who doesn’t answer at all.  The “unhappy” category might also be missing the people GumbyAnne describes who don’t lie but just don’t answer.

I’d also note that people with clinical depression just don’t answer surveys, for the most part, so they’re out of the game, too.

seeker6079 on 06/15 at 03:06 PM:

What you said.

My brother and SIL tithe. Where the money goes, who knows. But when he was fighting a losing battle with a leaky sink on a Friday night last summer, all they had to was call the professional plumber from the church’s “On Call” list. Half hour later, sink fixed, no charge.

Is there a similar way to put aside money for 24/7 household emergencies, fully tax deductible, guaranteed service in 30 minutes, for the agnostic community?

I suspect conservatives (especially men) are more likely than liberals to not want to admit to unhappiness.

I’d suspect that too, and add something.  People who are in non-egalitarian (ie: traditional) relationships have a considerable amount invested in the Strong Man archetype.  The man is very unlikely to admit unhappiness because that’s “weakness”, and if he does admit it he is very likely to have it thrown right back into his face instead of receiving support.  If the relationship isn’t built on two people leaning on each other through life then the one that isn’t supposed to lean is going to get a lot of anger flying back at him for not fulfilling his assigned role.  Sad but true, and Exhibit The Umpteenth in Amanda’s point that the patriarchy fucks up men too.

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”—George Bernard Shaw

And I am SO with Bitter Scribe on wanting to see the charity figures with the churches taken out.

From http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v19/i04/04001101.htm about, a man who published a book on essentially the charity difference between right and left wingers:

His initial research for Who Really Cares revealed that religion played a far more significant role in giving than he had previously believed. In 2000, religious people gave about three and a half times as much as secular people — $2,210 versus $642. And even when religious giving is excluded from the numbers, Mr. Brooks found, religious people still give $88 more per year to nonreligious charities.

He writes that religious people are more likely than the nonreligious to volunteer for secular charitable activities, give blood, and return money when they are accidentally given too much change.

Interesting, Erl, thank you.  But let’s factor in that Prof. Brooks is a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, describes liberals as possessed of antipathy to religion, and blithely accuses liberal Democratic leaders as disdaining charity.  Such connections and comments are not those of a self-professed “independent”; they seem to be firmly of the “I’m not a liberal but I play one on TV if I get to slag liberals!” variety.

Oh, I love playing around with statistics.

Most of the difference in giving among conservatives and liberals gets back to religion. Religious liberals give nearly as much as religious conservatives, Mr. Brooks found. And secular conservatives are even less generous than secular liberals.

People who are religious give the most, and they give equally whether they’re liberals or conservatives.  In second place, secular liberals.  In third, secular conservatives.  So this isn’t about liberal vs. conservative, it’s about religious vs. secular.  Now, I haven’t read his book, but the article makes it seem like this is Republicans vs. Democrats, which is not supported by his own facts (which makes me concerned about either his analytical ability or his bias, as seeker said.)  If anything, his conclusion should be that religion makes you more likely to give to charity, and that non-religious liberals (who are, presumably much more common than non-religious conservatives) are “weighing Democrats down.”  And I say that as a secular liberal.

However, the fact that secular liberals donate/volunteer more than secular conservatives should be examined.  Does this reflect an underlying difference in beliefs in secular liberals vs. conservatives?  Are these differences eliminated by religion?  Might religion motivate liberals to give for different reasons than it would motivate conservatives, such that the loss of this motivation would cause the differences in giving?  And what the hell happened to people who consider themselves independents in this study?

Aren’t people who lie to themselves going to lie to researchers as well?

Here we go:

Some studies have shown that depressed people appear to have a more realistic perception of their importance, reputation, locus of control, and abilities (Alloy and Abramson, 1979; Dobson and Franche, 1989).

People without depression are more likely to have inflated self-images and look at the world through “rose-colored glasses”, thanks to cognitive dissonance and a variety of other defense mechanisms.
[...]
Knee and Zuckerman (1998) have challenged the definition of mental health used by Taylor and Brown and argue that lack of illusions is associated with a non-defensive personality oriented towards growth and learning and with low ego involvement in outcomes. They present evidence that self-determined individuals are less prone to these illusions.

“Studies also indicate that those on the Left are less likely to give to charity or to volunteer their time to charity. When they do support charity, it is often less the sort of organisation that helps people and more one that advocates political action.

I’ve heard this before, and I really wish that the people who make this point would actually provide references to these studies.”

I’d like to see how they categorized such institutions.  I mean, something like Planned Parenthood helps a lot of people and also advocates political action—how does the study decide which it does more of?  Does the study break down which bits the volunteer participated in?  How would doing a call campaign to lift the Global Gag Rule get categorized?

Personally, it’s hard to read too much into things like that when you’re looking at a philosophy that tries to alleviate systemic problems in addition to their immediate consequences rather than just throwing charity at it and acting like every man/town/community is necessarily an island.

Is there a similar way to put aside money for 24/7 household emergencies, fully tax deductible, guaranteed service in 30 minutes, for the agnostic community?

Wow, this plumber did the job for free, just because they happen to go to his church?

How the hell does that guy’s business run in the black, again?

I don’t personally know any plumbers, but friends of mine with similar service oriented small businesses don’t work for free, no matter how much they love you.  I certainly don’t think that free plumbing services come standard with most church memberships—in fact, one benefit of belonging to a religious congregation I’ve always heard touted is that it can make networking easier, especially if you run a business that requires a steady flow of everyday folks type clients, for instance plumbing.  If people at your church know you’re a plumber, they’re going to call you before they call your competition (which obviously works equally for all sorts of social organizations, religious or not). 

Also, regardng religious people and why they might give more money to charity, or volunteer more for charity, even if the charity is non-religious.  Certain religions (including Christianity, to an extent) encourage community service and philanthropy, outside of contributions to the church itself.  My dad, for instance, spends a week doing volunteer medical care in Nicaragua every year.  Not in connection with his church, and not some sort of self-serving “mission trip” that is really just an excuse for a vacation.  His faith definitely informs his decision to do this.  And ooooh, god forbid one of those mentally defective “religious folks” does something good for someone else without it being connected to right-wing politics or their church.

If there is actually a difference between lefties and righties when it comes to voluntarism, I’m willing to bet at least part of it comes down to this:  Some of us lefties don’t like to work for free.  Personally, I see a hell of a lot of the voluntarism movement as a right-wing ploy to get (especially poor) people to work for free, or the cost of pizza at best.  (I did my stint in workfare, and heard all the rah-rah speeches while some poor schlubs in the same city were bucking crates on trucks for Wal-Mart…)  On the other hand, if I knew of a charity where the canvassers on the street were making minimum wage and the executive director wasn’t pulling down six figures, and/or one where nobody was getting paid, I’d probably be more inclined to pitch in.

By the way, if you’re religious and using your religion to convince yourself that God’s in his Heaven and therefore all’s right with the world, no matter how many homeless people you see, you are selling yourself a powerful drug, and you need to kick it right smart.  I really don’t see how that’s possibly controversial at all.

if you’re religious and using your religion to convince yourself that God’s in his Heaven and therefore all’s right with the world, no matter how many homeless people you see, you are selling yourself a powerful drug, and you need to kick it right smart.  I really don’t see how that’s possibly controversial at all.

Had Seeker said “religious people who use religion to convince themselves that everything is actually hunky dory”, then you’d be right.  And, yes, it would also be delusional to decide that all’s right with the world because The Invisible Hand Of The Market, or because More Tax Cuts Yay, or because The Revolution Will Come And Save Us All, Just Like Daddy Marx Promised. 

And it’s true that Seeker corrected hirself, which is nifty I guess. 

But seriously, some of us do actually manage to have complex reality-based worldviews and also believe in god, too.  You can think we’re wrong, but yes, actually, it’s fucking rude to suggest that because someone believes something you don’t, therefore they are brain-addled addicts who need rehab because clearly they can’t function in the real world with adults.

You believe in Santa Claus.

Is it rude to say that you’re wrong, in ways that sometimes frighten the rest of us?

If so, I’ll resign myself to being rude.

I have a lot of religious friends, and many of them will take up the occasional opportunity to argue with me. But none of them has ever complained that I was rude for finding their beliefs childishly silly. Is my circle of friends an anomaly? Are most religious people really as hypersensitive as you, Opoponax?

But none of them has ever complained that I was rude for finding their beliefs childishly silly.

Neither have I.

My problem is more with the “that’s pathological” aspect.  Or the idea that people who believe in god can’t function properly in society. 

Seriously, I think there are serious problems with atheism, but I hardly think you all need to be shipped off en masse and reeducated.

one benefit of belonging to a religious congregation I’ve always heard touted is that it can make networking easier

The Opoponax has got this one spot-on.  I’m not religious but found myself in a Baptist church recently for an event.  What leapt out was how networked everything was: groups, events, meetings.  A person like me much given to metaphorical imagery could almost see the multitude of lines crossing and criss-crossing through the air.  People choose from within their networks and many churches provide secure, closed units of trust which operate within the utterly areligious world of plumbing, lawyers and the like.  That should not be underestimated.

If there is actually a difference between lefties and righties when it comes to voluntarism, I’m willing to bet at least part of it comes down to this:  Some of us lefties don’t like to work for free.

That’s an interesting thought, Interrobang, and it raises another: Is there any cross-tracking of voluntarism not only across faith and party but income?  The simple truth is people can only volunteer if they’re not scrabbling to make a living using that same time. 

It also raises the issue of what volunteerism is: many people deal with it only from the starting point of charities.  I work with three community groups at the moment, only one of which is a registered charity.  The other two are business-related which produce measurable community improvements and often do work which, if done by, say, a church, would fit into the measurables discussed above.  The other stuff that we do, equally community-oriented, does not.

There are other things which Venn secular and religious.  Interrobang and I both live in London, ON.  Every year there is a City-sponsored cleanup: people go up and clean up their streets, the park where they live, and so forth.  (Hell, last year a neighbour and I pulled a bicycle out of a river using a grappling hook from this footbridge .)  Community groups participate, including churches.  Perhaps a hundred thousand person hours of work.  How does one allocate matters like that?  You can’t.

How does one allocate matters like that?

I think that’s the real question at the top of the whole premise here, that you can easily map or quantify how many dollars or hours go to ‘charity’ (as shorthand for community do-gooding, not as tax shelters or people contributing to groups they reap private benefits from) from the right or the left.

There are just too many different criteria to sort out, and it seems like the right is engaging in a lot of goalpost shifting in order to claim that they give more.  Not to mention a whole host of assumptions about who counts as a member of “the right” and why certain kinds of giving that people on the left are more likely to engage in “don’t count”. 

You also make a good point about charitable work that may not be for an official nonprofit.  I read recently about a yoga studio that is getting together to send shoes to children in r Asia.  If I donate $100 to my yoga studio so that they can buy a poor Cambodian kid a pair of shoes, does it really count as “giving to charity” if my yoga studio is not set up as a nonprofit group designed for charitable giving?

Sorry, that should be “10 Cambodian kids a pair of shoes”.  I hardly think they’re sending kiddie Manolos…

Yes, conservatives are happier than liberals.

In other news, the stoned are happier than the sober.

I think you put your finger on it when you talk about goalpost shifting.  To stick with the metaphor, not only are the goalposts shifting around there is also a great deal of disagreement about what a “goal” is and even which games on which field actually count.

Bottom line: Absent a set and agreed definitions and measurement standards I think we can largely write off “the Right gives more than the Left” or ” the religious give more than the secular” memes.  They may be true.  But they are—given current data and methodology—wholly unprovable.  Then again, the Right has never had a problem with baldly asserting unprovables and then demanding that public perception and public policy attorn to them.

Yes, conservatives are happier than liberals.

In other news, the stoned are happier than the sober.

Or the punchers are generally happier than the punchees.  (The author specifically excepts the denizens of certain recreational clubs in large urban centres.)

not as tax shelters or people contributing to groups they reap private benefits from

This bears repeating and it should be a policy (but NOT electoral*) issue for the Democrats.  One of the ways that the rich right wing sustains its hold is crafting laws which perpetuate intra-class maintenance of assets.  While one can argue about the merits of inheritance taxes one cannot rationally sustain an argument that tax avoidance—and income support—for rich families disguised as charity is a valid public good: most working and middle class people do not pay their taxes so that some inbred Harvard drooler can sit on his grandpa’s foundation board at $100k per year. 

* - It would be too easy for reformers to be painted as being “anti-charity”: look at how easily the CMSMW bought into the “death tax” and “small farmers!” lies on the inheritance tax.  Wait until one has the government, then blindside the rich with rapid reform backed up by aggressive government-funded PR / public information efforts.  “Obama and the Congress: Closing the loopholes!” sort of thing.

“How the hell does that guy’s business run in the black, again?”

By charging for customers who don’t go to his church, I’m guessing.

“How the hell does that guy’s business run in the black, again?”

By overcharging for customers who don’t go to his church, I’m guessing.

Fixed that for ya.

By charging for customers who don’t go to his church, I’m guessing.

Yeah, see, that’s the thing.  Unless he lives in a really big city or attends a very small church, eventually he’s going to run into the problem where the bulk of the people he’s networking to are people he’s agreed to give away his service to for free.

Doing that sort of thing (anybody who goes to my church gets unlimited free plumbing services for life!) is a violation of the most basic rules of small business ownership.    Maybe my friends are just a bunch of cutthroat dickheads, but my friend who is a massage therapist does not give out free massages to ANYONE.  My friend who is a computer tech doesn’t fix ANYONE’s computer for free.  My friend who is a photographer will not take the pictures for your wedding unless you PAY HER.  If you start giving out regular freebies to your prime networking contacts, pretty soon you find yourself a volunteer massage therapist, computer tech, photographer, or plumber.

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing….

[et seq.]”

I agree 100%.  But I’m going to go and check the Book of Revelations: I’m pretty sure that The Opoponax and I agreeing 100% on a given point is a sign of End Times.

““How the hell does that guy’s business run in the black, again?”

By charging for customers who don’t go to his church, I’m guessing.”

I’d guess more that it’s that simple/emergency fixes that would otherwise cost an arm and a leg are free or cost-reduced for church members.  I doubt everything is free or parts-only for church members regardless of ability to pay.

It tends to shake out that because the man came out and helped you (briefly, with a simple problem) for nothing or a pittance when having to call another plumber would have cost a fortune due to the weird hours or the need-it-now nature of the problem, you will call him first when you need serious work done.  Because you know these three plumbers on the list are Good People who do well by granny pensioners, poor families, etc., you’ll put in a good word for them if they bid on a contract.  You’ll pass tips along, recommend them to your neighbors, and so on.

Because they’re church members, unhappy customers are slow to bad-mouth them or take them to small claims court.  Ambivalent customers are quick to assume a barely-adequate job was a one-time thing, or persuade themselves to be okay with it.  People are more grateful to the person who comes out at six o’clock as a favor to them, because they’re a churchgoer, than they would be to a person who comes over at the same hour because that happens to be within the span of their business hours.

If the plumber in question can put that time he spent fixing flockmembers’ leaky sinks, replacing their corroded gaskets, and turning off water to stop a broken heater from flooding a basement down as charitable work (especially if he’s able to count the value as his official rate for off-hours work), he may be getting a worthwhile tax break in exchange for generating an enormous amount of goodwill and word-of-mouth advertising in a vocal community.

People who use churches to network for their businesses or practices tend to do pretty well for themselves, in spite of the appearance of being generous to the point of a failing business model.  It’s one of the reasons my mother—a fairly devout Christian—always cautioned me to never patronize any place that wore its religion on its sleeve.  It’s way too easy for the crooked and the incompetent to build a reputable-seeming business on the back of the church.

Also I had another brainwave. Assuming that the statistics and overall analysis is accurate (which I’m not willing to grant), it seems that all that’s been discovered is a correlation: people who are happier are more likely to be conservatives and vice versa. The articles all assume that adhering to the conservative philosophy simply makes for happier people. But what if happiness is a cause, rather than an effect? If liberals are the movement of change, then obviously the unsatisfied will gravitate toward liberalism.

Also another stat question I’d like to see resolved. They mention that liberals are on average slightly richer, but they don’t mention whether or not they control for the increased cost of living in areas predominately liberal cities.

And yeah, seeker, I agree that it’s probably bullshit. But I also think that it put it into perspective to see the numbers, or at least the claimed numbers. That’s why I love google.