The left’s disdain for charity is long-documented. But the most recent example is coming “from the top”, so to speak. Recently Congresswoman Alexandria Occasio-Cortez tweeted a picture of her grandmother’s living conditions in Puerto Rico.
In response, along with asking why AOC isn’t personally helping her family, pointing out AOC’s base salary as a House Representative, conservative commentator Matt Walsh set up a GoFundMe that eventually raised over 100 thousand USD.
And the funds have been rejected, leaving many scratching their heads.
The optics of the charity effort along with who began it is easily a reason the money was rejected. But it’s also poor optics on AOC’s part and her family to reject money that would be direct aid to someone in need. I mean who in their right mind would turn down $100 thousand? Even a billionaire I doubt would turn down that kind of money if it was being readily offered to them, even if they don’t “need” it.
So what’s going on here? Well it goes to something else that AOC pointed out in her tweet: the Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria relief funds from the Federal government and that Trump allegedly “blocked” those funds. One of Biden’s EOs was to end that stoppage.
Except Trump “blocked” those funds because of indications that Puerto Rico had not spent all of the money initially allocated to them. Why give them more if they still had money left over? And who was responsible for allocating the funds they had? It wasn’t the Federal government. That responsibility fell entirely to Puerto Rico.
But why is no one on the left castigating Puerto Rico for mismanagement of funds? Because PR has a leftist government, and this also gives leftists a reason to set them up for statehood, opening up the chance that Democrats will get two extra voting seats in the Senate to make it more difficult for Republicans to ever regain a majority there.
But the rejection also speaks to a larger disdain for charity from the left. (Except where it can be used as a political statement.) And this can be readily shown by looking at health care. Much of the policy ideas coming from the left are about making it so the world around them improves without them personally having to do anything. Instead, they basically want the government to do everything or fund everything. Because that’s easy.
It’s also passive and lazy because it doesn’t involve sacrificing anything. No time or money is directly expended on the part of the person calling for the government to do it.
Those of us who give to charity or directly help families in need? We’re the ones actually helping change the world.
Those who gave to that GoFundMe wanted to actually help AOC’s grandmother. Yes they were also making a side-handed political statement, but they were at least willing to give something of themselves to directly help someone in need.
But I guess they would more prefer government aid, with all the bureaucracy and red tape to go with it, over the direct assistance of charitable people. And largely I think it’s due to their disdain for charity and their complete unwillingness to actually admit that charity is a much better way of helping people compared to government aid.
But charity requires personal sacrifice. Giving your own time or money to help others. Government aid? That requires no significant personal sacrifice.
Plus it seems people are always more willing to spend someone else’s money than their own, to have the government force others to pay for what they want so those calling for the spending don’t have to do jack shit.
