From charity to 'compassion.' (Philadelphia Society conference on charity)

FROM CHARITY TO `COMPASSION'

I will tell you a Philadelphia Society secret: reporters are not allowed at its national meetings. There are always a couple of NATIONAL REVIEW editors present, but nobody thinks we qualify. So, the rule is kept, yet once a year you get some report of this most pleasant and fertile of conservative gatherings.

And an NR trade secret: the job is rotated informally among the editors, partly to keep a fresh outlook, mostly to see if anyone can think up something new to say about the unvarying meeting routine, which is as familiar and comfy as cotton. I'm not even going to try.

What is ever fresh and fascinating is the ground covered. The more so this year, because the subject lent itself to such sharp, factual focus: "Charity, Philanthropy, and the Welfare State." Most of the speakers were either in the front lines of research or in the last redoubts of a true charitable impulse for organized philanthropy. Veterans, with scars to prove it. The picture that emerged was so widely agreed upon I'll try to summarize it before taking up individual contributions.

Irving Kristol titled his keynote remarks, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." This gloomy title introduced an appropriately bleak view of institutional philanthropy today that was echoed, refined, and elaborated by other speakers. Some in the audience thought this view too pessimistic in details. But no one, either speaker or auditor, was willing to say that things go well in the non-profit establishment.

Not long ago, the shining hope of non-profit enterprise was to foster independence: to compete, as it were, with government's misguided do-goodism, which only turns its "beneficiaries" into dependent wards of the state. But all this has been turned upside down, said Kristol. Institutions that were supposed to rescue us from the worst of welfarism--churches, philanthropies, higher education, especially the tax-exempt general-purpose foundations--developed an insatiable affinity for the state and a hunger to serve its purposes. What we get is a whole class of what Kristol bitingly called "professional altruists"--the irony will be lost on the Left--feeding Moloch.

What is the purpose of philanthropy? The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, as Forrest McDonald reminded us, said that the highest form of philanthropy is to help one's fellow man stand on his own. Present-day "philanthropic" institutions invert this and recreate serfdom.

Older charities were based on the Christian vision of a city on a hill. Wealth was not sought for its own sake but to foster virtue, family, and community. Charities had the philosophy, "No relief given here!" Instead, they worked toward such self-help institutions as day nurseries, libraries, and savings banks.

This vision weakened after the Civil War as religious belief waned and industrialism boomed. What came in, with an assist from Marxist group-think, was the idea of social insurance, followed inevitably by the idea of entitlement. The philanthropist's gift became the recipient's right. With this inversion, the seeds of the welfare state are firmly planted. But in the process, a welfare class is created, dependent as well as parasitic, and the charitable impulse is taken away from the involuntary giver.

Concurrently, the focused charity gave way to the general-purpose foundation. Professional managers, guided by "science" instead of philanthropy, allocated foundation funds to the social agenda. The philanthropists' original purpose is almost always distorted or even perverted.

Moreover, the big foundations turn their statist lust into potent leverage in tax dollars. For every dollar they spend setting up the outlines of a liberal program, they may squeeze twenty or fifty dollars out of taxpayers.

In a word, the non-profit sector belongs almost exclusively to the liberals and the Left. Even business goes along: 70 per cent of corporate donations go to left-wing groups. Nineteen of the top 25 corporate donors support radical feminist groups, and many now support gays and lesbians. The "philanthropic" network aggrandizes government, attacks the market, and works to subvert the American system. Yet it is the market that promotes private charity--and, of course, provides the resources--and the state that chokes it.

A generalized view like this cannot convey either nuance or the richness of detail the speakers offered. In the little space that remains, I would like at least to make introductions, and mention a few more specialized arguments. And assure you that, however bleak the prognosis, the meeting could not have been more good-humored and cheerful.

Forrest McDonald opened the Friday evening keynote session by refusing to introduce Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and discussing the history of philanthropy from potlatch to the constitutional meanings of the three-point shot in basketball. Well, that's close.

Nothing new at the members' breakfast meeting the next morning except that the Treasurer actually used two (albeit rounded and vague) numbers in discussing Society finances. One may infer that the financial picture has improved.

The Saturday morning session, titled "Charity, Welfare, and the State," was chaired by William Campbell (now at Heritage) and featured Allan Carlson of the Rockford Institute, Eric Mack of Tulane, Les Lenkowsky of the Institute for Educational Affairs, and James Gwartney of Florida State. Professor Gwartney's argument, being specialized, was shortchanged above, but was one of the most interesting offered. Namely, that income transfer has done very little to help the poor and, in theory, never can. Whatever you have to do to get the benefit defeats its purpose. If, say, you have to stand in line to get a government check, the line will be exactly long enough to reduce the value of standing there to zero. Or, if you have to be poor to get the check, the law will be that you have to stay poor to keep getting it--and there you are, trapped. Moreover, the marginal tax rate on escaping the trap is terrible. And so it goes. The transfer is capitalized in terms of entry costs, and disappears.

Luncheon speaker Charles Lichenstein is a man of courage and humor. It was he, you recall, serving with Jeane Kirkpatrick at the UN, who told the UN whiners that if they didn't like it here, he'd be delighted to escort them to (and off) the pier. Ta-ta. He needed both resources to address a gathering split into two dining rooms, one served by a video gadget and also, oddly, having much the younger audience. Mr. Lichenstein made the most of it, and if he ever abandons the government-UN-Heritage circuit in favor of gainful employment, he'll be a natural at the comedy club.

But he was of serious purpose in his remarks on the Ford Foundation. Ford, he said, practically invented arms control, and was busy putting termites in the woodwork as early as 1952. They are still feeding. The effect of arms control is always to disarm the good guy while the bad guy prepares for war. Similarly, public TV and radio are the product of Ford, which even helped develop the first PBS communications satellite. For its own relatively modest cost, it is extracting millions in taxes and corporate donations to finance the "principal transmission belt of [the] dominant liberal culture."

Willa Johnson chaired the first afternoon session, "Charitable Giving and Social Change." The speakers were Stanley Rothman of Smith College; Ernest Lefever of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Marvin Olasky of the University of Texas; and Michael Joyce of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. As outlined above, they all argued vividly that the "social change" discussed was for the worse.

Frank O'Connell chaired the last session, which was given over to the professionals in conservative foundations; they are so few in number that most were represented here. The subject was "The Role of Philanthropy in a Free Society." The speakers were W. W. Hill of the Liberty Fund; James Piereson of the John M. Olin Foundation; Robert Russell, management consultant; and Donald Coxe, an NR associate, representing the Donner Canadian Foundation. What was interesting in this segment was the unanimity of purpose. The founders of these philanthropies were all businessmen concerned about the encroachments of government not only into the market but into the charitable act. They had in common also education in classical teachings, and a clear understanding of where the trends they saw would lead. So these few, at least, took great precautions that their philanthropy would be rightly used. It has been. The present managers, sharing both these ideals and these understandings, have preserved what is left of genuine philanthropy.

Meeting adjourned--but by no means over. There was an optional dinner meeting Saturday night, and another for Sunday breakfast. And of course friends to yak with and Chicago spots to visit and all the sense of reunion until next year's meeting in--Philadelphia. Do you suppose it will be the Chicago Society meeting there?