“It’s more complicated when it’s about your own children.” So said a liberal in 2015, objecting to the “diversifying” of his kids’ school. Yes, and it’s also more complicated when it’s about your own money.
Just ask one Grace Ryan, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member dubbed a “DSA Duchess.”
A chocolate heiress living large off her parents’ fortune, Ryan wants you to know something.
She really cares about the less fortunate.
In fact, when pressed recently on being a limousine liberal, she had a champagne-socialist response at the ready.
“But, like, have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?” she asked.
“I have a moral obligation to use my advantages to help those who are struggling.”
“Noblesse oblige” references, of course, the idea that the wealthy have a responsibility to help the lower classes. They’re to try to feed them, clothe them, and rescue them from privation. Charity is noble, too, but there may be a problem with Ryan’s conception of “help.”
That is, there’s no indication she’s running a food pantry, funding medical care in Appalachia, or opening schools in Africa.
She instead appears to occupy herself campaigning for DSA-aligned politicians such as congressional candidate Brad Lander (D-N.Y.).
Put differently, she just could, in typical liberal style, be “giving people the shirt off someone else’s back.”
Outsourcing Your “Charity”
Ryan is significant because she’s not anomaly but archetype. Reminiscent of infamous socialist Karl Marx, many DSA disciples are caviar-commie types. National Review (NR) reported on the Ryan story last Wednesday, writing:
Ryan is a rich-girl devotee of the Democratic Socialists of America who has for some reason decided to spend the better part of her 20s dressing up as Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis. “Everyone’s trying to dunk on me for being a progressive from a privileged background,” Ryan said recently, after she was criticized for being a stereotypical Lulu Lenin, “but like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”
Ah, there it is.
Ryan’s argument has become rather popular among DSA types of late. Chafed by the realization that their enemies’ characterizations are true, the group’s leading lights have begun to embrace the critique and insist that they have no choice but to help the peons: Oui, je suis un gosse de riche, mais je t’aiderai volontiers du haut de mon perchoir! After all: What, besides smash up the system that conferred their privilege, is a decent privileged person supposed to do?
Well, here’s an idea: Actually help the poor yourself. Volunteer for that army of altruism as opposed to trying to draft everyone else into it at gunpoint. Make sacrifices yourself as opposed to, like a careerist mother dropping junior at government-funded daycare, outsourcing your charity.
This is part of the point, too. What Ryan apparently advocates is not actually noblesse oblige (literally: “nobility obliges”). This obligation fell on the nobility and gentry themselves — and, in parallel, the Church. Money donated came from the lord’s own estate, rents, and household, not a national tax-and-transfer budget. The only overlap was that the lord and local authority were often the same person. (Of course, this may be DSA demagogues’ ambition as well.)
Today, though, there’s far less overlap with the Ryan types.
That is, they behave as if government largesse should be the only form of (pseudo) “charity.” In fact, contrary to the “selfish conservative, compassionate liberal” stereotype, it’s rightists who devote more time and money to charity. As the Acton Institute related in 2020:
Arthur Brooks, in Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, discovered that conservatives give vastly more to charity than statists, despite having lower incomes. That holds true at the community level, as well. Of the 25 states that give above-average donations to charity, 24 vote Republican.
It isn’t just about money. Peter Schweizer in his book Makers and Takers found that conservatives are one-and-a-half times more likely to volunteer at a charity (27 percent vs. 19 percent), and nearly three times as likely to believe it is important to “get happiness from putting others’ needs ahead of their own” (55 percent vs. 20 percent). Conservatives are even more likely to give blood than left-wingers.
Now, much if not all of this is attributable to conservatives’ greater Christian religiosity. That, however, gets at the point. Noblesse oblige grew out of Christian feudal society — not the Fabian Society. Charity was a virtue (and was officially declared such), not merely a vehicle through which to “virtue signal.”
Motivations — Noble or Not?
This gets at another point. The late mafia don John Gotti, a thuggish killer, would polish up his image by throwing spectacular neighborhood parties. This wasn’t, however, from-the-heart charity, but vanity; it was “boughten friendship at your side.”
Do leftist calls for taxpayer-funded handouts reflect anything more noble? I mean, Gotti at least spent his own money.
Or did he?
For statist government is much like “The Dapper Don”: It forcibly extracts money from others and then redistributes it.
This raises another question: Do Ryan-esque leftists really care about those they’d deliver “charity” to any more than Gotti did? As the aforementioned Schweizer pointed out in 2008, it’s not just that liberals are less likely to render charitable aid. It’s also that when they do, they more often support political causes than help the needy.
No one may have to tell this to Valérie Trierweiler, who was an “item” (ahem) with ex-French president François Hollande. She revealed in 2014 that while Hollande, a socialist, joked publicly about hating “the rich,” privately he “does not like the poor.” He calls them “les sans dents” — “people without teeth.”
In other words, libs won’t give much money to feed the hungry or heal the sick. But they’ve got teeth, and spending billions to turn America socialist is a cause they really can sink them into.
