More Victimized Billionaires

by digby

No, not the poor put-upon Wall Street masters of the universe. This time, it’s the unsung heroes of the conservative movement —- their wealthy benefactors:

Newsmax: Why are progressive givers generally lauded, while conservative philanthropists, according to your book “Funding Fathers,” are either ignored or vilified?

Robinson: The imbalance that the general news media have as they deal with issues shows up to an even greater extent in philanthropy because they can get away with it because. Conservatives in a lot of cases don’t get out the story of our supporters, and the great gifts. A lot of the conservatives are humble and they are not looking to toot their own horn, so they will defend their principals but they won’t necessarily defend publically their philanthropy. And so the imbalance that already exists in the media is exacerbated by those cultural differences between the left and the right.

Newsmax: You write, “The left dominates the universities, the media, and most of the philanthropic organizations but it seldom matches the conservative movement’s effectiveness.” Why do you think that the case?

Robinson: Well it is actually somewhat ironic, because conservative institutions comparatively were starved for funds. They tended to spend the money much more carefully like a family struggling through the Great Depression. I think that they will never spend carelessly and will always be very cautious with their resources. Almost every conservative group only receives support through voluntary efforts. There are very few conservative institutions that take taxpayer funds to any extent.

So I think that they are much more careful about how that money is spent. But I also think that there’s another reason for it, and it goes back almost to the Reagan speech. And it’s the same principal as with Sarah Palin, that when someone does come forward and articulates the conservative ideas as we conservatives ourselves would state those ideas, the general public is very responsive to that, because we represent the majority sentiment in American society. So it is easier once someone steps forward. The great challenge is that what makes a person conservative oftentimes is that they want to raise their own family, they want to run their own business, they are not out to decide everything else for everybody else.

So to get individuals to step forward perhaps is a greater challenge on the conservative side than it is on the socialist side, where people are dying to run other people’s lives.

Right. They only want to run the lives of people who disagree with them.

These poor wingnut welfare moms and dads have been scraping by like it’s the great depression all these years. The fact that they accomplished anything at all is a real up-by-the-bootstraps all American success story.

Unfortunately, it’s about to take a turn for the worse.

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