In my younger years, when I was new to Christianity, I was often startled by inconsistencies in my newly embraced faith. Conservative ministers would decry the sin of abortion, yet point a crooked finger at the pregnant "pouches" of young, unmarried women in their congregation. Many of these women would then compound the mistakes that led to their current condition with the greater mistake of abortion, feeling that if they hid their actions, they could escape judgment. I resolved early on that I would donate not to the organizations that protested abortion clinics, but to those that provided homes for these women and supported them through difficult times without overlooking the mistakes that put them where they were.

Conservatives in America have made great strides in the intervening years as we have realized that we CAN support unwed mothers throughout their pregnancies without overlooking the very real and pressing problems that brought them there in the first place. Virtually every community of size has homes for unwed mothers, and the tactics of the protestors are pretty much confined to the fringe elements.

We face a similar problem in our approach to poverty in America, and, it seems, far too many of us have not learned from the mistakes of the past. We have made great strides in reducing poverty in this country, yet we have not addressed the spiritual problems that are almost ubiquitous among their population. "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" is our guiding motto, yet instead of teaching the poor to fish, too many conservatives are satisfied with waving the contents of their livewells in front of the poor and decrying the lack of ambition that left the poor man without a fish to eat. If we are to survive, and to work to reduce poverty, this attitude must drastically change.

There is a saying that "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king". This is self evident among the poor, where liberalism is the "one eyed man". Liberalism does not begin to address the core problems of poverty, meeting it instead with a "tax and spend" approach that robs from the rich to allegedly give to the poor. It is not even close to a perfect solution, and its flaws are so self evident as to make any attempt to enuertate them appear entirely superfluous. Yet a program of robbing from the "haves" to give to the "have nots" resonates deeply with a nation where the majority identify themselves more closely with the "have nots".

(NOTE: The following contains an edit from the original posting due to a typo. The edit is noted and the original can be found in response #17 of the replies):

Conservatives have done an excellent job of identifying the problems that lead to poverty in this country. Yet we have not even begun to identify viable solutions. And because people will almost inevitably choose a poor solution over no solution, they have turned to the inadequate and often short sighted approaches of the liberals because they offer something rather than nothing. Ironically, this should have been pretty clear to conservatives, who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the 2004 presidential elections when an unpopular president, leading the nation through an unpopular war, presented a (edit) strong (/edit) and concise plan for the next four years, while his opponent offered nothing but hollow rhetoric and strong personal attacks against his opponent. In fact, a perusal of the websites of the two candidates showed George W. Bush's name appearing more times on John Kerry's website than on his own.

For all the criticisms one can offer of American liberalism, it has, at least historically, employed the proper approach. At the core of American liberalism is a call to activism that conservatives would do well to envy. Liberals encourage volunteerism and personal commitment that are all but absent in far too many of the approaches of the conservative community. Indeed, even the parable of the fish illustrates the need for personal commitment; teaching a man to fish requires a far more intense and personal approach than giving a man a fish ever could. And it's a commitment we can't legislate, nor can we delegate. We must be willing to take on all the challenges of such a commitment ourselves if we are to make a permanent, meaningful impact on poverty in this country.

Real, meaningful approaches are there, but we are doing a remarkably poor jop of promoting them. We can find them in the actions of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (Link ), which is working to address the very real needs of the inner city and which I discovered not through the writings of any conservative pundit, but rather through the coalition's own paid political advertisement advocating for the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. We can find them in the approach of Habitat for Humanity, an agency that requires commitment from those who benefit from its programs but from which conservatives sadly distance themselves because of the political affiliation of its leader, who has not held publicly elected political office in over a quarter century. We can find them in the effective approach of the welfare programs of the LDS church, but most conservative Christians will not concede the effectiveness of the program because they can't get past the doctrine of the church. And I am sure we can find them in many other places, yet a poor PR job leaves me hard pressed to say where.

As conservatives look to the future, we must face the uncomfortable but inescapable truth that, while a conservative outlook offers a far better prognosis for the future of the individual, if we do not address the immediate needs of the poor and needy, the liberal approach will offer far more appeal among those who need what we have to offer. After all, an empty stomach speaks far louder than the most vociferous politician.