Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Thursday, December 22, 2016
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
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OTHER VIEWS
10 ways to make more
mindful charitable gifts
I
f you’re a community-
6. Fewer may be better. As the
minded person, it’s easy
old saying goes, if you’re thirsty,
be overwhelmed with
it’s better to fill up a few cups
solicitations for financial
than put one drop in a thousand.
support from worthy nonprofit
You’ll achieve the greatest return
organizations, especially at
on your investment with deeper,
the end of the year. Being as
longer-term commitments,
thoughtful and intentional
not with a flavor-of-the-month
about personal and business
approach. And, if you have a
Max
philanthropy as you are about
Williams solid giving strategy in place, it’s
your own finances is a step in the
much more reasonable to decline
Comment
right direction.
opportunities that don’t fit the
Here are some charitable
profile.
giving ideas I recommend keeping
7. Involve family members and
in mind as you delve into your
employees. Bring your children,
philanthropy this month. And, despite
grandchildren or parents into the
what bookkeepers or certified public
conversation and give them a chance
accountants might cheerfully counsel, I
to share what is important to them so
try to think of the tax deductibility of my they can help guide your giving. Or,
own personal gifts as an added bonus,
if you are a business owner, let staff
not a primary motivation.
members give you input on what causes
1. Ask yourself the key questions.
and groups are most important to them.
What’s a realistic budget for charitable
Even owners of micro-businesses often
contributions? And, given my current
match their employees’ donations up to a
and likely future available resources,
certain limit. Also, consider creating fun
where do I think I can make the greatest
and meaningful staff volunteer activities
impact?
such as a nonprofit facility clean-up or a
2. Don’t wait for organizations (and
holiday food drive.
causes) to find you. Do some homework
8. Contribute things other than
to evaluate the vision and effectiveness
money. Time, talent, treasure —
of groups you’re considering, then
everyone has some of each. Once you’ve
connect with them in ways that make
identified who you want to support,
the most sense. Sometimes, it’s good to
constantly inventory what you have to
link with organizations that align directly give that matches up best with what’s
with your work or your hobbies. That’s
needed. In addition to cash, you may
why home improvement retailers have
want to join a nonprofit’s board or host a
supported Habitat for Humanity and
get-to-know brunch for potential donors.
why tech firm owners give hardware and
9. Think outside the “collection
software to schools and colleges. You’ll
box.” Many organizations, religious
be far more invested in their success if
and secular alike, rely on donors who
you pick the right partners.
commit to making regular contributions.
But, every once in a while, it’s good
3. Determine the best sources of
to check around and see if there are
information. Charity Navigator and
emerging groups meeting new and more
GuideStar are two readily accessible
critical needs.
online sources of intelligence about
10. Ask for help when you need it.
the structure and performance of
If doing all the research and legwork
many nonprofit organizations, but they
associated with creating and managing
don’t evaluate and rate everyone. Ask
your charitable giving this year seems
trusted experts about what groups are
daunting, think about tapping into the
really doing the best work on multiple
measures: breadth and depth of effective expertise of The Oregon Community
Foundation (www.oregoncf.org). It has
services, financial management,
helped thousands of donors make this
leadership, innovation, community
community and ones around our state
support and involvement, sustainability,
great places to live and work.
etc.
One final thought. Although you
4. Make gifts that satisfy both your
may want to use charitable giving to
heart and your head. Over time figure
out what really inspires you and commit enhance the visibility of your cause,
to giving most generously there. The real not all donations need to be publicly
key to long-term success and satisfaction acknowledged. Many cultural traditions
is to give honestly, not solely for ulterior teach that the most rewarding gifts are
made quietly and we have a number of
motives.
foundation donors who have expressed
5. Leverage your resources. There
how much they love seeing themselves
are many simple ways to make your
money go farther. For example, consider listed as “Anonymous” at the top of the
donor list!
making a match challenge to other
■
individuals and businesses who care
Max Williams is the president
about the same things you do. And
and CEO of The Oregon Community
investigate how “aggregators” such as
Foundation. The organization just
community foundations can effectively
announced $162,000 in grants to
pool donor dollars to increase the
support the important work of nonprofits
number and size of grants, scholarships
along the North Coast.
and other forms of support.
YOUR VIEWS
Hands off ag research
center
Once again the federal government is
throwing agriculture under the bus.
This year the Pendleton Experiment
station has been selected to take a
beating. All they do is research dryland
food, improve yield of food, identify
pests and weeds and design ways to
prevent and control them. Maybe the
folks in Washington D.C. will recognize
the importance of food grown and made
in America when their bread comes
from the Hanchin Bakery somewhere in
China and costs $29 a loaf.
Frustrated as usual,
Mike Mehren
Hermiston
LETTERS POLICY
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Books for the
Donald Trump era
T
he Donald Trump presidency is
My next recommendation is from
not yet officially upon us, but
across the Atlantic: “The Abolition of
the Trump era has already been
Britain” (1999), by Peter Hitchens,
good for political reading lists. Book
Christopher’s right-wing brother.
buyers baffled by Trumpism and
Writing early in the Tony Blair era,
seeking understanding have turned to
Hitchens argued that Britain’s rulers
various sociologies of the ur-Trump
had broken faith with the island
voter, making best sellers out of J.D.
nation’s past, burying its history,
Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” Nancy
customs and traditions, subjecting
Ross
Isenberg’s “White Trash” and Arlie
Douthat their people to a misguided European
Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in
pseudo-empire, and tolerating social
Comment
Their Own Land.”
decay and disarray as the price of
Liberals looking to feed
tolerance and progress. Nearly 20
their sense of alarm have been steered
years on, you will not find a clearer case
toward Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of
against both Blair and David Cameron’s
Totalitarianism,” Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t
shared worldview, or a clearer explanation
Happen Here” and Philip Roth’s “Plot
for why so many Britons voted for Brexit.
Against America.” “What Is Populism?”
Then I recommend widening your gaze
by German political scientist Jan-Werner
to Europe as a whole, through Christopher
Mueller has been widely recommended; so
Caldwell’s “Reflections on the Revolution
has Mark Lilla’s anatomy of reactionary
in Europe” (2009), which critiqued the
thought, “The Shipwrecked Mind”; so
Continent’s rulers for welcoming — out
has Richard Rorty’s
of idealism, economic
“Achieving Our
calculation and
Country,” from back
indifference — an
What
liberal
readers
in 1998, mostly for a
unprecedented level of
prescient few paragraphs
need right now are immigration from the
on “the nonsuburban
world that their
not just portraits of the Islamic
electorate” and its
societies lacked both
potential affinity for
competence and the
Brexit and Trump-vot- the
strongmen. The racial
civilizational confidence
element in Trumpism
ing domestic Other, to assimilate.
When Caldwell’s
has sent people back
but a clearer sense of book came out it seemed
to W.E.B. Du Bois on
“Black Reconstruction”
if it described a
their own worldview’s as
— once they’ve finished,
slow-burning, hopefully
of course, with the latest
manageable social and
limits, blind spots,
from Ta-Nehisi Coates.
religious crisis. Today,
But for your
blunders and internal in the wake of Angela
last-minute Christmas
Merkel’s decision to
contradictions.
shopping, I have some
hit the accelerator on
slightly different
demographic change,
recommendations to
the book’s mordant tone
make. The Trump-era reading lists I’ve seen seems, if anything, too optimistic.
include many worthy titles, but they also
Which is why my next recommendations
tend to focus heavily on the dark forces
are a few shades darker: First “Submission”
lurking somewhere outside enlightened
(2015), Michel Houellebecq’s seemingly
circles — in the hills of Appalachia, in the
dystopian novel about an exhausted near-
postindustrial heartland, in the souls of
future France that ends up choosing between
racists and chauvinists and crypto-fascists.
Islamism and fascism (it picks the veil), and
They are anthropologies of populism,
then one of Houellebecq’s earlier novels,
cautionary tales from history, blueprints for
“The Elementary Particles,” whose portrait
blunting revanchism’s appeal. But they do
of a loveless, sex-fixated and disposable
not generally subject Western liberalism
modern masculinity reveals that its author
itself to rigorous critique.
believes the real dystopia is already
And that might be what liberal readers
here — that the end of history is actually a
need right now: Not just portraits of the
materially comfortable desert, from which
Brexit and Trump-voting domestic Other,
the political and religious extremisms
but a clearer sense of their own worldview’s of “Submission” offer a welcome and
limits, blind spots, blunders and internal
rehumanizing form of escape.
contradictions.
This is itself an extreme idea, of course,
So my reading list starts with two of
and so is the comparison offered in my
liberalism’s sharpest internal critics, both
final recommendation, Ryszard Legutko’s
deceased — a reactionary of the left,
“Demon In Democracy” (2015), in which
Christopher Lasch, and a conservative
the author, a Polish political philosopher,
liberal, Samuel P. Huntington. Their
explicitly links the ideological conformism
most-cited works, Lasch’s “Culture of
and faith in capital-P Progress of
Narcissism” and Huntington’s “Clash of
contemporary liberalism to the oppressive
Civilizations and the Remaking of World
communism of his youth.
Order,” have obvious applications for our
Legutko is a member of Law and Justice,
culture and politics today. But the books I
the right-wing party currently ruling Poland,
would recommend are a little different.
whose ascent has provoked the Western
For Lasch, it’s “The Revolt of the Elites
media to panic over its religious nationalism
and the Betrayal of Democracy” (1995),
and illiberal forays. Which is all the more
a polemic against the professional upper
reason to read him, and to see through his
class’ withdrawal from the society it
eyes (and not only his) how the open society
as envisioned by contemporary progressives
rules and a critique of the ways in which
can seem to conservatives like a closed and
multiculturalism and meritocracy erode
stifling one — closed to transcendence,
patriotism and democracy. For Huntington,
closed to memory, closed to the pre-liberal
it’s “Who Are We? The Challenges to
traditions upon which Legutko (and most of
American National Identity” (2004), a book
the writers I’ve just recommended) would
widely denounced as racist for arguing
argue the liberal democratic order actually
that the recent wave of Latin-American
depends.
immigration might not be easily assimilable
Liberal readers probably will not finish
and might instead balkanize the country into
“Demon” ready to vote for Law and Justice;
identitarian redoubts.
Houellebecq probably won’t convince them
Both books are imperfect: Lasch’s is too
angry, Huntington’s too pessimistic (I think). that our civilization’s choice is porn and
cloning or the caliphate; Hitchens probably
But in different ways they both offer, in
won’t persuade them to become Brexiteers.
Lasch’s words, a “revisionist interpretation
But even for the unconvinced, reading
of American history, one that stresses the
these writers will go a long way toward
degree to which liberal democracy has
explaining the most unexpected thing about
lived off the borrowed capital of moral
Western politics in the strange year of
and religious traditions antedating the rise
2016 — the sheer number of people in our
of liberalism.” And they illustrate how
prosperous, at-peace societies who don’t
the Western elite has burned the candle
seem to want to live in liberalism’s end of
of solidarity at both ends — welcoming
history anymore.
migration that transforms society from
■
below even as the upper class floats up into
Ross Douthat, the previous senior editor
a post-national utopia, which remains an
at The Atlantic, joined The New York Times
undiscovered country for the people left
as an Op-Ed columnist in 2009.
behind.