It’s easy to have the right responses.

“An earthquake in Peru? Oh those poor people! Our prayers go out to them. ”
“The way women are treated by the Taliban is disgraceful!”
“Of course I support small business. ”

And it’s almost as easy to think you have done your part because you sent some money somewhere. That’s your sacrifice. You sent an amount of money you were totally comfortable parting with and now you feel like you are part of the solution.

Or if that’s too much for you (after all, what do YOU get out of it?), you can just make the enormous sacrifice of buying a different brand. Oh see, I am better than you because I drink fair-trade coffee, I recycle everything, and I even show up at pro-niceness events now and then! What a small (no really, small) price to pay for a sense of smug superiority to all those ignorant fools who are choosing to be part of the problem.

Cheap at twice the price.

And don’t get me wrong. All of that stuff helps. There’s a lot of power in consumer choice and charitable donation.

But don’t go around thinking you have made a sacrifice, because you haven’t. All you made was a purchase. You spent or donated whatever you felt you could afford at that time in order to get that feeling of being part of the solution, one of the good people, and whaddaya know, you got it.

Here’s the thing, though. Charity is more than a consumer choice. Charity involves real sacrifice. And real sacrifice is not comfortable, easy, or pleasant. Real sacrifice means giving something up. Real sacrifice involves getting less of what you want. Real sacrifice means spending things other than money in order to get things done.

Real sacrifice hurts.

But liberalism today is in the endless search for the painless sacrifice. Oh, don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything you don’t totally enjoy. You can help by doing exactly what you like to do! Like fancy meals? Go to a liberal dinner! Like mountain biking? Bike for the Cure! Like listening to rousing speeches that make you feel good about yourself? Come to a rally!

We have done everything we possibly can to make sure you get the most self-satisfaction out of the least possible sacrifice!

And of course, you can always throw another coat of paint onto your veneer of caring by saying “Well I could have done something else. ”

“I could have stayed home and cooked for myself instead of going to that dinner!” But would you have? Aren’t you going to that dinner because it’s something you enjoy more than just sitting at home watching TV and catching up on Facebook?

“I could have worked in my wood shop instead of Biking For The Cure!” And if that had been your real preference… you would have. But you didn’t. You did exactly what you wanted to do with your weekend. Can you really say that if it had not been for the event, you would not be out mountain biking this weekend?

“I could have stayed home instead of going to that rally! And I had to go all the way downtown to attend it!”. Sure. And you should be very proud of the small inconvenience you were willing to endure in order to attend an event that you thoroughly enjoyed and came away from feeling fantastic.

In fact, it says something about modern society that we give such great meaning to such minor sacrifices. Is the bar really so low that a couple of hours of our free time seems like such a huge contribution?

Imagine if making a difference actually involved doing things. And not fun things either. Dirty, difficult, unglamorous, unsexy, ugly things that involve a lot of toil and strain and effort and working all day long with no reward except the opportunity to do it again the next day.

You know, the kind of work poor people do.

In fact, if you look into your mind right now, you will hear the voice of your middle class upbringing saying “But…. but people like me don’t do that kind of work! We plan! We supervise! We work in offices and do things like programming or business or law! Here’s my money, just don’t make me do that!”.

And it’s not just that most people would prefer not to do grunt work or hard labour.

It’s that you think that you are the kind of person who should not have to do it. That doing it would be far more than an unpleasant physical experience for you. It would be something a lot more like dying, because to do that kind of thing would mean truly sacrificing something : status.

And human being react to loss of status like it’s a fate worse than death.

After all, if you are doing the same work as poor uneducated people, someone might think you’re poor just like them. And that’s not the deal, right? The deal is that you are the kind of middle class person who is better than the other kind of middle class people because you are the kind that cares – really cares – about the plight of the poor.

If there is even the slightest chance of actually joining them and being seen by your fellow liberals just like you look at the poor right now, then the deal is off.

So the liberal world bends over backwards to make sure being a liberal is easy and fun. And as long as all you really care about is feeling better than other people along with your friends, that’s fine.

But if you want to actually solve problems, you have to be willing to do a lot more than just those things you feel “comfortable” doing. Things that involve real sacrifice in the form of doing things you really don’t enjoy at all, things which scare you, things you’re not sure you’re good at, things that are way outside your comfort zone.

Things like being willing to confront evil head on, instead of just whining about it in your ideological enclaves where you are sure not to be contradicted. Where when you say something with the right political scent, people nod and say “mmmm.”

Things like doing what you are told without question or complaint. That means being willing to sacrifice some of your precious individuality in order to support the causes you claim to believe in.

Things like going to where working class people with whom you have nothing in common live and try to see the world from their point of view. Actually use your supposed open-mindedness

Above all, you have to be willing to change.

And that’s something the comfortable liberals of the world just won’t do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.