Conservatives' and Liberals' Moral Psychology

This is an old column but I came across when someone else things to it as part of a response to one of his current columns on ideological diversity.  It discusses how liberals give us to charity than conservatives and the implications of that, in the context of the public policy debate in which Liberals are widely agreed to be more generous public spending/public resources/public funds/the budget to the downtrodden.  

I've read/heard elsewhere that this finding disappears when you control for religion, so it's religion and not conservatism that makes people more charitable, and it's in religion and not liberalism that makes them less so. (check to see if this is in the column, and check to see if it's true)

More recently, it's been discussed some from the unearthing of a 1981 quote from Bernie Sanders that he does not believe in charity.

This might seem to accord with my analysis on liberals and conservatives and their differences on collective action problems: liberals favor coordinated solutions to collection action problems and conservatives don't, in general. 

Maybe this is because liberals overestimate/overprotect free-riding/action of unenlightened self interest, so they don't believe uncoordinated action can solve it, and maybe it's because liberals see themselves and those around them, who are also highly likely to be liberals, free-ride/act of unenlightened self-interest frequently/most of the time, i.e. that liberals free-ride/act on it unenlightened self-interest more than liberals do.

Maybe because they're less generous slash more vicious/less virtuous, or maybe it's because they have a different technical/positive view/belief, i.e. they believe and uncoordinated solution is less likely to happen, and are just taking the rational action rashly taking the action consistent with that belief.

Test both of those 

Maybe liberals just think that they don't have to do it, and it will even get done more efficiently by government.

The pros think they just should not have to do it.

Are they doing it out of defensive free-riding or initial free-riding?

Bleeding Heart Tightwads - NYTimes.com