"I'd be a lot more impressed with "faith based" stuff if I could find even one non-conservative xian group that got dime one."

These issues don't break down along conservative/liberal lines, Anon. I'll fight an Evangelical on, say, the issue of gay marriage, but that doesn't mean they're any less welcome when they're joining up to the fight against malaria. Coalitions should be built around specific goals; requiring agreement on the entire range of political issues is a recipe for getting nowhere.

Arj, my point is that we're already there. We spend more on cosmetics than would be required to save the lives of millions of children per year. Status anxiety (Alain de Botton wrote a great book of this title) is a reality and a constant...it's just a question of what will confer status. So yes, if we could make charitable contributions a source of status, alongside clothes/shoes/your children's nursery school and everything else, then absolutely I think that's very much somewhere we should choose to go as a society.

And to the other anon, believe it or not, I pay no one's salary. They publish this drivel anyway!