[true_religion]

If I had to guess it's because socialists believe that everyone should bear the cost of helping the financially disadvantaged, whereas conservatives believe that its up to each individual to decide of they should help someone (beyond such things as emergency/military services which are socialist but have been enshrined into our view of government).

So a socialist who wants to help the homeless will spend their time fighting the government to fund to social services.

Does political action count as "getting your hands dirty"? Well I'm not one to decide.

[randyrand]

Depends. FB activism I would argue is not getting your hands dirty, but more involved actions count, IMO.

Edit: This is actually a really interesting topic and I didn't mean offense by my original post. So it's sad to see people downvoting/unwilling to talk about these things.