Studies consistently show that Republicans give more than Democrats to private charities. But as any liberal will happily tell you, that doesn’t capture the whole picture. The left, they say, is far more generous than the right. It’s just that they don’t express their concern for the disadvantaged via charitable giving. Rather, they raise taxes and spread the wealth via big government.

There’s only one problem: The disadvantaged don’t always want that kind of help. For proof, consider the recent “yellow vest” protests in France. President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular gas-tax increase—aimed at stopping climate change—will only negligibly reduce global greenhouse emissions. What it will do is empty rural workers’ pocketbooks. Compared with their urban political leaders, the rural French must travel great distances for work without ready access to public transit. Higher taxes take a real bite out of their paychecks. And all so that France’s political leaders can appear virtuous, while accomplishing nothing.

Liberals in the U.S. have also pursued radical environmental agendas that burden average Americans. Higher energy and housing costs—the byproducts of liberal environmental and restrictive building regulations—are an inconvenience for the wealthy, but threaten the American dream for everyone else.

Energy-intensive manufacturing jobs, which traditionally have offered good salaries and benefits, are at risk from overseas competitors with a less hostile political environment, like China. Zoning restrictions, impact fees, land-use restrictions and other policies have reduced the availability of affordable single-family housing near urban centers in California and elsewhere, diminishing the opportunities for young families to take higher-paying jobs in these growing cities. Even as liberals decry income inequality, their policies make it increasingly difficult for younger and less skilled workers to move to areas with more economic opportunity or to get well-paid jobs that don’t require advanced degrees.

While progressives tout government spending and public programs as the solution for the working family’s ills, the taxation and regulation their agenda requires actually creates an ossified market with larger companies, less innovation and slower growth. In a vicious circle, an ever larger and more powerful government facilitates crony capitalism, whereby political insiders use their influence to benefit favored companies and industries, which in turn support the political establishment. The result? Americans lower down the economic ladder can’t move up.

At the same time, liberals are happy to dismiss or insult the ideas and traditions many Americans in the middle of the country hold dear. It’s not progressive to live by traditional religious values, drive a truck or shoot guns. And in the name of a better future, liberals work to take those things away from the rest of us. It’s not enough that they believe in their ideals. They must force bakers in Colorado to violate their consciences or shell out massive legal fees. Like a child giving up lima beans for Lent or confessing another’s sins, progressives are happy to renounce the practices they never valued and to demonstrate their virtue by taking those things from people who cherish them.

Yet liberal elites in America and Europe seem shocked by the growing backlash against their environmental, immigration and trade policies. They only see the upsides of globalization, with more-efficient supply chains, a rising middle class across many formerly impoverished nations, and a larger market for their advanced products and services. They ignore the tangible and near-term dislocations suffered by families and entire communities. Politicians should ensure that international trade isn’t a zero-sum game that disproportionately burdens the very working people they claim to champion.

Unfortunately, American liberals are too busy congratulating themselves for society’s increasingly rapid cultural progress—while bemoaning the work still to be done—to do the real work of helping poor and working people rise. It is almost inconceivable to them how backward and oppressive the West was just a few years ago. The thought of it consumes them, propelling them to spend their energies defending those who burn the flag, kneel during the national anthem, protest against the police, and engage in other unpopular expressions in the name of liberty and tolerance.

As important, they are also quick to sacrifice the rights of evangelical Christians, libertarians, supporters of Israel, and others for the same goal. The standards continue to shift leftward, with yesterday’s victories and compromises transformed into today’s outrages, thus ensuring that each generation of liberal warriors is more necessary than the last.

Liberal elites blame Donald Trump and his supporters for resurrecting a tribal, winner-takes-all approach to American politics. But it is their contempt for working people that has fueled this political polarization. Liberals love to preach about their virtue and conservatives’ selfishness, but they would do well to remember that charity begins at home.

Mr. Jindal served as governor of Louisiana, 2008-16, and was a candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.