According to CNN, the USA has just raised its donation level for tsunami disaster relief from 35 million to 350 million. Obviously, this a good thing we all applaud. Let’s all be on the same team about this one. For that reason I quickly said “yes” to the free UNICEF relief ad on this site. Until further notice, all aid is positive (but that shouldn’t stop you from taking a minute to decide where your money should be going).
John Podhoretz has an excellent column this morning decrying the politicization of tragedy. I’m going to do my best to avoid it. Call that my first New Year’s Resolution of the day…
UPDATE: For SoCal residents, the folks at KSCI-TV Channel 18 (a mulit-cultural station servinging the large Asian community in LA) have asked me to inform readers they will be holding a telethon for disaster relief from 1 to 5 PM New Year’s Day.
MORE: More skilled than I at such things, N. Z. Bear has a generic relief ad.
John Podhoretz has an excellent column this morning decrying the politicization of tragedy.
I can see some virtue to countries competing in this new sport. It may not be pretty, but it may serve some purpose. What we need to do is set up an international score keeper, sort of like the judges at the Olympic skating events. Then we can malign the judges and referees like in any other sport.
chuck:
I think it is tacky and shows disrespect for the dead.
Jarvis has a different perspective.
chuck:
The US would have paid most of the costs of this no matter what.
I hate the snarky comments about our stinginess in general and the use of this tragedy to bitch bitch bitch.
The people that hate us won’t give a damn what we give. In a week they will ahve found a way to blame it on us.
“Obviously, this a good thing we all applaud.”
I’m not so sure that it is an unalloyed good. I want to be clear here, so let me first say that I made a large donation to a charity that I trust, as much as I trust any of them- the nice thing about being young, single, and professional is that you have some money left over to burn, at the end of the month, even in NYC- I am not constitutionally able to burn money, beyond a good dinner or two a month, so I wind up accumulating it (and keeping it all in my checking account, which is dumb, and another story). This tsunami was a good opportunity to divest myself of a bit of it- if every American had the means and will to do that, the figure would be much larger than 350 million (this is the signal for public choice theorists- with whom I largely agree- to have at it…). So I am not against generosity, in principle.
A strict libertarian might argue against this aid on the grounds that, noble as its purpose might be, it is still taken at gunpoint from the taxpayer. I might agree, if it were not for the fact that larger sums are taken from me to support bureaucratic satrapies in the department of HUD- on balance, if you are going to rob me at gunpoint, I can’t think of a better use you could put the proceeds to than trying to ameliorate suffering in the wake of this still unnamed event. So I am not going to argue against state coercion in the service of “charity”- at least not ’til they tear down HUD, and clear away some of the corporate welfare. I am, in principle, opposed to this sort of foreign aid- but in practice I am for it.
So why would I object? I don’t object to the immediate expenditure- much as it pains the libertarian in me to say it, we should spend this money, and maybe more. It is a pittance, taking the federal budget as a whole (even more so if you amortize it), and this is a catastrophe in a real sense- the word is overused, but this really has been (and is) one hell of an event.
But we should also be very careful not to confuse immediate aid with the sort of aid that can actually prevent events like this in the future. In the 80s we were quite self-satisfied singing along with “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” (an obnoxious title when dealing with people who have hardly heard of Christianity and are starving to death- I say that as a real proponent of Christmas) and “We Are the World”. Africa is still a mess.
How many of us heard the name Mengistu? Without that name the Ethiopian famine seemed inevitable, an act of God, the sort of thing that Africans have always been, and will always be, subject to. With the name, and some facts, the famine becomes comprehensible- a foreseeable, avoidable event- and it is only by means of that recognition that we recognize Africans as actual people, as opposed to totemic sufferers. The reasons that the name Mengistu was unpronounceable at that point in time are complex, and left as an exercise- as a starting point, see Duranty (and why is it now permissible to discuss the very similar Mugabe?- we are less insular than we were, I think, and a bit harder to fool).
I am generally leery of people who opportunistically feed on tragedies like the one we just saw in Asia. Greenpeace seems to have already announced that this tsunami was caused by global warming- I was used as “the child” in the first set of TV commercials Greenpeace ever shot, and the only thing that keeps me from feeling real shame over that is that they were different back then.
We need to move beyond offering aid to Thailand- we need to offer Thailand the opportunity to become a modern industrial state- had this tsunami hit the gulf coast of Florida (where my mom lives) it would have killed maybe 10 stupid people, ’cause the rest of them would have moved inland.
So my objection is more of an accusation- as I said, I am disgusted by people who latch onto this event to push an unrelated agenda. I risk becoming one of those people by making this accusation. But I cannot sit back and not make it.
I accuse the modern world of romanticizing the third world- of romanticizing it to the point of homicide. The fact that mass death is natural does not make it desirable. We need to bring the third world into the fold- this is justifiable even on semi-libertarian grounds- imagine the economic activity if every country were modern.
I accuse Wired magazine of publishing stupid, meaningless articles by Stewart Brand, that fail to recognize the ways in which modernity has changed things- this is a man, after all, who actively hopes for the extinction of the human race- something which would require more of a flood than a tsunami- the timing was not propitious. You cannot simultaneously value the lives of men, and view men as a cancer on the earth- choose, and let the rest of us know your decision (though if you really view humanity as a cancer you have an option which the cancerous cell does not- remove yourself- that would send all the message we need, thank you very much)- it’s an important data point.
I accuse the American and European left of romanticizing the third world to such an extent that its people have become completely objectified. While living high on the university hog, the left has conspired to deny most of the world all of the things that could have prevented this disaster- and all of the things that could prevent the disaster that is all too often the daily life of men. In search of righteousness, the left has abandoned even the pretense of humanity- in trying to view humans as components of ecosystems (a worthy goal) you have reduced them to animals, to be toyed with at nature’s whim. You must choose.
I accuse, in a pro forma fashion, the American right- simply irrelevant, more concerned with the proper form of season’s greetings (err- Merry Christmas) than with the essentials that govern life and death. And you wonder why you are left behind, outpaced in the intellectual Belmont Stakes…
Yes, we should send money to Thailand, Sri Lanka, India. That money will not bring back the dead. When Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, become equal players in the world there will be no mass deaths from easily avoidable tsunamis. Give aid now- it is needed- but keep your eye on the prize. The next time this happens I hope that all these contries are so rich that the warning systems are a matter of course. Let’s make the death toll 10 dumb guys who had to check it out.
Tagore makes some good points however I think something else needs to come to the forefront. No matter what we do or how much we do the LLL friendly types will try their damnedest to make the U.S. look bad. It is their nature and their calling. If we look good, their whole house collapses under the weight of the lies supporting it.
On the aid front, the United States has far surpassed all comers already – Japan included. The fact that we have a carrier group on watch and they are flying ALL the aid in for free makes our contribution much more valuable than ANYBODY elses and we can take a great deal of pride in that FACT.
The lies that are being foisted on a unsuspecting public will be the LLL’s undoing and I for one will laugh all the way to the grave. To think, I actually used to listen the the Communist news network and Numbnuts, Chickenshit and Asshole networks and believed all the tripe they shoveled out. Boy, things sure have changed. I now listen to them but research and bounce it off Fox and the internet. There are quacks out there but, I trust the net much more than the leftist press.