Charity, Reality, Obscenity, Stupidity

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Afghanistan, Iraq, and the PLO just held what were, arguably, their first free elections ever. What is a liberal, just-beyond-the-horizon paranoid MSM hate rag to do? Why, suggest that the real goals were something other than a representative government and, in true liberal fashion, pretend failure on the part of the Conservative President and the Conservative Congress.

This week, the cover story of TIME magazine does just that. The issue is effectively devoted to a forthcoming book by Jeffrey Sachs, which carries the title “The End of Poverty”. Sachs, however, appears determined not so much to solve problems as to attack the Bush Administration. A highlighted claim, for example, is “U.S. Spent $16 Billion This Year to Address Extreme Poverty;
$500 Billion Was Spent on the Military”, a Moore-esque distortion so misleading it may reasonably be called a lie on its intent. For instance, the tax relief the Bush tax cuts provided to working poor is completely left out by Sachs. Same for the improved Prescription Medicine coverage for Medicare. The main message by Sachs, that the Bush Administration does not care for the poor, is nothing but a liberal lie.

So what is Sachs using for evidence, anyway? The $16 Billion he derides is being spent to help, as Sachs says, “the poorest of the poor, whose societies are destabilized by extreme poverty”, as if spending more money would change the domestic policies of the nations whose citizens are in the worst thralls of poverty. Let’s take a look at that for a moment. Who are the poorest nations, which come to mind? Maybe North Korea, which refused to accept aid from the United States after a chemical explosion last year, out of fear we would use the opportunity to build a profile of the regime’s stability. Maybe the Sudan, where terrorists are killing, raping or enslaving any Christians and Westerners they find, and U.S. charity is accepted only on the condition that we ask no questions about what the government is doing with the money and materials sent, even after much of it has ended up being sold for personal gain of government officials. Maybe Cuba, where the state’s idea of education includes chanting anti-Western slogans. Maybe places like the Iraq under Saddam, which we now know was selling oil for money to support the dictator and his regime, under the explicit approval of several high-ranking United Nations officials, even as Iraqi children starved because food meant for them was diverted. The very notion that the United States is somehow complicit in these conditions, much less insulted for giving billions of dollars a year to nations which spit in the face of the nation which send the aid, is obscene.

Sachs goes on to list “nine steps toward the goal of ending poverty”, none of which works on a government level. Sachs, for example, wants people to make a “personal commitment”, which is fine and worthy, but hardly the action of Congress, now is it?

TIME magazine tries to justify this worship of unreal fantasy by including a note from Managing Editor Jim Kelly, who says “it is impossible to deny that the needless deaths of so many people every year call for action on a global scale”. Such a claim can only be made by someone who believes at least one of two things:

Such a person must either believe that the United Nations, despite all the evidence, is functionally effective in helping nations grow their economies and welfare or their citizens, or that person must honestly believe that the United States has the right to dictate terms and conditions to every nation on earth, even to the point of controlling their economies and distribution of wealth.

It truly worries me, to discover that the Managine Editor of TIME Magazine is truly that far removed from Reality.