Responsibility—Not Cash—is What the Third World Needs

 

Right Hook

\. JJ: McCullough, OP Columnist }

very time the government of any
western country passes a budget,
there is always some controversy
over what percentage of funds are going
to be delegated to foreign aid. Today,
most countries donate less than 1 percent
of their GDP to aid programs. The
United States, for example, gives away

157 percent of their GDP, which
amounts to over 15 billion dollars of free
money for poor countries around the
world. Canada only gives about 3 billion a
year, but that’s still a huge chunk of cash.

But it’s apparently not enough. We
should be giving away .7 percent of our
GDP or higher, says Bono and the rest of
the internationalist set. This would
amount to something like 100 billion dol-
lars from the US and 20 billion from
Canada. Before we whip out the cheque-
book, we should at least know why we’re
being asked to do this.

Left-wingers love international aid
because it takes one of their favourite
domestic programs (welfare) and applies
it to the entire planet. It likewise allows
them to engage in that other favourite
hobby of theirs: pretending to care about
the third world. By forking over huge
sums of our tax dollars to the third world,
they say, we ate supposedly doing our part
to help end poverty, hunger, homeless-
ness, AIDS, Cancer, war, clogged toilets,

and so on. Not only that, but it helps ease
the guilt associated with being a rich,
white westerner. Of course, they don’t say
that second part as loudly.

When the left looks at the current for-
eign-aid status quo, their response is
always threefold. One, we’re not giving
the third world enough money; two, we
have no right to ask anyone where this
money is going; and three, we’re all mon-
sters for having the audacity to ask
third-world governments to repay us
when they borrow our money. In short,
the argument made by the third world and
their western supporters is essentially little
more than “give us free money and shove
off.” This snappy attitude is in turn con-
sidered justified because “we”? (i.e. the
white race, which, as you know, is one
huge homogeneous group who share a
common agenda on everything) have per-
petrated historic “wrongs” against
innocent Africans, Asians, and Arabs, and
the only way to recant our sins is through
hefty financial reparations.

You may have

 

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thought things like Asian
genocides, murderous
African dictatorships,
and approximately six
million different Middle
Eastern wats were, you
know, actually the fault
of the people who lived
in those places and caused
them, but no no, they
were actually owr fault
you see. No one in the
west really understands
what’s been going on in
the third world for the
last 50 years, so it’s very
easy for their leaders to
just claim that whenever
anything bad happens, it
can somehow be attrib-
uted to the “legacy” of
those damned
Europeans.

Colonialism is a great
catchall excuse. I don’t
know why we don’t use
it more in Canada.
“Sure, the gun registry
may be several billion
dollars over budget, but
that’s an understandable
outcome considering the
legacies of colonialism
perpetrated by
unjust British rulers!”

Leftists hem and cry
when anyone dares sug-
gest that the United

our

States or the World Bank have a right to
demand certain obligations are met in
exchange for granting international aid.
‘To so much as suggest that we in the west
might, just might, be running our govern-
ments and economies better than they are
in Uganda and Laos is considered akin to
the worst forms of bigotry, racism, and
colonialism. Instead, presumably, we are
to just sign over vast swatches of money
to whatever crackpots are ruling these
countries, and assume they will in turn
find “local solutions” to their problems
by, I don’t know, investing in voodoo dolls
or something, Anything except follow the
western capitalist model that seems to
have worked so well for us. The reality is
that this is precisely the plan that has been
followed for decades, and has always
resulted in dismal failure.

For years, western governments have
given third-world governments the “ben-
efit of the doubt” and blindly signed over
great sums of foreign aid in the assump-
that their governments are
competent enough to spend it properly.
Bono and the rest have recently been call-
ing for a “Marshall Plan for Africa,” but in
reality, Aftica’s already been given the
equivalents of about four or five Marshall
Plans, all of which have been fritted away
on pointless wars, disastrous land collec-
tivization schemes, and of course, good
old-fashioned embezzlement at the hands
of dictators. Moreover, the original
Marshall Plan was only effective in the
first place because its aid conditions were

tion

so tightly regulated and demanded so
much from its benefactors.

If nations in the third world want our
tax dollars, they need to prove their com-
mitment to capitalism, democracy,
liberalism, accountability, openness, and
tolerance. Money alone is not enough to
create a productive, wealthy, free, success-
ful nation. It is only one small piece of a
much larger strategy of long-term reform,
and should be regarded as such. If the
third-world wants to pull itself out of the
hole they have dug, the onus should be
primarily on their governments, not ours.
That they have been historical victims is
undeniable, but it is time to move on and
assume some degree of mature self-
responsibility for the future, just as the
Irish, Jewish, South Korean, and many
other historical “victims” have managed
to do. Call it heartless, call it colonial, but
the path to success lies in modernization
and responsibility, not handouts and end-

less pity.

April 6/2005