printWhat a relief. Yet another philosopher king, this time Clueless Clooney, has been recruited to steer the proverbial Ship of State to safety. The President and Vice President want you to know, as they “assured the actor and activist George Clooney last night,” that
“Bringing relief to the battered region of Darfur is a top priority for the administration.”
By breaking bread with Clooney, the “prudential” Obama-Biden pair is doing nothing Bush had not done before them. Or the Clintons, for that matter. Bush went from preaching “trade not aid,” and being charmingly unaware of celebrity, to instituting trade tariffs, and pledging to Bono a 50 percent increase in U.S. foreign aid over three years.
Expect an American nation-building “expedition” to Darfur, which will be greeted approvingly by the neoconnery and others on the left.
For those of you wishing to be reminded, if only out of nostalgia, of the constitutional position on foreign aid, the late Lord Peter Bauer had this to say about the “morality” of “taxpayer’s money compulsorily collected”:
“Contributors not only have no choice but quite generally do not even know they are contributing. It is sometimes urged that in a democracy taxpayers do have a choice, which restores the moral element to foreign aid. This objection is superficial. The taxpayer has to contribute to foreign aid whether he likes it or not and whether he has voted in its favor or against it.”
Update: Western economists like the great Peter Bauer, the foremost authority on development, had been condemning aid to Third World countries for decades. But in the PC order, it is only when an African reaches the same, derivative deduction that the case against foreign aid is given credence by liberals.
I’ve never understood the influence actors and singers have when it comes to issues like this. How does appearing on the big screen give them special insight about the world?
I wonder if anyone has ever asked blowhards like Clooney and Bono whether it is morally right to take someone’s property at gunpoint and give it to someone else. I doubt it. And I’m tired of paying for the pet projects of self-absorbed, over-paid entertainers. If Clooney wants to help the people of Darfur, no one is stopping him.
Politics is now entertainment.
A family member said this to me.
It’s true. The society pages feature Al Gore along with the gasbags from Hollywood.
And guess what?
They both have your money. Lots of it.
And they both think they’re your betters because of the money.
There was a very illuminating interview in (surprise) the New York Times (!!) with economist Dambisa Moyo whom they called “the Anti-Bono”. The very good but short interview can be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/magazine/22wwln-q4-t.html
— she was the only African at the Davos World Economic Forum and she recommends eliminating “aid” to parasitic African “governments” (e.g. thugs) in favor of private economic investment.
“…(S)he recommends eliminating “aid” to parasitic African “governments” (e.g. thugs) in favor of private economic investment.”
PRIVATE. ECONOMIC. INVESTMENT.
The difference is that you don’t give a hungry man a sack of flour, you give him a sack of seeds and teach him about agriculture. Next year he will have enough to eat and maybe even enough surplus to sell back to you at a good price.
But maybe liberals just love keeping Africans as pets.
More intelligent, better looking, more articulate than the common people. You can be sure that when the tax man comes, he will come after the common man not the ones who think they are better because of their superiority.
How I wish that more people would read and understand Austrian economics, but we have fallen for the lie that government can provide for our well-being and security. We will have neither.
The Romans had it right. Back then actors (and lawyers!) were one small step above whores on the social ladder.
[Keep them coming; your comments make my day.]
Given the current (lack of) aesthetic taste in America, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. Both groups are paid to fake emotion and frequently appear in the tabloids.