Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (39000)	8/16/2005 1:14:04 PM
From: Constant Reader	Respond to of 90947

As far as super-power is concerned, the quicker we resign that job the better it will be for everyone. Half our allies cannot defend themselves on their own from an external foe and the other half probably couldn't survive an internal uprising. Best to stop playing "mother" and let them face reality and do something about it before it is too late. Our power should be used in accordance with our own national interests. Period. We can't save others from themselves - life doesn't work that way. If it did, crime, poverty, obesity, and a host of other societal problems would have been solved decades ago. The world at large is no different. After 60 years under the comforting American umbrella, Europe's military is in a pitiful state, Canada's is on the verge of becoming a third-world level force. Tens of billions (probably hundreds of billions) of military aid to other nations have been largely squandered or misappropriated. As for our economic wealth, it remains to be seen how long that will last given the ever-growing national debt and never-shrinking trade deficits. All good things come to an end (nothing ever hasn't, yet) and I hope like Hell I'm not alive when it happens. Economic aid to others? Barring possibly the Marshall Plan, can you think of any lasting benefit from the tens of billions of dollars we and other nations have handed out over the decades? Did you see that article about the time of Live8 that calculated the money lost to graft and corruption in Africa is about equal to the amount of foreign economic aid sunk in Africa? Most economic aid, like most long-term welfare benefits, has only encouraged cultures of dependency and victimhood and effectively destroyed almost all sense of personal responsibility for even the most basic of human functions. Should we help out with natural disasters? Sure. But just as I have no desire or interest in helping someone rebuild their house in the same obviously unprotected flood plain six and seven times over and over, I am not interested in throwing good money after bad to save people living under incompetent regimes largely of their own choosing. If they want our help they had best take responsibility first and then maybe we can talk. Until then, its a monumental waste of time and money.