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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (36327)	4/30/1999 9:29:00 AM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

You do not rave. You raise points that must be considered by anyone with a mind. I do not know if I can respond fully to all the points you raise. Anyone with a working brain cell or two--needs two to fire across the synapse--must acknowledge the disintegration and disenfranchisement that colonialism breeds. I share your sense of anger and horror. As I posted earlier, I am an historian by training. I am not a blind advocate of any school of thought. My personal response as a libertarian is that I have a responsibility to understand the history before I mouth off, to figure out how to get there from here. (My master's thesis dealt with precisely the issues you raise. Otherwise, we remain the "Ugly Americans."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (36327)	4/30/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

But its failings are caused less by bleeding-heart liberalism than by one reality: foreign aid exists not to help the 3rd world poor, but to sustain the foreign aid business, which is very big business indeed. How much of the foreign aid budget does anybody think actually gets to the 3rd world? True, true, true. And EXACTLY why we should not be spending our tax dollars in these overseas adventurisms. The primary goal of U.S. government officials (elected and appointed) is to obtain and keep power. They do this by using tax dollars to pander to those who will give them the money and influence they need to stay in power. The charitable sector, OTOH, is concerned with helping people in need. That is why we need to limit the government to those things that HAVE to be done to ensure the security of U.S. citizens and provide a basic infrastructure for citizens to act within, and those things that ONLY the government can do because the costs are so high and the benefits so diffuse (such as maintaining fire departments and building road and bridge arteries) that it is functionally impossible for private individuals to do them through purchase (e.g. voluntary taxation).