Via Conservative Grapevine, a Jonah Goldberg article, one of his better ones. Actually, it’s very, very good. There’s a little bit of solid gold in each and every sentence:
It’s an old story. Loving parents provide a generous environment for their offspring. Kids are given not only ample food, clothing and shelter, but the emotional necessities as well: encouragement, discipline, self-reliance, the ability to work with others and on their own. And yet, in due course, the kids rebel. Some even say their parents never loved them, that they were unfair, indifferent, cruel. Often, such protests are sparked by parents’ refusal to be even more generous. I want a car, demands the child. Work for it, insist the parents. Why do you hate me? asks the ingrate.
:
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”
I think an apt analogy can be drawn with cars. This car over here demands oil changes and nothing else, up to one hundred thousand…two hundred thousand…three hundred thousand miles, even more. that other car over there is up to seventy thousand and the mechanic is giving the owner the go-car-shopping speech. You can ask “Why do I need a new engine after seventy thousand miles?” Or you can ask…how come this car over here has one service record, and that car over there has a different one.
If you stick to the Goldberg paradigm and ask “why this over here and that over there?” your answer might come in the form of driver incompetence. It could…but that’s only one possible reason. You might just as likely find out that model of car isn’t known for making it to six digits on the odometer, no matter what. You might learn more severe demands were made of it; it was driven where summers are hotter, winters are colder, and heavy loads had to be towed much of the time. Maybe the oil changes weren’t done on time — it was driven well but maintained half-assed.
But to guarantee that we won’t be blaming the driver, we have to stay away from the Goldberg paradigm and ask the silly question. “Why didn’t my car last?” Goldberg is right, it’s a silly question. It’s the question people ask when they don’t really want an answer.
And that is the way we handle poverty in the world. Because we’re so “civilized.”
Oh, I’m sure the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) might be doing something to alleviate the problem of world hunger besides blaming America…and holding press conferences to blame America…and distributing press releases that blame us…and holding conventions to blame us…