In US political discussions, there is currently a heated up Cold War going on between those who desire to move our country towards a Socialist foundation for our governance and those who desire to keep our Capitalist foundation.  That struggle is clearly in evidence in the Presidential campaigns, especially of the top tier candidates.

Most illustrative of the Socialist side of the equation is Mrs. Clinton's recent Christmas ad featuring her sitting in the midst of piles of packages to put under the Christmas tree, wrapping and labeling the <em><strong>gifts</strong> </em>she plans to<em> <strong>give</strong></em> to the American people.  The first is Universal Health Care and the final one is Universal Pre-K.

The idea that such programs are gifts, of course, ignores the fact that gifts aren't really free.  They have to be paid for by someone.  In the case of Mrs. Clinton's gifts, that someone is going to be the American taxpayer.  It must also be noted that it is most likely also going to be true that the vast majority of people paying for the gifts will not be realizing any benefit from the gift other than whatever blessings from the Scripture “It is more blessed to give than to receive” manage to apply to this particular giving.

The most important question in this discussion is a behind the scenes query. It's easy to see why "we the people" respond to Mrs. Clinton's promotion of a Socialist agenda.  It appeals to the part of our human nature that thinks <em><strong>we're</strong></em> going to be the ones to benefit from such largesse.  So we vote for her because we think it will get something for us.  But the real question is why do Mrs. Clinton and her associates support such an agenda?

The results of Socialism are plainly visible.  It has always been and remains a dismal and glaringly obvious failure that blights any country and economy it touches, let alone any it controls.  A simple examination of the history and fate of the former Soviet Union suffices to illustrate that point.  If we add in Cuba it becomes even more clear.  If we note that China's recent rise in power comes not from adherence to Socialist principles but, quite the opposite, from the introduction of Capitalist principles, it should put to rest once and for all the idea that it is possible for Socialism to produce any significant gains or benefits for the masses it purports to support.

The superiority of Capitalism over Socialism is succinctly distilled in the following excerpt from the Country Study of Russia done by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.


Even in the heyday of Soviet Socialism, the principles of Capitalism worked best and provided the most for Mother Russia.  This is not an isolated incident or result.  It holds true across the board and in every instance where Socialism is tried.  This truth was quickly realized by the very people Socialism was intended to benefit.  They rejected Socialism as a way of providing for the needs, dreams and futures of their family at every opportunity, preferring instead the hated and despised road to Capitalism.  Those who today desire the gifts offered by American Socialists will quickly come to the same realization and will adopt the same anti-Socialist behavior that the residents of other Socialist utopias did for the same practical reason – it does not work.

Which brings us to the question posed at the beginning.  If the Socialist model is notoriously inefficient; if it fails to produce the value it is touted as producing; if the people who should benefit the most from it soundly reject it at every opportunity once they become familiar with it and if it is replaced with our Capitalist model whenever possible, why in the name of rational thought do Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic leadership and an unfortunately rising number of people on the Right side of the political spectrum continue to promote it?

By all accounts Mrs. Clinton and the elite of the Democrats are intelligent people.  They have access to the same historical information that the rest of us do. Perhaps even more so. They surely know that at the end of Socialism's rainbow is a chamberpot and not a pot of gold. Thus, stripped to its bare essentials is the question, if Mrs. Clinton knows that Socialism is bad for the people she wants to lead, why is she so in favor of it?  Why does she keep riding to win on a losing horse?

Thinking that perhaps the best answer to that question is yet another question “If Socialism is bad for the people, who then is it good for?” ...

Blue Collar Muse

It would be nice if all the best ideas I have for all the best posts I write were my own.  But they're not.  So often the words you read or hear from me, while mine in print or speech, were inspired, appropriately, by the person who is my inspiration in so many areas of life, my wonderful bride, The Much Younger Trophy Wife.  And so it is with this ... thanks for the idea, honey ...

Into the chill and quiet of an unremarkable night a herald suddenly and brazenly proclaimed, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”  These are familiar words for millions.  Their familiarity brings peace and comfort.  But that same familiarity hides questions that need asking. Why did God make His announcement now?  Why didn't He wait until Jesus was a young boy or a man beginning His work?  Why proclaim the arrival of the Hope of humanity at the very beginning, when the Christ child was not even a child, but an infant?

I suspect the full answer is far more deep, elegant and inspiring than my explanation will be, but I pray it provides you some encouragement this Christmas.

 It wasn't simply information that the angels were disseminating in the quiet hills of Judea, it was inspiration.  It was not as if God was running down a cosmic checklist of things to do to make His son's birth memorable and was now at item #9, “Cue the angels!”  It wasn't that God was revealing yet another part of His plan to redeem humanity, although we're getting closer.  Bethlehem's birth is, indeed, the first step down the road to Calvary's Cross.

I often refer to God as The Great Economist because of His ability to pack so much substance into even the most mundane of things.  And so it was that night.  Beyond the event being announced, the manner in which the announcement was made opens our eyes a bit more to the character of God Himself and provides another reason for rejoicing and hope.

Why announce the birth of Christ at this time and in this manner?  Why not to kings and rulers?  Why not when His Son is about to begin his ministry and acquire some notoriety?  Because announcing His Son in this way adds to the information being provided a more subtle message which, if we permit,  bolsters our faith.

 God is demonstrating companionship in making the announcement in this way.  The time would come for His Son to be announced to “kings and rulers”.  That herald would be Paul the Apostle.  But the King of Kings is not impressed with the rulers of men.  The sovereign of all creation does not distinguish between the man on the throne of power and the one in the throes of poverty.  It is we who apply such false criteria.  The announcement was of “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to ALL people”.  In order to emphasize that relationship with God was available to all men, regardless of status, the announcement was made to the lowliest of men.  If those with worldly reputation are offended that the masses are offered companionship with the Almighty, it might be wise for them to remember that, to Him, they are also part of humanity's masses.

 God is demonstrating confidence in making the announcement in this way.  All of His plans are wrapped up in that bloody, mewling, swaddled newborn.  When the herald makes his proclamation, none of those plans are realized yet.  Everything is just potential at this point.  That potential includes potential problems, too!  Why make such an important announcement when your plans are at their weakest, their most vulnerable?  Every endeavor has a beginning.  When one knows the end of a matter, as and even before it begins, one's perspective is decidedly different.  Consider your attitude when you sit down to play checkers or tic-tac-toe with a child.  The only way that child is going to win is if you let it.  That does not speak ill of the child, it speaks highly of you.  Your understanding and ability to deal with the twists and turns in the game ahead are more than sufficient for you to be able to predict the outcome of the game with confidence.  Thus the bold announcement that the helpless Child is, indeed, “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord!”

Finally, God was demonstrating courage in making the announcement in this way.  That He was confident did not mean that there were not very real threats to the plans that He revealed on that peaceful night. From His infancy when soldiers were dispatched to kill him by a threatened ruler to His adulthood and the dispatch of yet more soldiers to haul Him before a kangaroo court and ultimately hand Him over to yet another threatened ruler, the very life of Christ was at risk.  His family had to flee for their lives to Egypt; Satan tried to tempt Him into killing Himself; and, even the crowd that accompanied Him wherever He went tried to throw Him off of a cliff at one point.  Who knows how many other threats to the plans of God  remain unrecorded?  Yet Emmanuel, God with us, faced them all and bested each and every one of them.  Even at the end, understanding the dynamic of the will of God, He proclaimed His life was His to surrender, not man's to take.  Thus, the incredible announcement into a dangerous world, “Fear not!”

Companionship. Confidence. Courage.  For all men. Because a Savior is born. We need not fear.  That is the message that was proclaimed at the beginning.  It was made then instead of later because of our frailty.  The truth of the matter is that a man starts each day of his life alone, unsure and afraid.  But with each dawn comes the message of the manger of companionship, confidence and courage.  “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Merry Christmas,

Blue Collar Muse

The housing market slowdown has led politicians of both parties to propose a variety of industry bail-outs.  None of the ideas are good:  taxpayers would be forced to subsidize people who never should have bought a home while lenders would cut back future loans even for responsible borrowers.

Among the worst ideas is increasing lending activity by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which already are at risk in the subprime lending debacle.  Freddie Mac just announced a $2 billion loss, and more red ink is expected.

Indeed, warns Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, these enterprises "are nothing more than huge S&amp;Ls, but in one respect they are more dangerous."  The federal government only backed federally-insured deposits for the S&amp;Ls, "but Fannie and Freddie have what the capital markets consider to be government backing for all their debt."  The result could be a true financial disaster.

Blue Collar Muse

The housing crash is a serious problem, hurting borrowers, lenders, and investors.  But the surest way to make it a crisis would be to bail out borrowers, lenders, and investors.

The federal government already has manipulated interest rates.  The administration has pressed lenders to maintain low initial rates and forego foreclosures.  Legislators are pushing to expand mortgage lending by federal agencies.

Politicians obviously see a short-term benefit in bailing out their constituents.  But we will all pay the long-term cost
as lenders raise their fees and cut back on future mortgages.

Moreover, as columnist George Will observes, such a bail-out represents "an enormous new entitlement" for the irresponsible.  Unfortunately, this won't be the last time that they will try to off load the consequences of their mistakes on the rest of us.

Blue

Despite dire warnings of the immediate and irreversible demise of the Almighty should I dare to see 'The Golden Compass', two friends and I took the plunge this weekend.  I'm happy to report that God seems none the worse for wear.  He was His usual chipper Self when we talked this morning.

Which brings me to my point.  What in heaven's name is there in this film to object to?  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good boycott when it's needed.  I'm even a multi-task capable boycotter.  I stayed away from all things French until they recently elected Sarkozy as their President.  All of that while maintaining my years long commitment to not see 'The Last Temptation of Christ' or 'Brokeback Mountain'.  My family homeschools our 5 children and none of them has ever spent even 30 seconds in a public school as a student.  I can do Politics, Religion and even toss in Education and not even break a sweat.

But in order to justify a boycott, it's usually helpful to include some of the material that is deplorable enough to trigger a nationwide response.  I've yet to see it from Phillip Pullman's work.  There's the quote making the rounds and attributed to him that “I want to kill God in the minds of children…. I want them to decide against God and the Kingdom of Heaven.”  It's not been sourced anywhere that I've seen.  The closest I've seen is this quote from The Sydney Morning Herald.


The notion that his books might kill God is implausible at best and not borne out well by the plot of the movie I saw. To be fair, I've also heard that more open anti-religious sentiments from the books were edited out of the movie.  So I'm reading the books to make sure.  Even so, I find the entire conversation a bit odd.

In fact, far from making the case for atheism, I find a fair amount of overtly CHRISTIAN symbolism in the movie and what I'm hearing about the books.  There is an alternate universe from which a substance enters the universe of the story.  This substance, called Dust, transforms those whom it touches.  Pullman's own description of dust according to the Sydney Herald is “the totality of human wisdom and experience.”  Christians also believe there is another reality, more real than the world we currently occupy, from which wisdom and experience have entered this world to transform those whom they touch.

Pullman describes a struggle between those heroic souls who seek to expand the influence of Dust and those who would oppose them; those who hold on to their little kingdoms of me established for their own profit and promotion.  These villains, whom Pullman links to the church, know full well the value of Dust and yet oppose it since it threatens their rule and authority.  As a Christian, that sounds far more descriptive of the World and its systematic opposition to and persecution of the Church than the other way around.

The very tools Pullman uses are problematic as well.  In his story we have other worlds, contact between them, spirits, specters and all manner of supernatural concepts and creations imbued with respectability and authority in order to debunk the notion of other worlds, contact between them, spirits, specters and all manner of other supernatural concepts and creations.  Doesn't seem like a particularly well thought out argument.  He's saying he wants us to believe that all this first group of stuff is just real enough to convince us that all this identical second group of stuff couldn't possibly be real.

In its final analysis, any promotion of atheistic ideology, subtle or not, will hit the same wall that atheism itself hits.  It is intellectually bankrupt.  Atheism posits definitively that “There is no God.”  How silly! The most  anyone can say with intellectual integrity is “I have not yet seen enough evidence to convince me personally that God exists!”  Others claim to have seen enough evidence for them - fine.  But the fact that atheists have not does not mean the evidence does not exist or that this afternoon, that most persuasive missing tidbit won't make its appearance.    Even if it never arrives, or more probable, if it is never recognized for what it is, it does not prove atheists are right.  You cannot prove that God does not exist.

Most atheists, once having come to the conclusion He does not,  become just as dogmatic in defense of their untenable conclusion as any Christian is of the premise that He does. I suspect Pullman falls into this group.  At its root, atheism is as  "religious", as “Christian”, a position as any other addition of men to the revelation of God.  As such, it's doomed to the same inglorious end at His glorious appearing.

Thinking God's existence is a bit too settled a matter to be called into question because a writer penned a scene that ends “... this is where I kill God” ...

Blue Collar Muse

H/T to Conservablogs.com for putting up the notice that there's a cattle call for indie bloggers to cover the GOP Convention in Minneapolis, MN September 1-4, 2008.



You'll have to head over to the site to fill out the form.  Wouldn't it be great to have a few of Nashville's finest blogging?

Good Luck,

Blue

This selection is available as a downloadable or streamable podcast at The Voice Of Liberty Podcast, Week 6.

The War ...

Is there a more divisive issue in the US today?  Likely not.  But it is acceptable to me that it should be so.  After all, the stakes are high and people should have an opinion on the matter.  I would expect that opinion to be a passionate one.

If your opinion is that all war is all wrong all the time, this article is not for you.  I disagree with your conclusion in just about every way possible but I hold your opinion in high regard along with you for holding it.  The elimination of war is a noble and admirable goal.  I share it.  I, too, am anti-war.  Only psychotics are for the death and destruction that comes with combat.

What I am not, is anti-THIS-war.  There are times and places when, in my opinion, one has no choice but to defend oneself from aggression.  If an individual does it, it is called self defense.  We fight back against someone attacking us.  If a nation does it, it's the same concept but it involves the use of military power.  I've been pondering this over the weekend after considering what Pearl Harbor Day meant to me and means to so many.<!--break-->

The political Left in America today, especially the leadership of the Democratic Party, does not seem to be able to grasp this simple, basic idea.  If one listens to them, we should not be in Iraq or Afghanistan fighting terrorism and engaging terrorists on our terms on their soil.  We should not be at war.  I have to ask them, 'Why?”

If pressed to explain their rationale for this position, they often fall back on the canard that Iraq didn't attack us.  I am not aware of anyone that has ever suggested that they did.  We were not attacked by Iraq.  We were attacked by terrorists.  The terrorists, however, were tied to both (some of) the people and the government of Iraq.  That made Iraq a legitimate opponent.

However, whether attacked by Iraq or a nebulous group of terrorists, attacked we were.  I understand and can dialogue with those who feel Iraq is not a valid target.  My question for them is, with whom then are we at war?  The Left decries our military response to an attack but I have yet to see any serious suggestion from them regarding what an appropriate response should have been.

There is not a Democrat that has had the audacity to suggest that we were not attacked on 9/11.  It is time for the Left to stop their political obfuscation and answer a couple of simple questions.  Who attacked us?  If you don't like the strategy taken by the Administration, what serious alternatives have you and/or are you offering.  If Iraq and Afghanistan are the wrong military targets, why are we not at war with those whom you DO consider responsible for the attacks on our nation?

The other argument that has gained some traction in the country is the one that says our military efforts are possibly needed, but currently illegitimate, because Congress, the Constitutional trigger for involving us in a war, has failed to do so.  People holding this position refuse to accept Congress's authorization of force and granting of broad authority to President Bush shortly after 9/11 as rising to the level of a declaration of war.  Thus, the argument goes, we are not at war since Congress has not declared it.

Again, I understand the argument but this does not let the Left off the hook.  After the 2006 elections, Democrats control both houses of Congress.  If they had wanted to declare war and make it official they could have done so at any time.  Is there a sentient person in the US who could imagine the Republicans and the administration objecting?

Once again, the Democrats must answer a simple question.  Has the United States of America been attacked or not?  If not, please explain how 9/11 should be understood?  It will be difficult to simply say that Islamic fundamentalists were upset with the West in general and the US in particular and found no other way to express said upset outside of a horrific act of barbarism.  Even if one concludes that the terrorists had a “right” to express themselves as they did, how is it not an act of war?

The only position for the Left to take consistent with their behavior over the last 6+ years is that we were not attacked.  That position will obviously not have much traction with anyone in the country, Right or Left.  But if we were attacked, why have we not responded properly?  If the Administration and the GOP majority behaved improperly and did not declare war, why has the new Democratic majority not fixed that troubling oversight?

The Democrats now control Congress.  They can do what they want.  We have been attacked.  Why are we not at war?

Thinking that since talk is cheap, perhaps the the reason the Left has done nothing BUT talk is that they're bankrupt  ...

Blue Collar Muse

Price fixing?  Price controls?  A pig with lipstick is still a pig.

It appears that Wall Street investment bankers can breathe easier today, they’re going to get their holiday bonuses after all.  That was really close, it almost didn’t happen until the President came to the rescue this afternoon.

The news just keeps getting better for Wall Street bankers, er, I mean the soon to be foreclosed upon housing speculators, er, Henry Paulson’s BFFs, er, nevermind.

President Bush announced today that he intends to “freeze” interest rates for those homeowners who agreed to mortgages that reset at rates higher than their monthly salaries.  Huddling with Wall Street bankers (and a Saudi prince or two) he courageously stepped forward to “shore up” the market with a  price control scheme (insert memory audio here of Al Gore intoning "risky tax scheme").

Let me get this straight.  Profligate lenders gave “no doc” loans to non-qualified buyers.  Those loans were sold into a secondary market  whose principals looked the other way when it came time to verify the ability to repay.  Of course, all the pigs at the trough were fat and happy when times were good but now that there is no one left with home equity to borrow against, Wall Street and their coterie of supplicants are crying (and apparently now, all the way to the bank) for financial “relief”.

Sounds like I should have taken out a loan before it was too late. Wait, maybe I can still apply ...

Blue Collar Muse

Not the sort of title you normally expect to find on a Conservative site.  But it's a question that needs asking in the face of a brand new study, the first of its kind, issued today by The Alliance for Worker Freedom.  Entitled '2007 Index of Worker Freedom:  A National Report Card', the report lists how each of the 50 states does in treating their workers.

Each state is measured

... on ten variables: right to work (RTW), minimum wage (MW), union density (UD), paycheck protection (PP), prevailing wage (PW), defined contribution pension (DC), collective bargaining rights (CB), public sector union membership (UM), entrepreneurial activity (EA), and workers compensation (WC).

For each variable where a state receives a passing grade, it gets one point. If they fail to do so, they get no points at all.  A perfect score is 10, an "A+", and a perfect failing score would be 0, an "F".

Not a single state managed a perfect score.  Only one, Utah, received a 9, the only "A" on the report card.  Only four states, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi and South Carolina joined Utah in the "A" range.  They each scored an 8 for a report card grade of "A-".

The bottom of the rankings found 11 states with either 0 points or just 1 point.  Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island all had perfect failing scores of 0 for an "F".  California, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey managed to find a point somewhere to score a 1 and earn a report card grade of "D".

Tennessee finished in the middle with a score of 5 and a grade of "B-".

The report is well done and easy to understand and navigate.  Each state's grade is explained and depicted in several different ways.  There are individual state reports highlighting where the state is strong and where it needs some work and there are great graphics included that will make a excellent transition to PowerPoint and other presentation formats.

The best part of the report is near the end.  A map of the US is shown with each state's grade depicted by different shadings, light to dark based on their report card grades.  Think of the red/blue map of the country.  The darker the shading, the lower the score.  It provides an interesting "data at a glance" take on the study's findings.

Thinking again of that red/blue map, it's striking to note that the bluer the state, the worse it treats their workers.  The NorthEast portion of the country has significant grades of "D" and "F".  So do perennially "Blue" states like Illinois and California.  Southern states, Plains States and Mountain States - "flyover country" - do much better.

That one observation, for me, is the most revealing.  It's the states that score the worst when specifically measured on how they treat their workers that seem to be praised the most when all one does is talk about how their workers are treated.  There's a great deal of talk about how the Democrats are for the regular guy and just look at how Illinois and California and New York have great deals for their state's residents.  They're supposed to be the "Worker's Paradise" dreamed of by Socialists.  When you do more than just talk, however; when you actually objectively measure how the states treat their workers, the results and the conclusions are far different.

The only variable that remains to be measured is, will the workers overthrow their oppressors?  Will they vote the scoundrels out that set up the system that so badly abuses them?  Will they dig in and vote to change the laws and regulations in their state to make it better for the regular guys?  Or will they vote with their feet and head for greener pastures a state or so away?  Thanks to Brian Johnson, the Alliance for Worker Freedom and the 2207 Index of Worker Freedom they'll know just what to do and where to go regardless of which option they choose.

Wondering if "Workers of the World, Unite!" might not have some Conservative application after all ...

Blue Collar Muse

SEE ALSO:  AWF Policy Director Brian Johnson talks about the Index with Ed Morrissey on his radio show, Heading Right, this Thursday at 3:00pm EST.   Click to listen!

This selection is available as a downloadable or streaming audio podcast at the Voice of Liberty Podcast Network, Week 5.

If you're active at all on the Internet, you've likely received an email or seen an ad or some other type of tease directing you to get involved with the game/international aid program called 'Free Rice'.  Free Rice is said to be the brainchild of John Breen, a 50 something computer programmer and is already wildly successful. At the website, visitors play an English vocabulary game.  Getting the right answer means 20 grains of rice are donated to starving nations as food aid.

How successful is it?  On the site's very first day, October 11, 2007, just 830 grains of rice were donated.  Six weeks later on November 30, 2007, according to the site, a staggering 372,369,680 grains were donated.  Such is the power of the web, bloggers, email and the other viral methods of marketing used to promote the idea.

Unfortunately, as delightful as this sounds the reality is that all this effort will likely amount to little more than giving players a false impression they've done something effective to combat world hunger.  For the people supposed to benefit from all this largesse, little will actually change and things will likely get worse.  Free Rice is simply the latest in a decades old collection of failed programs designed to help the starving.  Little effort is needed to determine that this program, like so many of those before it, involves the United Nations.

Free Rice's sister site is Poverty.com.  Poverty.com displays a list of 22 countries which agreed to contribute a percentage of their Gross National Income to international aid.  This would raise $195 billion per year.  From the website you get the impression this was a recent pledge.  It talks about conferences and summits from 2000 to 2002 where the world's nations, via the UN, pledge this aid to combat world hunger.  In reality, that pledge was first made in the UN in 1970. Since then, UN member nations have donated trillions of dollars and yet world hunger is the same or worse as when this program was initially agreed upon.  The problem involves the same nations and parts of the world.  35 years of effort and no success to report.

The UN has been an abysmal failure at almost everything it has undertaken.  International aggression in the Middle East?  Humanitarian crises like tsunamis?  Purely UN based programs like the Oil-for-Food program/scandal in Iraq?  Take your pick.  The UN is corrupt, ineffective, bloated and inefficient.  Why should  we get involved with another UN boondoggle?

Free Rice offers a way for people to feel good while actually doing nothing of substance to fix the problem.  Individuals aren't even asked to contribute a single penny of their own money.  Free Rice displays advertising from corporations and so it is ad dollars that pay for this.  The UN gets its cut, of course.  Administrative oversight and other international low speed/high drag twaddle.

But there's a more important reason to dislike the program.  Bottom line?  Not only is its administration problematic, it makes the problem worse!

As far back as 1988 The Heritage Foundation documents objections to programs like this.  Beyond the corruption, the diversion of food to other groups and areas, and the myriad other obstacles programs like Free Rice must overcome, the problem is their goal is to end hunger.  However, except in cases of disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, hunger is merely a symptom of the real problem, poverty.  Flooding the markets of starving countries with free food prevents those markets and agriculture infrastructure from making money and developing adequate and modern infrastructure to ensure they'll be able to fed themselves in the future.  When the infrastructure either fails to develop or erodes further it guarantees there will be both poverty and hunger to spare next year.

Better we take the money from our companies and governments and build real pipelines for irrigation and rail, road and air hubs for shipment and exchanges for fair market trades.  These practical and proven infrastructure improvements would do more to feed the hungry than all the grains of rice we can donate by knowing what “dystopia” means.  Of course that would mean implementing democracy, capitalism and the rest of the nasty, detestable characteristics of the US and other First World nations.  I doubt that will go over big with either the despots and dictators ruling these countries or their compatriots at the UN who talk a nice talk in the arena of assistance but fail to walk any walk at all when it comes to practically changing the reality on the ground.

So - if you want to improve your vocabulary, spend some of your own money on a thesaurus.  If you really want to help starving people, you've a better chance at doing that by sending a check directly to Haliburton than by taking part in any program involving the UN.  Should we help set these suffering people free?  Absolutely.  But Free Rice isn't the way to get the job done.

Thinking the truth of the premise that 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' wins another round ...

Blue Collar Muse