Daily Archives: 7 February 2012

Resetting with Russia and China

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Given Russia’s and the People’s Republic of China’s veto of an Arab League motion before the UN’s Security Council “aimed at ending the violence in Syria that called for Mr. Assad to hand over his powers to his vice president and allow creation of a unity government,” vetoes that came hours after Assad’s murderous artillery bombardment of the Syrian city of Homs with an estimated 200 civilian deaths )about which Russia and the PRC surely knew), it may be time to “reset” relations.

Plainly, these vetoes are motivated by either, or both, of two things.  Others have written of Putin’s reluctance to admit that a dysfunctional, even dishonest, much less a murderous government should be susceptible to abolishment by the people: for one thing, Syria is important to a Russian naval presence in the Med, for another, Putin doesn’t want to encourage the Russian people along the same lines, and so on.  Other Chinese motives also seem apparent: Iran is a convenient source of needed oil, and Syria is an important, if not critical, ally of the Iranians.

Another motive is much more stark.  A butcher in charge of Syria hurts the US.  American impotence in dealing with this butcher, especially after the benign (compared to the Syrian situation) affair of Gadhafi, hurts the US.  Vetoes of American-backed (if Arab-led in the present instance) public initiatives demonstrate that impotence.

Following these vetoes, we’re getting some unusually strongly couched statements from President Obama’s State Department.  UN Ambassador Susan Rice has said of the vetoes

The United States is disgusted that a couple of members of this Council continue to prevent us from fulfilling our sole purpose.

and

The people of Syria…have been slapped in the face by several members of the Security Council today.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said

What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty.

and

Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations….

and

We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons to be used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children….

The question becomes, then, is this a sign that resetting is beginning?  Or is it just more idle chit-chat and firm finger-shaking from the Obama administration?

Thoughts on Charity

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As President Obama pretends to channel his inner Christian and, in doing so, distorts Jesus’ message, a friend reminds me of another passage from the Bible.  Ruth 2:1-17 has many lessons, but one of them concerns the charity of Boaz toward Ruth.  Within this lesson is another.  Boaz had productive fields, else he could not have let Ruth glean from them—there would have been nothing to glean.

This new and old lesson is understood by many in our own time.  Isabel Paterson has also written about the relationship between charity and production.  In her The God of the Machine, she wrote

The great religions, which are also great intellectual systems, have always recognized the conditions of the natural order.  They enjoin charity, benevolence, as a moral obligation, to be met out of the producer’s surplus.  That is, they make it secondary to production, for the inescapable reason that without production there could be nothing to give.

Charity is a moral duty, and so of necessity a personal one.  Government cannot command our morality.  Yet President Obama’s policies add to the difficulty we have in satisfying our moral duty by taking our wealth away from us, by dictating to us our production and our exchanges among each other—and thereby reducing our ability to produce enough for our families and to have a surplus from which to offer charity to others.  Obama would have us glean our fields threadbare and give the surplus to his government so that he can engage in the wealth redistribution which he pretends is our collective charity.

Thus, Paterson also says this about that Obama-style “charity,”

If the primary objective of the philanthropist, his justification for living, is to help others, his ultimate good requires that others shall be in want. His happiness is the obverse of their misery.  If he wishes to help “humanity,” the whole of humanity must be in need.  The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others.  He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves.  The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.