A Wave of Criticism

Thomas Sowell in his article, a wave of criticism, makes the excellent point that complaints concerning U.S. aid to the tsunami victims are based upon attitude and not fact. Excerpts below

Two questions: First, what country has done the most to help the victims of this natural disaster? Second, what country has been criticized most for not doing enough? The answer to both questions is the United States of America.

No matter what we do, it is always possible to do more. But "more" is not the standard to which any other country is held. “More" is the demand -- and the criticism -- that can always be made. We are not compared to other people. We are compared to an ideal that human beings have never met. No consistent principle is involved in these criticisms, just attitudes.

Decades ago, Eric Hoffer wrote: "Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America. Reasons may be cited but the flimsiness of many of those reasons betrays the fact that what is really involved are attitudes.”

A recent example is a denunciation of the United States as a "land of penny pinchers" by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. Why? Because, aside from highly publicized tragedies like the tsunami, "we're tightwads who turn away as people die in greater numbers" around the world from things like malaria and AIDS.
Incidentally, in all of Mr. Kristof's waxing indignant about the ravages of malaria, there is not one word about the banning of DDT, which has led immediately to a resurgence of malaria that has taken lives by the millions, as a result of propaganda campaigns against DDT by environmental busybodies.

Apparently it is not the principle of saving lives lost to malaria that is crucial, but the opportunity to score points against the United States. Green extremists get a pass. So do bungling and corrupt foreigners, including the United Nations.