Remember Bono? He’s the lead singer of U2. Remember U2? I do, vaguely. They were okay for a while, about 40 years ago, and after that, they became a mildly annoying radio presence that didn’t have the good sense to go away after their tape played out, like REM did. I don’t think they’ve had a good song since I graduated from college, and even those songs weren’t that good. That would be the album where they are in the desert staring meaningfully at cacti. A few years ago, U2 made themselves infamous for that terrible, terrible album that they included on everybody’s iPhone that you couldn’t erase no matter how hard you tried. Well, somehow, Bono has beaten the odds and somehow become even more annoying, illustrating an important point that we, as anti-leftists, need to understand.
Joe Rogan just had Bono on his podcast, and Bono, who famously poses as the great White Irish savior of the Third World, stated that America’s USAID cuts have already killed 300,000 people. Well, that’s a lot of people. Rogan pointed out that USAID is a giant money laundering scam, and a lot of other people have been either asking where all these 300,000 dead people are or wondering why Bono – who’s rich beyond measure thanks to the bad taste of so many people – doesn’t get his checkbook out and start scribbling. No evidence supports his ridiculous claim, but the substance of his accusation isn’t really the point.
The point is foundational. It reflects something that leftists do all the time, whether about the climate hoax, Gaza, or even domestic pathologies. They announce there’s a problem, and it’s our fault for not stopping it. It might be slightly hotter in a century? You (not China) must shut down all your coal plants! Terrorist sympathizers feeling the consequences of their murder sprees? You’ve got to feed them! Drug addict criminal bums infesting our streets? It’s your job to give them the same kind of shelter you suckers work to pay for!
Unfortunately, far too many conservatives accept the premise du jour and go along with it. Bono’s premise, shared by fellow leftists who are outraged that the Trump administration has shut off the cash flow to Third World potentates that their allies took a piece of, is that America has some obligation to the rest of the Earth to keep bad things from happening. Leftists are always announcing that we have some sort of obligation to do something and berating us because we have failed to meet this expectation. But here’s the real question: when did we become responsible for the supplying day-to-day needs of the rest of the world?
That is, what is the source of this duty and obligation to prevent 300,000 Third Worlders from somehow dying because we haven’t just handed over money? Again, I don’t believe that 300,000 Third Worlders have died because we haven’t just handed over money, but let’s assume Bono is telling the truth. Why is filling Botswanan bellies our problem?
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What is the source of this obligation? I don’t remember voting for it. Do you remember a debate among Americans where we kicked around the idea of whether or not we were going to assume responsibility for the entire world and our elected representatives voting for it? Do you remember the president signing some sort of legislation setting forth that we had formally assumed this obligation? Because I don’t remember any of that. I don’t think that happened. And, you know, I don’t understand how my country suddenly became obligated to do something that the people of this country, via its elected representatives, didn’t vote for.
Is it written somewhere, Bono? Can you give me a source and a citation where it’s on the United States to make sure that every Botswanan is getting his bowl of mush every morning? Or did you just sort of make this up? Did you decide it sounds like a good idea, so suddenly it’s mandatory? Did you figure that because we potentially could do what one would think that the Botswanan government would do, that we have to do it? Again, got a source and a citation?
Look, I don’t want to pick on Botswana. It could be one of those rare effective and non-corrupt Third World governments, and its government could be doing a fine job. I don’t know, and that’s kind of the point because it’s not really on me to know because I’m not a Botswanan. You would think that the Botswanans would be all over the problem of feeding Botswanans. But when you start asking these questions, it gets awkward. Are you saying that the Botswanan government doesn’t want to do these things? Well, that seems bad. I think we can all agree that, by definition, a government has an obligation to its own people. If we can’t agree on that, I’m not sure how we’ll ever agree that a government has an obligation to someone else’s people. Taking care of your own population seems like a pretty basic function of government. So, why are they not doing that?
Trump has been in office for four months, and 300,000 people are dead already? The United States has been helping out countries around the globe since World War II ended, and you might think that, by now, they would have built up an infrastructure in case there was a hiccup in the welfare checks. But apparently not. Apparently, these other countries have simply decided that since the United States is, for some reason, taking on the responsibility of paying to take care of their people, they don’t need to do anything to take care of their people. You have to ask why. Are they too inept to run a country? Oh, you can’t ask that. Are they just too corrupt? Why, you can’t ask that either. So, what’s the reason that the United States has to do for people on the other side of the globe what the people on the other side of the globe cannot or will not do for themselves? Nope, can’t ask that. Just get out your checkbook.
But I’d like to know what’s going on. It’s a pretty serious accusation to accuse somebody of killing 300,000 people. So, exactly, why is America the cause of 300,000 people dying? There’s a basic principle in the law that you’re only responsible for damage if you have a legal duty to prevent it. I have a duty not to drive my car into yours. If I do, I have to pay you damages to compensate you. But I don’t have a duty for someone else not to drive his car into you. If somebody else hits you with his car, I don’t have to compensate you.
So, where does America’s alleged duty to these 300,000 people come from? We already discussed how we Americans never agreed to take on this duty. Maybe there’s some sort of moral duty. Perhaps it’s in the Bible. Is Bono saying that the Bible’s teachings should govern America’s government? The Bible prescribes an individual Christian or Jew’s duties, not a nation’s. Is he saying America’s non-Christians are bound by Judeo-Christian teachings too? Regardless, I’m betting Bono limits these Biblical obligations to only a few of the Bible’s teachings — the ones that work out the way he likes. The other ones? Not so much.
Maybe the UN has decided that the governments of countries that aren’t completely corrupt and/or inept are responsible for performing the basic functions of governments that are completely corrupt and/or inept. The only problem is that the United Nations doesn’t govern the United States. That collection of parasitical dirtbags is not the boss of us. So, again, where did this obligation for the United States to pay money to make sure that 300,000 or 300 million or 300 zillion Third World foreigners, or whatever the baloney statistic is, don’t drop dead come from?
Like leftists do all the time when they decide we have to do something, Bono didn’t say, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for – an answer to the foundational question of why foreigners’ problems are our fault. I think he’s just pulling it out of the same place he’s been pulling songs out of since about 1987.
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