For a good conversation...

You wrote that at 7:54 am? AM? I'm lucky if I can remember to put my clothes on forwards at 7:54 am...--Tegan

Yes, dear Tegan, but I am just getting off work at 7:54 am, so my clothes are already on and generally forwards.

...UN...---Just About Everybody

I find this interesting--I think perhaps you who mentioned this are reacting to what you expect to hear...erroneously anticipating the arguement. I never once mentioned the UN in my last post. What I did argue is that governments wield unique capacities to act and responsibilities that individuals, and groups, do not and should not hold. For instance, the governments of the world have created a system by which cruel and abusive dictators, such as Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic, can be brought to justice--something else no individual or non-governmental organization can accomplish. Notice, you alluded to the successful humanitarian intervention to the tsunami by nation-states: Australia and America. The relief could not have been achieved without the close interaction between the governments and the ubiquitous NGOs--non-governmental organizations. NGO's played a vital role--but so did governments. NGOs cannot negotiate trade treaties, tamper with the international and national economy, or help bring stability and peace to anarchic and semi-anarchic situations.

I could care less whether the United Nations or an ad-hoc coalition of the willing are the medium for actions that cannot be accomplished nongovernmentally. Please be careful to read what I write--not what you automatically assume your fallen liberal relative enshrines in the warm and fuzzy cloud world of his ideology. I am not an ideological liberal. I am a practical humanitarian discovering that classic American conservative thought is simply not compatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

...impose utopia...

(see above) I never claimed to attempt to impose utopia. What I am trying to do is have active compassion for my neighbor by attempting to establish some semblance of justice and peace in places where people are suffering and dying for the lack. Please don't try and make me into some idea of a cardboard cutout grinning liberal that exists in your head. It demeans the both of us.

The fact that many of the material goods we buy were made elsewhere: who would pay those people for anything if they could not sell things to those Americans who have money to pay? Would they be richer or poorer if no American money was spent in their countries?

Let's creatively rephrase that question. "They should be greatful, those miserable bastards, that we give them anything at all for their lost childhoods, destroyed health, shortened life expectency, miserable working conditions, constant fear of unemployment..."

You have not yet opened your mind to the possibility that the urban poor are a result of economic changes in the world--changes forced by powerful economies in the west (that's you, and me, and everyone we know). The very existence of western economic superpowers and international trade produces changes in national and local economies. Quasi-subsistence farming becomes untenable. Western firms, with capital, introduce mass-production farming, edging small-plot farmers into poverty. The livelihood of hundreds of families becomes the livelihood of a manager, a few tractors and a score of hired hands. Where do those families go? They cannot compete, so they have no way to make bread. No money to send their children to school with. No land, because corporations take what they cannot buy, harnessing their economic power to secure political power through the cooperation of corrupt local officials.

During the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, the problem was apparent--the abuse of cheap labor, unhealthy working conditions, minor miners, etc.--were next door. So Christians made a stink and the government changed the rules. Now, the injustice is easier to ignore because it is far away--but it is still our problem. We are involved in it, it is wrong, so why are the Christians like you doing nothing to change it?

Is it bad or good that Americans buy cotton which is grown in the US? Is it bad or good for the government to tinker with the market by subsidizing a crop in that way?

I believe in freedom. Americans should be able to buy cotton grown in the US if they so desire. I don't belive there is, ethically, any inherent justice or injustice in either subsidization and economic control or the laissez faire. I do believe, however, that there is something injust about the use of power to benefit one person or group of persons at the expense of another person or group of persons. That is what angers me about the United States--not that she is rich, or powerful, but that she bases that wealth upon injustice and uses that power to further her wealth at the expense of others. Sometimes to their detrimental and impoverishing expense. Sometimes to the point of impoverishing other countries and destabilizing their economies.

Since when did governments ever do anything but tax people, blow things up, and punish those who disobeyed their (the government's) rules? Can you think of even one instance where the government has been successful in "fixing" anything like you suggest it has the power to?

and

How do government offices visit people in prison, train people to become self-reliant?

You are apparently suffering from a critical lack of imagination. I work for a government-funded agency that provided emergency medical care within eight minutes of a telephone call. We work with government-funded people who will put out any fires that threaten your house and property. Your water is delivered to your tap, clean and drinkable, by the government, and whisked away to be safely recycled by the same government, after you've used it. The government makes sure you have a nice, green, oxygen-producing national forest to go to so that you don't have to vacation someplace paved. I went to college and learned self-reliance in part due to a government loan. The library that you enjoy was made possible...by the government. Government job-retraining projects were part of the conservative welfare revolution that decreased the welfare roles and made more people...self-reliant. This is a short list. Stretch your mind a little.

Let's look internationally. National governments have cooperated to put both Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor on trial for the crimes they commited while they were in positions of power. Until recently, national governments cooperated to stop the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons, a hazard to us all. It was the United States government, acting in concert with other nations, that acted so ably to assist those devastated by the December 2004 Tsunami. National governments participated in an international ban on the trade of ivory, stemming the demand that drove both and elephants and rhinocerouses almost to extinction. Governments and coalitions can provide a neutral force to enforce cease-fires, disarm warlords of their private armies and return power to more representative, less thuggishly self-serving governments, and defend neutral places such as refugee camps where noncombatants can live safely and recieve medical attention, clean water, and food.

And finally...the United Nations (I will finally bring her into the discussion) regulates and overseas the internet internationally so that Jeff can join this discussion from Tanzania. It does so with such effectiveness--that you didn't even know it was involved.

Next, I don't see why you as an individual couldn't get together a group of like-minded people and find a way to smuggle in food, water, and medical care to hurting people. If others are smuggling weapons, bullets, bombs, and other such truck into the country, why can't someone smuggle in the things those people really need?

Again, you suffer from a lack of imagination. You cannot smuggle in healthcare, education when there is no peace. People cannot carry on with life when they live in the constant and real fear that someone is going to ride into town, take their food and belongings, rape their women, and force their children to execute their parents and grandparents. This is not hypothetical--this is actual, documented, widespread.

You cannot smuggle in peace. Nor can you smuggle in economic justice and opportunity when governments and organizations with money, guns, and the power they bring are happily taking part in economic injustice at the expense of people's economic opportunity. Not to mention the economic and political injustice that we, the world's most powerful nation, are actively involved in.

You said intervening personally would get you killed. So? The Iron Curtain came down because individuals stood up for their faith, got imprisoned, slain, were beaten, and somebody managed to get out and tell about it. If nobody has the guts to get imprisoned, then who will the government send to act on their behalf?

No. The Iron Curtain fell because it was opposed and considered unjust by many people, including Ronald Reagan, a head of state who used the power of both the United States government and coalitions of other national governments to resist, undermine, and promote change within the Communist Bloc. People had been standing up for their ideas, and dying in droves, for a long time before the Iron Curtain fell.

Additionally, it's not a matter about having the guts to be imprisoned for some lofty ideal. It's about wanting to be live in peace and instead being subjected to anarchy, genocide, banditry, rape, slavery, child-soldiering, and famine, but not being able to do anything about it. Those who "stand up" for anything against armed mobs lay down quite quickly and permanently and those in power do not care. In the Iron Curtain, they learned to care, because even in the Iron Curtain it was unacceptable to openly slay large segments of the populace. Not so in anarchy and failed states.

And Finally...

As for Christian symbolism, Jesus didn't appeal to the government to fix anything. He appealed to the people, the people who had nothing, to be generous with each other. Jesus didn't preach to the rich, he spoke to the poor, the needy, and the destitute. He advocated a world without government, not a world with the perfect one. He advocated a world in which everyone was self-governing.

Does your Jesus speak to Lazarus about embezzlement and abuse of tax-gathering status? Does not your Jesus advise wealthy young men from Arimathea? Were there not bureaucrats and centurions in thoselarge crowds of people? Wasn't Jesus' ministry supported by a group of wealthy women? Does the Jesus you know address the injustice of women being stoned for being found in adultery...while the man with whom she was committing adultery was not being stoned? Does he not say "Render onto Caesar what is Caesar's"?

Remember that Jesus lived in an occupied country where religious courts handled much of the day to day governance, and Jesus had an awful lot to say to those religious leaders about their justice and their concern for the poor and helpless. Remember that the national government was not a democracy, but a puppet monarchy, in which the people had no say whatsoever. Remember that economies were to a larger extent simple and local, without the massive centralization of power and resources that exists today.