The Altruist With the A-Bomb
by Max Raskin Over the past few weeks, my school has degenerated into an orgy of elitist egalitarianism, compelling me to fight back with rugged individualism. I’ve stood toe-to-toe with the hoity-toity humanitarian and survived to relay my findings. But unlike with most issues, I am not the only one denigrating the majority. In fact, the altruists have taken up arms against each other. A civil war has been raging because it is simply not enough to do good; the true benefactor is sure to expose the deficiencies of others. So, after the Gay-Straight Alliance’s "Day of Silence," our Save Dafur Coalition unwittingly retaliated with the slogan "Silence is easy." Placards on the walls, coupled with the slogan emblazoned on vibrant red tees, was not enough. Organizers needed to take direct action – a letter writing campaign to the White House. Unfortunately, given this administration’s position on literacy, the missive strategy needs re-evaluating. Nitty-gritty implementation, notwithstanding, this article seeks to deal with the raison d’être of each competing group – egalitarian guilt. After analyzing their individual concerns, I will propose a plan that will ease this onerous burden of the affluent. In order to cope with the contrition of opulence, we must understand each group and their motivations. Gay-Straight Alliance These people are genuine – painfully so. While most of the year, they’ll just tell you how introverted they are, the Day of Silence is different. Noting the contradiction in needing to profess one’s self-esteem, the GSA devised the Day of Silence. Ostensibly it was designed as a protest against the, "harassment, prejudice, and discrimination," committed against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendenarians. In order to prove their tolerance and rejection of the Neanderthalic conservative, they abstain from talking so that people will see the light. There must be some way to give the GSA what it wants while still respecting the wishes of others. After much deliberation, it hit me. If one day of silence is effective, then wouldn’t more only multiply the awesome power of the misunderstood teen? If silence is truly deafening, then why merely stop at twenty-four hours? With this in mind, I propose a Decade of Silence. The heterosexual community will not have to deal with these obnoxious attention-seekers, while the homosexual community will finally be able to live like everyone else. Contrary to the GSA’s view, people have no right not to be discriminated against. People are naturally discriminatory, even about traits we cannot control. The nerve of the modeling agency to reject the homely girl! She and the Imam who was refused communion can take their claims straight to the Supreme Court – and probably win! Provided we are not physically aggressive towards others, we should be allowed to do as we please; however vile a bigot, he has a right to his views. Forcing an Evangelical Church to accept gays not only violates their freedom of religion, but also their freedom of association. By forcing people to accept homosexuality, or heterosexuality for that matter, the GSA only breeds social strife and tension. A Decade of Silence would allow for the peaceful cooperation of different social groups, without the constant meddling of these agitators. Save Darfur These guys are tricky. They are seem to be benign altruists, but beneath cries of "never again" are calls for intervention and force – an insidious message. Our game plan will be nothing short of a Hobbesian war of all against all. Members will be required to join a foreign legion whose aim it is to police the world. Among other countries, we will invade China, Iran, North Korea, the Sudan, Nigeria, and the Congo. Because our students think they have such a firm grasp of the geo-political divisions of the Sudan, they will be required to find the "bad guys" and zap them. Every Wilsonian knows that there is always a good guy and bad guy. Studying the nature of the conflict as sedentary vs. nomadic and the nuanced politics of the region is not as heady as George Clooney and his rallies. Who cares if they cannot tell the difference between the JEM, SLA, and Janjaweed? It’s the thought that counts. After realizing the complexity of the world, maybe people will think twice about massive intervention. Finally, it is interesting to note that many of the Darfur interventionists are supposedly against the Iraq War. Let us not forget the Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. The consistent position, then, should be that America was justified in ending the human rights violations in Iraq, and that by leaving, we create a vacuum waiting to be filled with more violence and turmoil. Thus by the Coalition’s own standards, the war in Iraq was/is just. (It was/is not). But why stop at Iraq? Iran and China are both notorious for their blatant disregard of human rights. Should we invade them? Should we adopt a bellicose foreign policy, rife with tones of jingoist imperialism? Or should we return to a non-interventionist, peaceful foreign policy? America was intended to be a beacon of liberty to lead by example, not napalm, illuminating the rest of the world in a blaze of humanitarian violence. Key Club The prime motivation for the Keysians is not achieving altruism, but rather radiating its illusion. There are ways of improving society, but a couple hours of community service is not it. Instead, we have to realize that every step forward with community service is set back one hundred by the government. The extent to which our government parasitically drains the lifeblood of our economy, is the extent to which poverty and squalor become more likely. Laws ostensibly designed to help the poor only end up hurting them. Take minimum wage laws, for instance. When business owners are forced to allocate more resources to labor than is profitable, they must make up the difference by firing those workers with low marginal productivity. These people tend to be low-skilled and would be destitute otherwise. Or as Charles Murray convincingly argues in Losing Ground, the more government spends in its War on Poverty, the worse the problem becomes. The government’s interference in poverty only ends up making the problem worse and causing more problems, like drug trafficking and addiction. But no one harbors any illusions that working for the Key Club is actually going to change anything. So what is their motive? Given that the majority of students involved in this club want to proclaim their selflessness, we might as well give them what they want. Instead of spending time helping people, give these students a chance to practice creating elaborate stories of selfless heroism. Have the creative writing teacher come in each day and go over literary techniques for creating the mood of that squalid ghetto where the kiddos risked their health to save homeless children from their burning home. Then, the second half of the class can be devoted to filling out those obnoxious applications. This way the students can get what they want and won’t waste their time trying to solve an insurmountable problem. But these suggestions are not for the genuine altruists, however futile their work may be. Indeed, as in Judaism, giving and working anonymously is much more righteous than making one’s good deeds public. It is also interesting that the highest form of tzedakah, or charity, is not merely giving away money, but providing a job to enable a person to work and support himself. Peer Mediators Some people have a proclivity for intruding in the lives of others. When these people come together, they form what is called a government. In their adolescence, however, the state has no use for them, and thus they are forced into clubs like the Peer Mediators. Having society and voluntary associations deal with problems is not what these people want. Instead, their philosophy is based on the principle of coercive interference in the lives of others. Much like the government, these people claim that they know how to solve our problems better than we do. So let’s put the hypothesis to the test. To show that a third party’s intervention usually has a deleterious effect, let us send the peer mediators to a school in an urban ghetto. Instead of simply dealing with John calling Sally a "bitch," the social engineers should be happy to apply the same techniques towards solving gang wars and teenage pregnancy. Maybe life is too nuanced for someone else to tell you how to live it. It is certainly not the job of a high school student. Yet we know that these plans of peer mediation and government intervention are both bound to fail. A government cannot keep from just providing for courts, police, and armies; it must extend itself into the massive bureaucracy that is now our federal government. Thus, if the peer mediators know how to solve small problems, they should tell us when we should study, how much television we should watch, and most importantly what books we should read. Once we open the door for peer mediation, the philosophy of intervention is sanctioned and thus by exposing students to the problems such pervasive intervention entails, we can obviate the problem and counteract the trend. Earth Club I’m not really sure I even want to deal with these people and their ignorance. I have no real opinion on global warming. I mean, on one hand, you have the apparent rise in the average global temperature; and on the other, you have Al Gore – a very tough decision for your rugged individualist. A paucity of scientific reasoning doesn’t seem to stop the Earthlings. When asked to give information on the scientific causes of global warming, they fumph around, but they are more than ready to provide us with alternative life styles. So let’s have them try out some of those alternatives. I propose the Earth Club regress back to the Stone Age. No toilet paper, running water, or Grey’s Anatomy. Instead of being able to talk about that latest episode within the comfort of their air-conditioned classroom, the Earth Club will be forced into a more natural life style. If we really should think globally and act locally, then what better place to start than in our on locality? By living in the forest, a person does his part to help out the environment. Instead of secretly pining for a return to horse-and-buggy autarky, let them openly live such a natural life. And by natural we mean miserable, brutish, and…not long. As the zookeeper returns home after a long day, so, too, do I. We are both amused by our fine specimens and take pleasure in introducing the spectacle to the public. And why do we do it? Am I not my brother’s keeper? May 4, 2007 Max Raskin [send him mail] goes to high school in New Jersey. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |