Why can’t we talk about foreign aid?

David Brooks is a jerk etc etc

What can one really write about this week other than Haiti?

Colin linked to both a David Brooks piece and Matt Taibbi’s response.  I think it’s an important debate — not because both sides made great arguments, but because one side made arguments and the other broke new Internet ground by making penis size jokes (yes, really).  I’ll let readers figure out which is which.

What I want to talk about today is the strange anti-intellectualism of those responding to fairly nuanced discussions on foreign aid.

Tyler Cowen, someone I respect immensely, takes the opportunity to invoke Hitler/Holocaust references to serve his point, which I guess the less that can be said about that argumentation strategy the better.  Of course immediate foreign aid can help alleviate right-now human suffering.  I’m not sure any mainstream commentators, and certainly not David Brooks, are saying that there should be no immediate aid; maybe I’m misreading.  I have no idea why there is such a visceral response to the suggestion that we should use this moment to think about the success of long-term foreign aid.  We should use this moment because foreign aid isn’t usually in the news; as Brooks points out, the earthquake has revealed the absolute abject failure of foreign aid in Haiti in a way that no white paper could.

The root of the argument against discussion foreign aid really comes in Taibbi’s piece when he write, “There’s nothing to do after a deadly earthquake but express remorse and feel sorry.”  I’m just not so sure that this is true.  In particular, it seems morally suspect that in the face of a tragedy the only response must be emotion and not action.

I’m sure what Taibbi means is that we should donate our $10 and then shut up, but Haiti has been disproportionately poor for a long time.  Foreign aid has been failing Haiti for a long time.  Should these facts be ignored?  If there hadn’t been a major earthquake, how long would foreign aid have continued to fail Haiti?  Will foreign aid continue to fail Haiti even now?

Is it really better to donate $10 now then to generate a discussion on how foreign aid can be made more effective?  I absolutely believe that the long-term implications of this debate will outweigh, in real human costs, the devastation caused by this earthquake.  Maybe the strangest part is that bloggers like Taibbi don’t think that you can do both — donate (to Haiti or elsewhere) as well as be critical of foreign aid.

And yes, culture is part of the discussion on foreign aid.  I can never really muster the proper sensitivities to say that an entire genre of data is off the table, as I guess Taibbi can.

-John

Related posts:

  1. Brooks vs. Taibbi on Haiti
  2. Brooks’s nostalgia for aristocracy
  3. The David Brooks manual of style
  4. Kristof on foreign aid
  5. Should journalists stay out of Haiti?

January 20, 2010 · Filed Under John, Uncategorized

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    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU, a former Fulbright Scholar to Mauritius, and a graduate of Cornell University. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

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  • Luke Freedman is a student at Carleton College, pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science.


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