For a 'Progressive,' It's Better to Feel Good Than To Do Good

Everything Melanie Phillips says here re Britian's foreign aid (i.e. that it has "totemic" meaning to self-styled progressives, enabling them to advertise their "virtuousness" bona fides) could just as easily be said of Canada, too:

Of course, wealthy nations should help others. And in cases of natural disaster — tsunami or earthquake, for example — the Government should certainly provide instant financial and other relief.

But the point about overseas aid in general is that very little of it goes to help the poor and oppressed at all — quite the reverse.

The chief recipient of British aid is India. Yet India is rich enough to afford a space programme, nuclear programme and even its own foreign aid programme. How ridiculous is this?

Aid programmes do little to tackle the root causes of Third World poverty, which are overwhelmingly the behaviour of tyrannical regimes depriving individuals of democracy and human rights.

Instead, such programmes foster yet more destitution and corruption. Indeed, such need is often manipulated or even created by tyrants or warlords in order to obtain the aid that then enables them to kill and enslave even more people and prop up their corrupt, brutal regimes.

Oh, Melanie, you're just a heart-hearted conservative who doesn't care about squandering gazillions for the feel-good lift it gives you helping those in need.

Update: Our tax dollars in action--doing "good" in Gaza and the West Bank.