Reclining Standards

Victory! Giraffe reference on the podcast!

Here's the tricky aspect of limiting our efforts to gradual change in the barbarous regions of the world: innocent people die and suffer while we wait for those cultures to civilize by supposedly "natural" progression. Should we not hope to provide these peoples an easier path to freedom than our ancestors had to suffer?

Is their suffering our problem? Yes, if we are powerful enough to address their problems in addition to our own, because we care about our fellow human beings. Yes, if Americans are united by an honorable culture and not just by a self-serving government.

Of course, in a democratic society, voters should have a say over the extent to which we commit to such shared sacrifices of blood and treasure. So far, American voters continue to support charitable acts of force overseas, though they do not like to be in a constant state of war and have concerns about the feasibility of such operations. Throughout my life, it has been assumed that our Special Operations units are active at any given moment, beyond the scope of major news media, in efforts to aid oppressed peoples in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Our soldiers should know what they are getting into. Ideally, there would be a separate or subsidiary volunteer service for charitable interventions. We might even authorize private military services to intervene on our behalf. Fight for your country or fight for humanity with our blessing — your choice.

But, as I've said before, I don't see an effective middle ground between whack-a-mole punishments and total cultural conquest (ala the British Empire's remaking of India) for forcibly reshaping a society into something functional and honorable. And most Westerners have no stomach for conquest anymore (Iraq is proof). We aren't willing to change any culture by force, even to save lives, so we are limited to soft encouragements.

The best hope I have read about in a while is an effort to provide satellite internet to the entire world, bypassing dictators' attempts to keep their peoples ignorant. I don't know the technical hurdles, but it's a noble goal.