retrorepublican
09-28-2007, 08:10 PM
This is a ROUGH article on the Darfuri Genocide I'm writing for my school newspaper. I'm the editor of the Op-Ed section.
I organized a week long event for the people of Darfur at my school last year (raised $700) and addressed all my classmates at a Town Meeting. I go to a pre-med vocational high school, so I discussed how doctors can save lives in different ways. Every Friday we've been wearing "Have A Hand In Stopping Genocide" shirts at school, and my picture was recently in the newspaper advertising the school district, so people will definitely pay attention to an article I write on the subject.
GenNO!cide
War is a staple of human life, with men savagely destroying each other since the days of tribes. Genocide is a development in warfare, a more catastrophic and calculated way of eliminating enemies. For all of human history, there have been tales of entire civilizations disappearing, men and children being killed, and mothers raped to cut off their father’s bloodlines. Before we can take action, it is important to realize that genocide has always been and always will be. “Never again” is a false promise because of its premises. It’s tragic but it’s the truth.
So what can we do in a world where evil is a constant? Go to the government? No! Governments start wars, they don’t stop them. Governments fight wars, they don’t end them. In fact, governments are more often than not the perpetrators of genocide. While “humanitarian warfare” and “humanitarian intervention” are becoming more and more popular terms, never before in human history has a military been able to prevent genocide.
During the Holocaust, 11 million people were slaughtered. 6 million Jews were annihilated and over 5 million Catholics, gypsies, and homosexuals destroyed. At the same time, 300,000 people were massacred in China, an amount very much akin to the current loss in Darfur. Looking at the sheer magnitude of these numbers alone, there is no military in existence that could have prevented this. There never will be.
Germany declared war on the United States in World War II, giving the Congress good reason to constitutionally exercise its authority to declare war in return, but what can the United States do about Sudan, a foreign nation that has not declared war on us but continues to slaughter its own people in a ruthless and scorched earth-styled civil war? It may sound complicated, but the answer is very simple.
The United States can get out of the way. Our government can get out of the way by no longer preventing people in genocidal regions from seeking asylum on our shores, and then trying to pretend that its actions are somehow compatible with liberty.
The current world policy in regard to genocide is fundamentally a policy of containment, which completely baffles and horrifies me. I think most people today would agree that it would have been best for those persecuted during the Holocaust to have escaped while they still had the chance, not that they be penned into protective enclaves that eerily remind us of ghettos and concentration camps. I am not one to lightly play the race card, but it seems that the acceptable approach differs depending on the continent.
Containment can be compared to the following analogy:
The house is burning, so the fire should be put out.
It is a flawed and oversimplified analogy. It ignores that the people need to be taken out to safety first—and not just enclosed in a fireproof room, but taken out of the flames entirely. It also ignores that their houses and communities have already been burnt to the ground, with nothing for them to return to.
Although containment’s effects are felt more strongly in today’s world, especially in Africa, the United States was already way ahead on these sorts of policies during World War II. In atrocious affronts to human liberty, the United States would turn away European Jews seeking refuge on our shores. While it is one matter to not get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, as the Founding Fathers wisely advised, it’s another to send those nation’s victims back when they finally escape and are beckoning on our shores. This country was founded by persecuted people escaping tyrannical governments. The engraving on the Statue of Liberty says,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Containment is a travesty. We need to adopt a policy of integration. The United States can start by eliminating immigration quotas on genocide-ravaged regions of the world. There is no future for the Darfuris in Sudan. How can the United States tell another country to stop driving out its people when we are not even willing to take them in ourselves? It makes you wonder why the politicians most vocal about sending troops and employing peacekeepers overseas want nothing else to do with them. If immigration was allowed, private charities and relief groups would jump to the cause. Their donations would skyrocket when people found out they are actually saving people instead of throwing them firewood to hopelessly hang on to for hope. It is also more likely that the world would follow our lead in this than sending their often undersized and inferior troops into hot zones alongside ours.
Instead of rampaging around the world, seeking purpose like a country that has lost its soul, we can start building a righteous republic here at home.
“Peace at home, peace in the world” is a famous Turkish proverb by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the legendary liberator of modern-day Turkey. He was right. Ironically enough, Turkey was founded in the aftermath of a historically-disputed Armenian genocide during World War I.
Some people will say it’s impossible with out-of-control illegal immigration and broken borders, when all we have to do is enforce the law instead of sending our national guards and military overseas in pursuit of greater goods and superhuman endeavors.
Some people will say it will destroy our economy, when in fact a healthy, prosperous, and free market economy would swallow up immigrants like there’s no tomorrow. Immigrants are too often used as the economic scapegoats of their times. An economy incapable of assimilating immigrants is more a reflection of a dying, nonexpanding one.
Some people will say that the refugees won’t be able to adapt to the American way of life. These people will pride themselves in being “multiculturalists.” What ignorant hypocrites!
Some people will say that the refugees will be impoverished and stuck on welfare, when it is more of a reflection on the failures of the welfare-state than immigration itself. The federal government could relieve refugees of the oppressive income tax for a few years, giving them a real chance to pull themselves up. They would only have to pay state taxes, which include those that go towards the community and schools. The income tax itself could be eliminated if we returned to 1990 federal spending levels.
Some people will say that the refugees will be a burden on our healthcare system, bankrupting our emergency rooms by not being able to afford treatment, but this is more of a reflection on the shortcomings of a quasi-socialist and overregulated system. A healthcare system based on minimal regulation and free market economics would be both cheap and innovative, like anywhere else government is not involved.
Practical? I think it’s more practical than thinking we can eliminate the world’s evil with bombs and bread. It is a matter of the righteous republic versus the restless empire, a philosophical punch-out for the soul of America.
What do you guys think? Should Ron adopt a similar stance? Any advice or criticisms?
I organized a week long event for the people of Darfur at my school last year (raised $700) and addressed all my classmates at a Town Meeting. I go to a pre-med vocational high school, so I discussed how doctors can save lives in different ways. Every Friday we've been wearing "Have A Hand In Stopping Genocide" shirts at school, and my picture was recently in the newspaper advertising the school district, so people will definitely pay attention to an article I write on the subject.
GenNO!cide
War is a staple of human life, with men savagely destroying each other since the days of tribes. Genocide is a development in warfare, a more catastrophic and calculated way of eliminating enemies. For all of human history, there have been tales of entire civilizations disappearing, men and children being killed, and mothers raped to cut off their father’s bloodlines. Before we can take action, it is important to realize that genocide has always been and always will be. “Never again” is a false promise because of its premises. It’s tragic but it’s the truth.
So what can we do in a world where evil is a constant? Go to the government? No! Governments start wars, they don’t stop them. Governments fight wars, they don’t end them. In fact, governments are more often than not the perpetrators of genocide. While “humanitarian warfare” and “humanitarian intervention” are becoming more and more popular terms, never before in human history has a military been able to prevent genocide.
During the Holocaust, 11 million people were slaughtered. 6 million Jews were annihilated and over 5 million Catholics, gypsies, and homosexuals destroyed. At the same time, 300,000 people were massacred in China, an amount very much akin to the current loss in Darfur. Looking at the sheer magnitude of these numbers alone, there is no military in existence that could have prevented this. There never will be.
Germany declared war on the United States in World War II, giving the Congress good reason to constitutionally exercise its authority to declare war in return, but what can the United States do about Sudan, a foreign nation that has not declared war on us but continues to slaughter its own people in a ruthless and scorched earth-styled civil war? It may sound complicated, but the answer is very simple.
The United States can get out of the way. Our government can get out of the way by no longer preventing people in genocidal regions from seeking asylum on our shores, and then trying to pretend that its actions are somehow compatible with liberty.
The current world policy in regard to genocide is fundamentally a policy of containment, which completely baffles and horrifies me. I think most people today would agree that it would have been best for those persecuted during the Holocaust to have escaped while they still had the chance, not that they be penned into protective enclaves that eerily remind us of ghettos and concentration camps. I am not one to lightly play the race card, but it seems that the acceptable approach differs depending on the continent.
Containment can be compared to the following analogy:
The house is burning, so the fire should be put out.
It is a flawed and oversimplified analogy. It ignores that the people need to be taken out to safety first—and not just enclosed in a fireproof room, but taken out of the flames entirely. It also ignores that their houses and communities have already been burnt to the ground, with nothing for them to return to.
Although containment’s effects are felt more strongly in today’s world, especially in Africa, the United States was already way ahead on these sorts of policies during World War II. In atrocious affronts to human liberty, the United States would turn away European Jews seeking refuge on our shores. While it is one matter to not get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, as the Founding Fathers wisely advised, it’s another to send those nation’s victims back when they finally escape and are beckoning on our shores. This country was founded by persecuted people escaping tyrannical governments. The engraving on the Statue of Liberty says,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Containment is a travesty. We need to adopt a policy of integration. The United States can start by eliminating immigration quotas on genocide-ravaged regions of the world. There is no future for the Darfuris in Sudan. How can the United States tell another country to stop driving out its people when we are not even willing to take them in ourselves? It makes you wonder why the politicians most vocal about sending troops and employing peacekeepers overseas want nothing else to do with them. If immigration was allowed, private charities and relief groups would jump to the cause. Their donations would skyrocket when people found out they are actually saving people instead of throwing them firewood to hopelessly hang on to for hope. It is also more likely that the world would follow our lead in this than sending their often undersized and inferior troops into hot zones alongside ours.
Instead of rampaging around the world, seeking purpose like a country that has lost its soul, we can start building a righteous republic here at home.
“Peace at home, peace in the world” is a famous Turkish proverb by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the legendary liberator of modern-day Turkey. He was right. Ironically enough, Turkey was founded in the aftermath of a historically-disputed Armenian genocide during World War I.
Some people will say it’s impossible with out-of-control illegal immigration and broken borders, when all we have to do is enforce the law instead of sending our national guards and military overseas in pursuit of greater goods and superhuman endeavors.
Some people will say it will destroy our economy, when in fact a healthy, prosperous, and free market economy would swallow up immigrants like there’s no tomorrow. Immigrants are too often used as the economic scapegoats of their times. An economy incapable of assimilating immigrants is more a reflection of a dying, nonexpanding one.
Some people will say that the refugees won’t be able to adapt to the American way of life. These people will pride themselves in being “multiculturalists.” What ignorant hypocrites!
Some people will say that the refugees will be impoverished and stuck on welfare, when it is more of a reflection on the failures of the welfare-state than immigration itself. The federal government could relieve refugees of the oppressive income tax for a few years, giving them a real chance to pull themselves up. They would only have to pay state taxes, which include those that go towards the community and schools. The income tax itself could be eliminated if we returned to 1990 federal spending levels.
Some people will say that the refugees will be a burden on our healthcare system, bankrupting our emergency rooms by not being able to afford treatment, but this is more of a reflection on the shortcomings of a quasi-socialist and overregulated system. A healthcare system based on minimal regulation and free market economics would be both cheap and innovative, like anywhere else government is not involved.
Practical? I think it’s more practical than thinking we can eliminate the world’s evil with bombs and bread. It is a matter of the righteous republic versus the restless empire, a philosophical punch-out for the soul of America.
What do you guys think? Should Ron adopt a similar stance? Any advice or criticisms?