If you can, do you help people or don't you? Where do we draw the line?

Helping people starts with your own strong and solid foundation and builds outward from there.

It starts with the individual, progresses through the family, locality, state, nation, and only then, when all that is all in order, can or should it reach further. Reaching further without a solid base erodes the base. Example: We should not be feeding starving children in Africa when we have starving children of our own at home. Harsh as that may sound.

I adapt the Star Trek prime directive here. Individuals and nations below a certain threshold of personal, technological, scientific, and cultural development should not impose their own values or ideals on others.

a reply to: tinner07

The same way we turned our backs on the Montengards in Cambodia/Vietnam.

Useful until we don't need 'em any more. Allies, not friends.

It's one of the reasons my dad's youngest brother left the military right after Vietnam. Those people died for our cause while, not unreasonably, expecting us to help them with theirs.

Odd how it didn't happen... Isn't it?


Be very careful allying yourself with the U.S. govt. They have very, very short memories.

a reply to: onequestion

In my personal life, I'm very careful about who, and how, I help. I've been burned numerous times. Doesn't keep me from helping, but it does make me more careful.

To transfer that over to our foreign policy would be a great idea... Though I'm not sure how well it would work. In an ideal world it would. We'd have friends, rather than allies of the moment...

There are just too many entrenched interests for it to be an easily workable idea.

It would also require us, as citizens, to take an active roll in govt, beyond every other year or so, punching a chad/flicking a lever.

A change in a moral compass of this nature will have to come from the bottom up. It's not going to happen on its own.

For me there is a big difference between being charitable and being helpful. Charitable is the giving of aid, money and so on, this could be to the homeless guy down the street or to an undeveloped nation like some of those seen in Africa. Charity will give a short term fix, it wont get rid of the problems, it will just numb you from them for a short while but once its gone your back to square one. To be truly helpful you need to make people aware of why the problem has arisen, what can be done to fix it and what can be done to stop it happening in the future, and the only way to do this is by educating people. Help them to see what you see. Its the old you can lead a horse to water scenario. If you give the homeless guy down the street some change every day he will never be hungry but he'll never be happy either. If you make him aware of his self worth, find out his interests and desires and point him in the direction of realistically achieving these desires he will come out better off at the end of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is the most helpful thing you can do is to give people the belief they can help themselves and give them the resources to do so whilst supporting them charitably, eventually they won't need the charity. The problem globally is that many undeveloped nations we just chuck money at them and expect them to become developed overnight without addressing the key issues that cause the poverty In the first place.