U.S. Tsunami Aid V

On Wednesday, donors continued to announce aid pledges. Germany linked its pledge of EUROS 500m ($664.5m, £352m) for victims of the Asian tsunamis to the ending of rebel insurgencies in Sri Lanka and in the Aceh region in of Indonesia.
Joschka Fischer, foreign minister, said he would use a trip to the region starting tomorrow to press the governments of the two countries to prioritise “national reconciliation” as relief efforts are stepped up in the disaster-hit districts.
He noted that government leaders in the two countries could not ignore the “political context” in which the disaster took place.
But Andrew Tan, a Singapore official, warned against complicating the relief and reconstruction drives by “tying them to insurgency problems such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka”.

"Complicating the relief"? Let me get this straight. First, the U.S. is stingy. Then, the U.S. is doing too much unilaterally. Now, the U.S. is going to have to hand over the control of the relief effort to the U.N. In all of this, was the chief concern the victims of the disaster? Or political posturing?

Further, why are the victims entitled to this aid? Don't get me wrong, I want to see them helped, but my problem is that people have been conditioned that they have a right to it. Allow me to explain.

David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute writes

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give.

Libertarians, ya gotta love 'em. Chrenkoff included this in his list of "The 12 most stupid tsunami quotes". But wait a minute. Holcberg continues:

The question no one asks about our politicians' "generosity" towards the world's needy is: By what right? By what right do they take our hard-earned money and give it away?

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe the U.S. should absolutely give the aid, but only because that is the world we live in. Imagine a parallel universe where we don't send such a high percentage of our earnings to Washington, where aid is done through charitable contributions, and most government functions are pushed down to the state and local level (goodbye Dept. of Education?). Where the federal government had not destroyed the inner city black communities by trying to play daddy. And the American Indians as well. I know this is not welfare, but do not the same principles apply?

In that world, I have more money to contribute on my own, there is a stronger sense of community as I am helping my neighbors, and I have the ability to control where my money goes and how it is used. If I contributed to the Red Cross and I saw them in a political squabble with United Way over who should do what, I might re-think my contributions to that particular charity. And if you think that these organizations could not do what the governments are doing, in my parallel universe, having been the leader in providing aid for decades, the infrastructure would exist to do it. Also, for all of you doubting the money would be there, I offer this evidence (currently at 15 mil. even in this universe, with the ridiculous taxes we pay).

But instead, my money is confiscated, sent to Washington where it is lost in the mix of many trillions of dollars, and doled out as they see fit. Why? Because this has become an accepted role of government. And, what's worse, it has become an expected role of government.