Ordo amoris, as explained by Vance, is a concept that you prioritize the needs of people closest to you (immediate family), then the next closest, etc. Obviously this is common sense and generally describes how reasonable people live their lives, so it is completely wrong for Trump to govern the country in the same way according to libs.
A lot of the discussion has centered around a foreign aid program called PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) started by Bush in 2003, also referred to as PREP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis). Basically the program distributes HIV/AIDS meds to 20M+ people for about $6.5 billion and has been estimated to save 26M lives since its inception. This program is now cut off, probably permanently, since it was administered by USAID and that agency has been deleted by DOGE.
It's a pretty interesting issue, especially regarding Christian ethics, since it's a proxy for the entire African charity movement, but I think the answer is clear.
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Ordo amoris: we don't adequately take care of the poor and needy in our own country, so we can't justify spending money on other countries.
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USAID is a supervillainous agency that uses aid to force countries into globohomo and who knows what other purposes. USAID is made to hurt people, not help them. We need to wipe the slate clean.
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Any soft power we get from PEPFAR seems nonexistent given China's Belt and Road incursion into Africa, among other things.
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Love in the Bible is a concept that encompasses just leadership as well as kindness and help. This is why the Bible firmly defines "God is love" even though He visited all kinds of disasters on the Israelites and other nations. Allowing the consequences of their wrongdoing to fall on their heads, instead of aiding and abetting it, was an act of love. In the end it was better for them.
Would it be better for Africa to distribute free anti-STD drugs in the long run? The continent's population is skyrocketing at an unbelievable rate thanks to Western intervention, and they still can't take care of themselves. Is it better for Africa to host an exponentially growing population that will be unable to obtain food by themselves, let alone anything more meaningful?
Are Africans advancing when anti-STD drugs insulate them from practices like pouring sand in vaginas before sex and raping virgins to cure AIDS?
- one of the crucial tests of love in the Bible is the Golden Rule: "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." - Matthew 7:12
So if I was African and I had foresight of what was going to happen to Africa when the continent spikes into the multiple billions of people, would I want that to be done to my people? Probably not.
- also, as some people have noted, the previous verses illustrate God's love as such: "Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?" - Matthew 9:12
One might ask, "what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will tell him he already gave the bread to the Africans?"
This actually raises an interesting discussion when you mentioned Africa:
If USAID is shut down (as Elon mentioned after looking into it's funds, it's not an apple with a worm in it was an entire ball of worms), would we see a sharp decline in population growth in places like Africa, India, Middle East etc with America no longer subsidising their food and healthcare?
It's one way to solve the the invasion issue in the west if they no longer have the resources to provide the floods needed to invade..
Honestly, no. You'd probably see improved life outcomes and economic productivity because the economy is no longer being disrupted.
Cancelling Foreign Aid helps those countries more than it hurts them.
Sowells iron law of the train disagrees with you. A countries ability to excel is not based on what incentives it’s given by other countries, but instead by what its country is able to produce from those incentives. When Britain began exporting the rail system most countries hired and kept British engineers and paid Britain for the maintenance and repair of the trains and rails. However some countries, notably Japan, Germany, and the US, learned how to run the trains without British engineers and then improved upon their structure using their own engineers and maintenance.
Africa is so far down the hole that economic philosophy isn't nearly as ironclad because they are skirting the line on survival and basic needs in setting up their economy.
Their economy might fall to complete shit on a global relative scale, but it'll stabilize on things they need to survive and provide. It'll end up a century behind technologically, but that's not our concern if that's what they are capable of maintaining for themselves.
Doubtful, Africa has been propped up by foreign countries for so long the only realistic outcome of all aid leaving is mass death with many pockets of Africa going extinct.
Pretty much anything south of the sahara is a retarded shithole. Apparently jungles have low iq people. It only gets slightly better in south africa.. slightly.
I don't see how that counters my point.
We aren't sending trains or experts when sending foreign aid. We're just sending raw cash, for no significant benefit, and then disrupting the economy by promoting mal-investment among the locals. It was Sowel's classic argument that pointed out that Doctors were choosing to be taxi drivers when foreigners showed up with foreign aid because it paid so much better.
Again, why did it pay so much better? What happened to the money? This is why the train law applies. Those doctors weren’t creating or innovating medicine, they used foreign textbooks with foreign medical gear and foreign medications. Those doctors became taxi drivers because it was more relevant to their actual skill set, which was the ability to speak a foreign language. The fact is the overwhelming majority of the world does not have the intellectual capacity to innovate and compete, many don’t even have the ability to replicate or be self sustaining.
That depends on which countries. Foreign aid certainly has the effect of propping up corrupt governments and dictators in third-world countries, and of making their economies dependent on aid rather than self-sufficient, but especially in Africa, cutting off aid does not mean that those countries will become more self sufficient. At least in the short term, it will drive those countries even further into the arms of China, until the Chinese money runs out.
It means that those countries will have the ability to return to self sufficiency by having a better incentive for it, rather than none at all.
Some may appeal to China, but then China is burdened with a fundamentally unproductive colony.
Foreign Aid to a prosperous country is just bribery and market manipulation.
Are you positive? I have no doubt in my mind that most if not all will revert immediately back to a feudal warmongering state as they were before we intervened
Without us artificially propping up a government, the warlord that is supposed to win will win. Survival of the fittest.
I doubt that that is the case: Foreign Aid promotes misery and warmongering corruption.
But even if it reverted to a pre-colonial state; it would reduce human immiseration greatly within Africa. It would probably collapse malaria and AIDS rates in Africa if they returned to tribal life.
More than likely, the countries would have to sort their own shit out rather than being the Financial Sector's slave vassals.
In the long run yes, but in the short run many of them don't have the farm production, infrastructure, or medical resources to support their population. Disease will be rampant. China will maybe pick up some of the slack. I expect the population curve would flatten.
China won't pick up any of it, once the resource dries out in an area the Chinese are gone. It's the fate of any mining town, when it's fresh and working, it's blooming like a flower, when whatever the resource is dries out, it becomes a ghost town.
The Chinese often ship out political prisoners and other criminals to work in these mines in other countries, they live in barracks, aren't allowed to go among civilians etc. I've spoken to a guy who's worked as an engineer in one of these Chinese mines, I won't get into much detail but the stories that he's told me about what they do with their own, I can guarantee you they could not care less about some hungry std infested african, the Chinese are aware that they're 10000s of years behind as humanoids and have no instilled guilt that they owe them something, the perks of not having a certain tribe design your school curriculums.
Wow... ouch.
Seems the africans dont try something like slaughter and rape the chinese there??? Id imagine disgruntled african worker would do something.
The population curve is already flattening. Even birth rates in Africa have been falling for decades, it's just not at 2.3 yet.
Most of them actually can support their own populations as they always have. The cities may reduce in size, but the rest of the country is just being Africa. Moreover, they can still trade for food.
It hurts the autocrats. If you spend $200 million on a hospital in Niger in order to get the government of the country to do your bidding, that's $200 million that they can spend on repression instead of social services without creating the popular discontent that normally results from that.
Especially if 199.9 million of that hospital will be immediately embezzled for the purposes of repression, while they ask you for another 400 million in additional foreign aid.
If we send Aid, it should be in the form of AR's and Ammo.
Re-distribute the means of political change.
That doesn't seem to have done much for Syria and Afghanistan, at least to improve the lot of the people living there. Or fake Ukraine.