Herere two stories that neatly capture much of whats wrong with contemporary liberalism. Both from this mornings L.A. Times (intrusive registration required, use laexaminer/laexaminer):
First, this story on the UN AIDS bureaucracy:
A U.N. special envoy on AIDS warned Wednesday that a war against Iraq would eclipse humanitarian efforts around the world, and 29.4 million Africans with the disease would be among those suffering the most.
“Wars divert attention, wars consume resources, wars ride roughshod over external calamities,” said Stephen Lewis, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s representative for AIDS issues in Africa. “People with HIV/AIDS are in a race against time. What they never imagined was that over and above the virus itself, there would be a new adversary, and that adversary would be war.”
Lewis said that perhaps only a month remained for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a consortium of nations and nongovernmental organizations supported by the U.N., to raise the estimated $7 billion it needs for this year and 2004.
“The response to the fund has been abysmal,” he said. “It is inexplicable and terribly disappointing. We haven’t had a contribution to the fund since Germany gave $50 million last July.”
“What is required is a combination of political will and resources,” he said. “You will forgive me for the strong language. But … the time for polite, even agitated entreaties is over. This pandemic cannot be allowed to continue, and those who watch it unfold with a kind of pathological equanimity must be held to account.
“There may yet come a day,” Lewis said, “when we have peacetime tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity.”
Listen carefully. If you dont support his efforts, you arent wrong, you arent misinformed, you arent even immorally callous. Youre guilty of crimes against humanity, just like those tried and convicted at Nuremberg.
And then this gem about anti-smoking activists who intend to use their leverage against poor people by denying them housing unless they ‘behave’:
The Los Angeles City Council, which pioneered smoking bans by prohibiting people from lighting up in restaurants, theaters and workplaces, was urged Wednesday by a group of health activists to ban smoking in half of the new affordable apartment buildings subsidized by the city.
With the city launching an effort to provide $100 million a year to subsidize the construction of affordable housing, council members assured representatives of the Task Force for Smoke Free Housing that they would hold a hearing on the proposal next month.
“A person who smokes can live in the building. It’s just that they don’t smoke in the building, in the same way we have smokers who eat in our restaurants. They just don’t smoke there,” said Esther Schiller, executive director of Smokefree Air For Everyone.
Under the proposal made by the activists, the city would award housing trust funds to affordable apartment projects based on the requirement that there be an equal number of units that allow smoking and that do not allow smoking.
The city already prohibits some substances in housing such as lead-based paint, said Marisol Romero, executive director of the Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Network.
“Smoke-free buildings are not about evicting people who are smokers,” Romero said. “Smoke-free buildings really are about giving people options, and letting people know in advance that if they plan to live in a certain building that this building is smoke-free.”
Look, I hate smoking. My father died of vascular disease doubtless made worse by the cigarettes he smoked for twenty years. After I was divorced, I convinced my sons to put on a campaign to pressure their mom to quit. Ive never smoked a cigarette in my life. But damn, this is offensive.
Liberalism doesn’t have to be this way, I’m positive. It is possible for government to help people without tribunals and pecksniffery.
I just haven’t managed to articulate how it would work yet…