He who gives by the sword...

One of history's most tragic and unsuccessful of well-intentioned ideas is the widespread support that we see in our day for the elimination of poverty by means of government (i.e. coercive/aggressive) redistribution of wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots." Ayn Rand addressed the issue with perfect clarity and accuracy when she wrote in 1966: "Another current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Yet today, this most well-intentioned, hellward pavement, this fallacy of forcible wealth redistribution continues to persist and gain support in the public mind and popular culture. Since enrolling and studying at my university, I've noticed that much of my generation is extremely sympathetic for a particular movement called the ONE Campaign.





The organization's website states that its primary goal is that of:

"...allocating an additional one percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the world's poorest countries."

In other words, wealth redistribution. When interviewed, ONE Campaigner Elaine VanCleave stated that her support of the ONE Campaign is a result of her Christian worldview:

"simply, I am motivated by my faith. I strongly feel that my faith requires me to care for the 'least of these'. I think Matthew 25: 35-41 is the most powerul instruction in the Bible, when Jesus says, among many things, 'I was hungry and you fed me.'"

Notice Jesus did not say, "I was hungry and you lobbied the government to tax others to feed me." He said, "I was hungry and YOU fed me." I certainly believe in obedience to Christ's instructions regarding the poor, that we are to care and provide for them; that true religion, as he says, is caring for widows and orphans. Yet Scripture does not condone forcible extortion of wealth from some to give to others. True generosity is the act of giving of oneself and one's property to others, not the giving of someone else's and certainly not the forcible confiscation of their property to give to others.

Allocating one percent of the U.S. Federal budget to fight poverty is an inherently unethical policy, and this truth is obscured by layers of obfuscations, equivocations, and impassioned, but mostly empty and logically bankrupt rhetoric. Yet the ONE Campaign takes absurdity and shoddy ethics into the realm of the perverse by refusing to accept donations:

The ONE Campaign is not asking for your money, we're asking for your voice. ONE does not accept donations. Instead, we hope that you'll take action with ONE by contacting Congress, the President and other elected officials and ask them to do even more to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty.

An organization that accepts and distributes donations by willing volunteers of their own income, should be commended (assuming that it uses the money responsibly and effectively). Yet the ONE Campaign, while outwardly espousing the value of charity for one's fellow man, scorns actual donations of money to help others. It prefers that its supporters join the effort to lobby for the confiscation of everybody else's income to support its ends. Ugly and immoral are not strong enough to accurately describe the vast illogic behind the ONE Campaign's goals and policies.

Unfortunately, the unethical aspect of redistributing the world's wealth is rivalled only by its lack of efficacy. I've heard it said before that foreign aid is the equivalent of taking money from the poor citizens of rich countries to give to the rich citizens of poor countries. While that claim itself is not entirely accurate, the basic premise it illustrates is. The intended beneficiaries of foreign aid often do not recieve it, but rather it is misused by the autocratic authorities that rule over them. Even if it were not for this fact, wealth redistribution is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.

I firmly believe that it is not only very possible, but should be very likely (I say "should be" to account for the retroactive power of statism to destroy what should be and could be accomplished in the world) that extreme poverty will be eliminated in the world. Capitalistic thinkers like Adam Smith were among the first to suggest this startingly wonderful truth. In fact, extreme poverty is vanishing at a marvelous pace in many of the world's countries where it is currently the norm. In your lifetime, you will see poverty become the exception in places where it was previously rampant.

This will be your exciting privilege, not because of the efforts and programs of the ONE Campaign and other such movements, but because of the sweeping revolution of capitalism and globalization. Production, the division of labor, trade, and the monetary system are what lifted man out of the pre-industrial darkness of the past, and they are what will continue to lift people into prosperity. They require only one program, the existence of a state to defend the lives of its people and to defend their right to dispose of what they produce according to their own will and conscience. Governments are characterized by their use of force, and as such, should never initiate its use, but reserve its use for acts of defense. The ONE Campaign proposes that we give by the sword, and if we take their advice, we will die by the sword.