Middle Eastern Peril

Caroline Glick methodically describes a dire situation in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt and Syria. Following a bleak statistical picture of those two countries, Glick notes the following:

What this means is that we can expect continued political turmoil in both countries as they are consumed by debt and tens of millions of people face the prospect of starvation. This political turmoil can be expected to give rise to dangerous if unknowable military developments.

POOR ARAB nations like Egypt and Syria are far from the only ones facing economic disaster. The $3bn loan the IMF offered Egypt may be among the last loans of that magnitude the IMF is able to offer because quite simply, European loaners are themselves staring into the economic abyss.

This last is, of course, tied in to the sovereign debt crisis.

The common thread to all of this looming danger and misery is the notion that we are all ethically bound to aid those in need on the basis of that need. This idea (1) gave rise to the welfare states that have drained the coffers of the world's wealthy nations, (2) explains the massive foreign aid programs that have artificially made possible the millions of lives now in peril of starvation, and (3) threatens to involve every corner of the world in the ugly consequences of both (1) and (2).

The twentieth century saw communism discredited as a political system. Perhaps this one sill see altruism discredited as an ethical system.

-- CAV