Ideology and Foreign Aid

Taken at face value, a large part of the discussion of “foreign aid”— as of most other political questions— is irrelevant or meaningless. Revolving within the sphere of ideology, it touches only indirectly and symbolically on the empirical issues that are actually at stake.

Considered rationally, it is ridiculous to be simplistically “for” or “against” an undefined abstraction labeled “foreign aid.” There are a dozen different facts indiscriminately grouped under the term. The effect of any specific kind of foreign aid will vary enormously from one place to another, and from one time to another. Whether you are “for” one specific kind in one place at one time would depend, if you were rational about it, on what goal you had in mind, and on the likelihood that this kind of aid, here and now, really will help you toward your goal.

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James Burnham

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Foreign Policy

Taken at face value, a large part of the discussion of “foreign aid”— as of most other political questions— is irrelevant or meaningless. Revolving within the sphere of ideology, it touches only indirectly and symbolically on the empirical issues that are actually at stake.

Considered rationally, it is ridiculous to be simplistically “for” or “against” an undefined abstraction labeled “foreign aid.” There are a dozen different facts indiscriminately grouped under the term. The effect of any specific kind of foreign aid will vary enormously from one place to another, and from one time to another. Whether you are “for” one specific kind in one place at one time would depend, if you were rational about it, on what goal you had in mind, and on the likelihood that this kind of aid, here and now, really will help you toward your goal.