Foreign Aid: Distinctions Needed

On large political issues it is always difficult to make convincing distinctions. The very nature of the political process pushes us toward an unmodified Yes or No. So it has conspicuously been in the case of Foreign Aid: each citizen, judging that complex entity to be either Good or Bad, has tended to be quite simply For or Against. During fifteen years the For has prevailed in our national councils. Foreign Aid—all kinds, to any and all countries—was good, and the more the better.

The pendulum has started its reverse swing. The judgment that Foreign Aid is Bad, all Bad, lock, stock and barrel, is being heard more loudly in the land, and has brought from Congress, this year, the first really massive cuts in Foreign Aid appropriations. These cuts, since they are motivated, largely, by a blanket rejection of the whole idea of Foreign Aid, are undiscriminating; every sort of aid for every purpose has been slashed. This is an understandable enough reaction to the undiscriminating grants of years past, but no less unwise.

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James Burnham

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On large political issues it is always difficult to make convincing distinctions. The very nature of the political process pushes us toward an unmodified Yes or No. So it has conspicuously been in the case of Foreign Aid: each citizen, judging that complex entity to be either Good or Bad, has tended to be quite simply For or Against. During fifteen years the For has prevailed in our national councils. Foreign Aid—all kinds, to any and all countries—was good, and the more the better.

The pendulum has started its reverse swing. The judgment that Foreign Aid is Bad, all Bad, lock, stock and barrel, is being heard more loudly in the land, and has brought from Congress, this year, the first really massive cuts in Foreign Aid appropriations. These cuts, since they are motivated, largely, by a blanket rejection of the whole idea of Foreign Aid, are undiscriminating; every sort of aid for every purpose has been slashed. This is an understandable enough reaction to the undiscriminating grants of years past, but no less unwise.