Without do-gooders, there are no populists

Which statement is correct:

Well-meant is the opposite of good and well-meant is not the same as done well.

The term ”do-gooder” is a sarcastic, spiteful or contemptuous denigration of individuals or groups.

Do-gooders can be described as an emotionally loaded term. But there is no replacement for do-gooder or goodie two shoes.

All people occasionally take on the role of a do-gooder.

People in Europe have to admit to themselves that, had they been born as Nigerians, they would probably also make their way to Europe and people in the USA understand that as Hondurans they would also try to cross the border.

Nevertheless, does this empathy have to mean that all people in developing countries are granted the right to emigrate to the USA or Europe, even if a few million would make their way there?

Do-gooders would say: Yes, we have to. Surely not too many people will come and we will manage.

However, such an immigration triggers a sense of unease in a lot of people to varying degrees. (More on this in the Refugees post).

Governments that do not pay attention to this unease (“fears”) and insist on human rights and the Geneva Convention on Refugees lose many votes to populists.

Trump won the US elections in 2016 because he promised to build a wall on the Mexican border.

The biggest argument of Brexit supporters was the cancellation of the EU’s freedom of movement.

Most Germans who vote for the AFD don’t want a Nazi regime. They want a party that promises to stop immigration. The immigration topic drives the AFD. If Germany would implement a regulated and restrictive immigration act like in the USA, Australia or Japan, the AFD would quickly decline to become an insignificant party.

The do-gooders, however, prevent this from happening and strengthen the populists.

A realistic, pragmatic policy without ideological blinders would calm the political situation in the USA and Germany. There would then be time and energy to contemplate on ways to improve the situation of crisis states.

Most parties to the left of the center want to keep the borders open for ideological reasons.

The parties to the right are not in agreement on how far they want to open the borders. The pressure of migration from the south has increased in the past decades in the course of globalization and will continue to do so. Even if the situation slowly improves in developing countries, the wealth in the industrialized states will grow more quickly due to IT and automation and the gap is likely to continue to widen.

Migration will continue to be a pressing and loaded issue for the next 50 years!

Were all wars pointless?

Have there been wars that, looking back, may be described as justified or that created “progress?”

Or were all wars pointless? Does it even make sense to ask this question?

Jean Amery writes: One should not and must not leave the past undisturbed, or it may rise once more and become a new present.

Let us look at the wars in Iraq first. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. A few months later, a Coalition led by the USA began the fighting to liberate Kuwait. Kuwait was free just a few days later and the Iraqi troops suffered a devastating loss.

In 2003, a war was once again started in Iraq and led by the USA. The USA had suspected Iraq’s dictator at the time, Saddam Hussein, to be in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They toppled Saddam Hussein and pursued the goal of bringing a democratic government to power.

The Liberation of Kuwait by the armies of the Coalition was, without a doubt, a justified and successful operation.

In contrast, the Invasion of Iraq, which consequentially led to the toppling of the dictator, Saddam Hussein, must be described as a huge disaster.

The claim that Saddam Hussein had been developing WMDs turned out to be false. It is true that he supported terrorism and oppressed his people. But may allegations as these legitimize military interventions in the future? The Invasion of Iraq claimed many lives among Iraqi civilians and after the war was over, the situation deteriorated and resembled a civil war. This was an advantageous condition for terrorist attacks and the spread of the so-called Islamic State.

The intention to install a democratic government was completely unrealistic! The hope remains that the insight finally asserts itself that democratic governments can only be installed in countries with a population that is ready for it.

Were any lessons learned?

The conflict in Syria began in 2011 with peaceful demonstrations which quickly turned into armed clashes with the authoritarian regime of Assad. A large number of armed groups fought for power, who also represented the interests of foreign powers.

The heterogeneity of the Syrian state and society leads to a great potential for conflict. The Sunnis represent the majority of the population. The religious minorities include Shiites (Alawites, Druze), Yazidi and Christians. President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Alawites. Most rebels were Sunni, who felt oppressed by Assad.

Starting in November 2012, the secret service CIA massively supported the rebels by means of covered operations (Wikipedia: Civil War in Syria since 2011).

From July 3013, the Obama Administrations only openly supported “moderate” rebels with weapons.

The “Islamic State” benefited from the chaos in Syria and quickly conquered large areas of the country. It could only be pushed back once US and Russian fighter jets intervened.

Half a million Syrians have lost their lives due to the war and more than 5 million have fled abroad.

Why did the Syrian people have to suffer? The rebels, the Obama Administration and many European states supported the removal of the despot, Assad. They received moral support from renowned newspapers in the US and Europe. Most newspapers were of the opinion that peace would not be possible with Assad in power.

Sure, Assad is a dictator who can only cling to power using brutal violence. But what is the alternative?

In predominantly Muslim Syria, a culture dominates in which violence is and always has been commonplace. The conflict between Sunni and Shia is not a new phenomenon. 18 years after the Prophet Mohammed died, the Sunni and Shia resolved their disputes in bloody conflicts. I do not believe that the West can develop Syria into a functioning state.

The violent toppling of Gaddafi in Libya has also not concluded in great success.

       The military deployments of the West described above were all carried out in foreign cultures.

The conflicts in Yugoslavia occurred in the realm of our culture and a military intervention there should therefore be rather successful.

NATO’s intervention in Kosovo cannot be explained without the mass murder of Srebrenica. People in the West felt guilty for not having intervened in Srebrenica.

In 1999, the conflict between Serbs and insurgent Kosovo-Albanians had reached a level that made it impossible for the public to simply stand by. The intervention of NATO was meant to protect Kosovo’s civilian population.

NATO assumed that a few heavy air attacks against military targets would suffice to make the Serbs change course. However, the Serbs only changed their actions after civilian infrastructure was also targeted, which led to about 500 civilian casualties.

In the end, the intervention brought about the contended independence of Kosovo, where the weapons are now silent, however.

Are there further wars or interventions that one could rate as a success today?

A website titled “Wars of Humanity” lists more than 400 wars. We are no longer concerned with most of these wars and can only discern why people budded heads back then with great difficulty.

Yet the War of Secession in the US still keeps our minds busy these days. There are countless articles online and easily hundreds of books have been written about the American Civil War. Yet only very few actually ask whether this war was necessary and what would have happened, had it not been fought. When Abraham Lincoln, who is seen as an opponent to slavery, was elected President, the South seceded and proclaimed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln could not accept the dissolution of the United States’ unity and started the Civil War in 1861. 

In 2015, the Frankfurter Allgemeine wrote: “It was only by means of that war that the USA could ascend to become a world power. The conflict revolutionized the economy of the North.”

I, however, have my doubts that the North’s economy would not have become stronger even without the war. And even if that is the case, was it worth the death of 620,000 people - 2 percent of the American population?

In my Pacifism post of November 2017 I wrote:

In recent years there have been two principle reasons for armed conflict:

·       Minorities without any autonomous rights are held in the central state by force of arms in order to preserve the unity of the states. How many deaths is the unity of a state worth? It should become customary law that all minorities should be allowed to vote on how many autonomous rights they wish to claim.

·       Over the past two thousand years, ideologies and religions have repeatedly led to catastrophic wars.

I believe that the Confederate and Union States would have found a way back together after several decades even without this bloody war and that the inhuman slavery would also have been abolished in the South. The citizens of the North, who wanted to use armed force to control the states of the South, certainly meant well, but..... (cf. Foreign Policy of Oct. 2017).

The question does arise whether it is appropriate to interpret US history as a European. The assessment of the US Civil War still has an effect on the whole world to this day. Because if you are of the opinion that Lincoln had to invade the South to end slavery and preserve the Union, then you will take the same view today - that governments that violate human rights must be overthrown by use of force.

            

Citizens are more important than the economy

It is a truism:    

If there is a workforce shortage, immigration won't do any good!

Immigrants require more shop assistants in the grocery shop, more doctors, more bricklayers for new houses, etc.

This fact is suppressed by the business-friendly newspapers (e.g. NZZ in Switzerland) and the rose-tinted, left-leaning newspapers (e.g. Tagesanzeiger in Switzerland) do not mention this truism, because they want to open the borders completely for immigrants, due to ideological reasons.

Immigration is very beneficial for the economy. Companies want to grow and have the largest possible selection of a cheap workforce.

Citizens desire secure jobs and well-paid work.

The citizens want to avoid that immigration overloads the infrastructure and that their local natural recreation areas are covered in concrete and developed. In little Switzerland, 29 km2 are developed annually, which corresponds to the area of Lake Brienz. In 1960, Switzerland’s residential population totaled 5 million and has risen to 8.5 million today. Now we are forced to densify our construction.

Business lobbyists claim that when immigration is restricted, jobs are outsourced abroad (aspect A). That cannot be ruled out.

However, these lobbyists conceal the obvious aspect (aspect B) that unemployment decreases and wages rise when there is a shortage of labor.

So the question arises: Which aspect will override the other?

I believe that by sensibly managing immigration, the economy can flourish and the development of the countryside can be reduced.

The economy is fueling fears that jobs may be lost out of self-interest. But why don't the Left point out that there is also a second aspect?

There is an unholy alliance between business and socialist-minded politicians that is formed in this matter. Only in recent months have the unions exited this unholy alliance.

They finally realized that they represent not the urban, well-earning left-wing voters, but the low earners, who despite all the rhetoric, know that their wages rise less because of the immigrants.

The title can often be found in the media: “The economy profits from immigration” and it is implicitly suggested that the citizens are automatically better off because of it. But economic growth in Switzerland lowers our feel-good factor and our quality of life.

Companies are to grow in their foreign branches, so that unemployment in Switzerland can continue to fall and wages can rise with controlled immigration, without businesses having to forego growth.

The problem with the do-gooders

in German published 2018-03

The Duden German dictionary adopted the term Gutmensch (do-gooder) in the year 2000.

Is a do-gooder a good person? Or: Is well-meant the opposite of good and is well-meant not the same as well done?

It could be argued that the term do-gooder is often used polemically. In 2015, Gutmensch became "non-word of the year" in Germany.

Every human being who aspires to higher goals (myself included) repeatedly slips back into the role of the do-gooder.

           However, the influence of the do-gooders can have disastrous consequences, as the war in Syria has shown.

In the past there were true believers, who also felt they were better people than their fellow men. The true believer feels superior to the paper Christians.

The term Pharisee is even more pejorative.

The do-gooder, the orthodox and the Pharisee all feel morally superior.

Do the do-gooders have an ideology? Is there a do-gooder ideology?

Most do-gooders are positioned to the left of the center.

They have a rosy worldview.

The Swiss politician Blocher coined the term "the left and the nice".

The nice are for the most part religious.

The do-gooders want to remove all dictatorships in developing and emerging countries, whatever the cost. In Syria, an attempt has been made to overthrow the bad man Assad. As a result, half a million people have died for nothing and several million Syrians have had to flee.

Sure, Assad is a brutal dictator, but can a country in the Middle East be governed in accordance with human rights?

What would happen if a do-gooder was instated with full powers as head of the government in Syria?

Do-gooders can also have a negative influence on development aid. The distribution of second-hand clothes in Africa decimates the local textiles manufacturing. Due to food distribution, local farmers can no longer live on the sale of their products. Clothes and food consignments only make sense in disaster areas. However, this does not shine a light on do-gooders, because they have often been taken over by the helper syndrome.

Only help for self-help gives people in developing countries a boost.

Do-gooders oppose the fact that we support voluntary family planning in developing countries, because we may be subject to racist motives. There is certainly a danger of this, but that does not have to be a reason to make family planning a taboo subject. This promotes famine and the neglect of children who are sent out on the street by their parents, because they can no longer feed their large hoard of children.

         I would like to transplant do-gooders to Africa and see how they use the opportunities there to feed 6-8 children without having access to any contraceptives.

          More than 3 million children die each year as a result of malnutrition and hunger. This number would be much smaller if we were to allow all women to volunteer for family planning.

Now a look at the USA: Why was Trump elected? US voters were fed up with Obama, who was accused by Trump of placing more importance on political correctness than the welfare of the American people.

           Trump is the anti-do-gooder.

Whereby it is unclear how anti-do-gooders are to be classified.

 

Refugees

in German published 2018-1

We humans are individuals who have to find their way in the world. However, we are also social beings who seek support and affirmation in society. By nature, we are made to seek support and affirmation from like-minded people or from people who are as similar to us as possible. When it comes to people with other skin colors or ways of life, we only feel comfortable when we have established that they are just like we are in terms of what makes them tick. People with a rosy worldview and do-gooders will reject this idea and assert that they do not have this "primal" feeling. However, I am convinced that everyone has this primal feeling, although it is not equally easy for everyone to override it. Nor can it serve as an excuse to surround yourself only with similar or like-minded people and to declassify everyone else.

The refugee problem can cause us inner anguish. We see the misery in which a large proportion of the people in the world live. However, even if we take on a great number, we can only accept a small fraction of the people who want to come to our country.

It costs a great deal of money to integrate a refugee or a migrant. With this money, 10 - 100 people could be helped in the Middle East or in Africa.

The stream of refugees cannot be reduced with development aid in the medium term! On the contrary, due to more development aid more people have access to a television, where they see what "paradisiacal states" we live in, and increasing numbers of people raise between 3,000 and 10,000 euros to pay smugglers (escape agents?) to escape to Europe.

So far, refugees coming from Africa hail from North and East Africa. In the future, refugees from Central Africa will come too, for example from the Republic of Congo or the Central African Republic, where the population is growing exponentially.

Having said that, of course, I also believe that development aid is very important, especially if it is self-help.
With do-gooder thinking, we often support the wrong people. If we allow ourselves to be guided by our feelings, we will cause crisis countries even greater problems.

We promote unrest and conflicts in third world countries with our asylum law!

When they travel to a third world country and are asked by a young man there: What do I have to do to get asylum in Europe? Then they would have to tell him that he must oppose the government to such an extent that he ends up in prison for a few weeks. He is subsequently a victim of political persecution and almost certainly qualifies for asylum.

The reasons he is being persecuted are irrelevant for the asylum authorities in Europe. He may have committed Sunni violence against Shiites, or he may have committed violence against Sunnis as a Shiite, he may have participated in mass shootings as an IS fighter. If he fails to mention this and says he is threatened with life and limb, he will obtain asylum.

Young men should not flee crisis areas, but seek peaceful solutions in their countries and then help rebuild them.

This could be seen as an empty claim, but I do not think I would leave my country as a refugee if it was in crisis.

Asylum policy

in German published 2017-11

There is an unholy alliance between socialism and business interests in the issue of free immigration. The Social Democrats and the Red-Greens want open borders for ideological reasons and the economic managers want the highest possible rate of immigration. Economic managers do not care if employee wages thereby fall. As for the Social Democrats and the Red Greens, their ideology is ultimately more important than the wellbeing of their employees.

          In 2016, almost 5,000 asylum seekers drowned in the Mediterranean.

An untenable situation. How can this be prevented?

We could pick up the refugees in Libya and Lebanon with large-capacity aircraft or old cruise liners.

However, if Europe opened its borders, several million economic refugees would come to Europe every year.

         The do-gooders point their fingers to anyone who wants to limit the influx of refugees, crying: shame on you!

Nobody wants to be called a do-gooder, but neither do they want to be called a monster. What is the right attitude?

I think we should rather be guided by reason. Feelings certainly have an important place in our lives, but reason should always prevail in politics.

Politicians who are guided by reason must slow down rose-tinted politicians, economic lobbyists and do-good politicians.

Which of the following statements is more populist?

 - I am against building walls and I am against partitioning ourselves off.

 - We have to be realistic and, if necessary, strengthen our borders.

Foreign policy

in German published 2017-10
Politicians who have a rosy worldview (see socialism) advocate an ideology and, like all ideologues, have missionary zeal. This missionary zeal leads them to point an incriminatory finger at other people.

        And the do-gooders want to remove all dictatorships in developing and emerging countries, whatever the cost. In Syria people have tried to overthrow the bad guy Assad. As a result, half a million people have died for nothing and several million Syrians have had to flee.

We have no business interfering in the Middle East. We are infidels! When we intervene, we are considered crusaders.

Countries that are not yet ready for democracy (such as Russia, Turkey and China) are punished with contempt instead of being encouraged to take small steps towards democracy.

We must not forcibly impose our understanding of democracy and human rights throughout the world, because in doing so we will cause great harm and not help the people living there.