Okay, this is something I've been meaning to do for a bit, but now I'm seeing this meme all over the place, and it's got to stop.
People keep bringing up the Marshall Plan as an example of American altruism and the generosity of American citizens and the US government.
It wasn't.
Sorry to shatter your bubble, but - "Nations do not have friends, they have interests."
Ask yourself - have you ever asked yourself this? - what the alternative was.
Seriously.
What alternatives? Well, who
else was out there? Who would Europe have turned to, of the Allies, (have had to turn to) if we had not gone in and bailed them out - and never once failed to remind them of it, even those of us who were not born then, whose parents were not born then, and whose grandparents, for all we know, might have been working for companies that supported Hitler right up to WWII.
Trick question #1:
Whose influence, and what ideology, did capitalists loathe wherever manifested in Europe (particularly during the 60s) and still do to this day?
If you said "the Soviet Union" and "socialism", you've obviously been paying closer attention than most of your fellow citizens. (If you are European, you have an unfair advantage.)
Trick question #2:
Why did the US create the Marshall Plan?
a) out of the goodness and pure benevolence of our hearts, because we were Exceptionally Virtuous in those days.
b) to stop Europe from going communist.
c) for the same reason banks counterintuitively let major borrowers in a bad way have more slack, because we would never recover any of our investment if we hadn't.
Congratulations, if you answered
b or
c; they're both correct. If you answered
a, you need to hie thee to the library (or Project Gutenberg) and get yourself a copy of Machiavelli's
The Prince and start reading.
Here is the 50th anniversary website with all kinds of official government documents from the time, about the Marshall Plan. It's an interesting starting point.
Now, some theoretical questions, of a philosophical bent:
- If I give you $500 when you're in a hole, because I know you will feel obligated to do something for me in return, and I have something in mind that I want from you that I know you will find it very hard to refuse if you feel grateful/guilty towards me, but which under ordinary circumstances you would be seriously opposed or unlikely to do - have I been generous?
- If I give you a sumptuous present, at Christmas or birthday, not because you wanted it but because I knew that giving it to you would humiliate and tick off my ex or my kid, your parent - have I been generous in this case, either?
- If I give an enormous contribution to help found an expanded children's hospital in my area, so that my name will be on the building and everyone in the entire community will think of me as "that wonderful person" so that my planned run for public office will be jump-started, have I been generous, or not?
In each case, the gesture may, objectively, have
looked like generosity. It may have been perceived by the recipient as such. But with the hidden motivations and goals, the secret strings attached all around - this is a
very different thing than a gift given anonymously by a friend to help, for the sake of the helpee, not for the gratification or worse yet, the projected personal benefit of the giver.
When you think about generosity, it's well to keep in mind proportionality, rather than the raw numbers that jingoistic Red Staters like to toss around - if a millionaire gives two hundred, that doesn't mean the same as if a little old lady on Social Security gives two hundred.
But also, consider the alternatives, and whether or not something is merely practicality, even if it is also an objective good with a humane outcome. Motivation is, when it comes to judging the value of human actions, the primary component. (If you cut off someone's leg while he's asleep, is it a good thing, or a bad thing?)
And never, never make the mistake of believing that nations are any more altrusitic than their prime cellular building blocks, corporations - any more than corporations are any more altruistic than the individual humans who compose them. The less a country has to gain, by doing good in a particular action, the more pure good there is in the deed - just as for individuals.
If I were feeling really evil Chaotic Good, I'd suggest some contemplation of what exactly we as a nation got out of the Marshall Plan, and who benefited from it the most, along the lines of asking what sorts of businesses would have flourished around Hadrian's Wall and Trier and Alexandria during the height of Roman expansion...
Oh dear, did I just do that? Silly me. (And really now, how could it be relevant? There wasn't any serious economic interest in naphtha back then, it wasn't like the Persian empire or the Kushan empires were trying to lock them out of it...)
If I was really being Loki-like, I'd point out that the fact that our government doesn't think that we have any interests in south-east Asia, such that making a grand gesture which considered from that coldblooded geopolitical POV both is good PR and which contributes to the stabilization of the Eastern Hemisphere, is worth it - is something that citizens need to think really, really hard about...
(The Rapture Index, the "prophetic speedometer of end-time activity", has risen, as I correctly foretold it would: two points, one for "Earthquakes" and one for "Leadership," in anticipation of projected world instability...)