Excellent commentary that could have been entitled:
David Brooks: “Putting Down the White-Man’s Burden”
or “On the Moral Superiority of Impotence”
or “The Futility of Hope.”

Sadly, Brooks is about the best writer among this gaggle of broken-souled, limp-dicked conservative regurgitaters. You deserve a Bill Buckley to contend with… Can you imagine sailing across the Atlantic with David Brooks? The whole crew would be looking for a big shark to shut him up, before you lost sight of Montauk.

Most of all, I wanted to thank you for making me laugh out-loud.

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Thing is, there’s a good chance he’s right. I mean, Afghanistan is a much bigger shithole for having a culture that is based in misogynistic tribalism. I don’t see why this can’t be true for Haiti as well.

Being from a post-Soviet country myself, I saw firsthand how even a place that has a very high level of education and industrialization can go to seed because of the lack of a culture of governance, and the people’s lack of faith in the possibility of an honest and transparent government.

To bring it back to earthquakes, there was a massive quake in my country that destroyed a whole city to the ground and left 25,000 dead. A quake of the same magnitude in California the same year had a death toll of 2. There’s footage of buildings sinking into the ground – they were built with substandard materials because of widespread theft of construction materials by the people in charge of the projects. The culture of corruption killed tens of thousands of people.

If Brooks’s point is that a country can’t rise on charity alone, and that it needs a competent government, then I can totally accept the extended argument that such a government won’t emerge till the culture changes.

As for the deleterious effect of certain religions on society, boy, I could tell you plenty about that too, but enough for now.

Note the recent riots in Haiti protesting foreign assistance since the earthquake, and particularly the resentment from the Haitian medical establishment. “How can we make money when they’re giving it away for free,” is how one top government doctor put it last week.

Truly.

Regarding Mr. Taibi’s defense of voodoo I’d like to point out that human progress is impossible as long as we afford religions unfettered control over people’s lives, or “respect” that none really deserve. We face and uncover the ugly truths of white religions quite bravely — intolerance of evangelical Christians, pedophilia in the catholic church. But once the practitioner’s skin darkens all criticism is off limits, e.g. Islam and Voodo.

Ditto for social dynamics. My wife runs a charity that is active in the Dominican Republic, where many Haitian refugees live. The cruelty of Haitian parents towards their children is legendary.

We can continue to hide our heads in the sand regarding third-world problems. But our eagerness never to offend anyone, particularly dark-skinned people, to the point of allowing them essentially to mass-murder themselves and their own kids, serves nobody and nothing but liberals’ innate sense of guilt.

his point is not that an earthquake is haiti’s fault. his point is that the RESULTING DEVASTATION, completely disproportionate from devastation that results from earthquakes in developed countries, displays a discrepancy- points to factors other than just a natural disaster. Why do earthquakes in California not result in a hundred deaths? Because our buildings don’t collapse, our infrastructure remains strong, our relief agencies are well equipped. Katrina was an example of a natural disaster that can devastate even a developing country- why? Not because the flood was stronger than any that have affected other countries, but because there was no preparation and weak infrastructure. He’s exploring the factors that go behind no preparation and weak infrastructure, he wants to hold people accountable, not place the blame on a monstrous natural disaster completely out of our control.