PERSPECTIVErnWhy Don’t We Mind Our Own Business?rnby Thomas FlemingrnV / o u can fool some of the people all of the time,” saidrnJ . W.C. Fields quoting Lineoln, “and those odds are goodrnenough for me.” Fields also said that, in a presidenHal eleehon,rnhe never voted for anyone, only against, and this time aroundrncontrarians eould have, well, a Field day, since George W.rnBush and Al Gore have joined forces to snooker the Americanrnpeople on virtually every subject, from taxes to education to foreignrnpolicy. They both agreed, for example, that the Americanrnpeople were morally obliged to violate U.S., Guban, and internationalrnlaws by stealing a six-year-old Cuban boy from his father.rnWh- should we be surprised? Both parties have also agreedrnthat it is right to murder Iraqi and Serbian children to expressrnour disapproval of the governments that are making their livesrnmiserable. ‘I’hc two Catholic candidates in the race, PatrickrnBuchanan and Joseph Sobran, have seen through the bad logicrn(and bad faith) that has turned the United States into the leadingrnterrorist nation on the planet, but neither can see that thernsame puritanical busybodying is at work in the Elian Gonzalezrncase. There is sdll hope for Joe and Pat: I can remember whenrnthey were both what they would now call war-mongering imperialists,rnand they have grown out of that phase.rnThe underlying fallacy in the Elian Gonzalez case is thatrnAmericans somehow owe the rest of the world something—arnchance for freedom, a higher standard ot living, access to rerunsrnof McHa/e’s Navy. If you listen to the official voices of our culturalrnlife —church, television, schools, magazines, even whatrnwe now call the arts—each one of us now has moral and politicalrnobligations that connect us with staring villagers in Peru,rnrebels in Afghanistan, aborted girl children in China.rnFor most of us, these obligations can only be discharged byrngiving support to internahonal charit}’. ‘I he spirit of internationalrnhurnanitarianism was best described by the president ofrnthe Rockefeller Poimdahon who, in 1937, lauded the “menrnwho never thought in terms of flag or boundary lines and whornnever served a lesser loyalty than the welfare of mankind.”rnMost people in the United States (although by no means all)rnacknowledge some responsibility to make charitable contributionsrnout of their surplus and abundance. But how much torngive, to whom, and how—those are queshons to which therernare no easy or obvious answers, although some philosophersrnand theologians have made it sound as if there were. All menrnare brothers, say the theologians, and Christians have an obligationrnto plav good Samaritan everywhere and at all times. Fromrneach according to his abilities, to each according to his need,rnsay philoso[3hers on the left. We are positively obligated to dornanything we can to alleviate sufferirrg “without thereby sacrificingrnanything of comparable moral importance.” Proximity orrnfriendship might once have counted for something, but (as PeterrnSinger put it) “in.stant communication and swift transportahonrnhave changed the situation,” because the “global village”rnhas made “an important, though still unrecognized difi^erencernto our moral situation.”rnThe global village is a powerful image that makes everyonerneach other’s next door neighbor. If a neighbor’s house burnedrndown in the middle of winter, it would be worse than uncharitablernto refuse to take in the family and provide tliem with foodrnand warm clothing: It would be unjust. In the world of internahonalrnphilanthropy, the same argument applies to all of thernglobal village.rnDo not imagine that citizens of a global village can takernrefuge in the right to dispose of their own property. Two centuriesrnago, William Godwin argued in Political Justice (the classicrntext of modern liberalism) that a wealthy man is obligated tornlO/CHRONICLESrnrnrn