Also everyone please stop with the "who is a good person" pissing contest.

You want to have an ethical debate over whether proximity is a legitimate factor in moral decision making, okay. You want to try to decide who is a good person and who's not, I'm not interested.

And the problem, semck, isn't so much that anyone is opposing it - it's literally apathy.

I used to be a teacher, and even in the inner city (10thgrade history) It is why I am no longer teaching...lol It takes a greater man than me to teach 10th grade history in the hood. I 'thought' i was up to the task....i was wrong.

BB, our direct community is what makes or breaks us, really. Where I live, you help people in need, period. It is not asked of us, we simply do it.

Applachia people are not exactly well known for their 'wealth' either. Those no electric, no running water houses, children running barefoot? ya, those are REAL stories, and still happening today. However, these people are very very reclusive, and will not accept help, unless they think you are one of them, so it is hard to get to them.

a few years ago, there was a family we went to see WAY up in the mountains. I would actually call it a Clan, since that was the word I thought of after I left.

I am from this area, and even Ihad trouble understanding their English. It was heavily accented, deep, and not really Southern at all.

this group has no electricity at all up there. maybe 60 of them. I counted ABOUT 40 KIDS. 12 had shoes. However, that being said, all seemed happy, and content.

It is not the type of place I would want to get lost in though, and not be from the area.

" our direct community is what makes or breaks us, really. Where I live, you help people in need, period. It is not asked of us, we simply do it. "

^ This is actually just about, in my opinion, the only legitimate reason, other than convenience and emotional satisfaction, that might argue for proximity being a legitimate moral consideration, ceteris paribus of course.

@Stressedlines whereabouts in Appalachia are you?

Hey, survival of the freaking fittest...
If the African people can't take care of themselves, and our policies have an adverse effect on them, I certainly don't care!
Why make a big deal about what the US does? If you live in the US, it is your job to stay informed so that you can opinionize yourself and be able to vote accordingly, but if you live in England, Australia, or some other lame-ass nation, WHY DO YOU CARE? You don't live in Africa, do you? And you can't change a thing about what we do! We're America for crying out loud! So quit complaining that we don't do exactly what you want us to do. They don't do what I want them to do, so why should they cater to you?

Anyway...Draugnar said it the best way in his first post, so go back and read his. But, of course, you don't care about what I say, and you're going to continue this pointless thread. Not that wasting your time worrying about some third-world country isn't going to make the world a better place, but you should all start seriously considering how politics really works. Because at the end of the day, you cannot accomplish anything. Ever. Even if you grow up and become the President of the world, you're still gonna have to deal with things the way they are, cause nothing ever changes, and you better bet your ass that if things do change, they're gonna come back to haunt ya.

I gotcha, Thucy. I just wasn't sure. Lots of things are presented as slam-dunk cases by one side, and then you find out there are articulate and well-thought-out arguments on the other. I just wanted to make sure. Thanks.

Dang. there is a poverty of intelligence in America among low SES, where people dont have any vocation in life but to produce children. And in fairness that is actually the problem in all the poorest countries too. People with a loss for what to do with this tremendous gift of life other than to just keep making more mouths to feed. I wish we could educate people about the lack of need for procreation, perhaps India, Africa and yes America would not have families with that many kids.

This also could allude to the mandatory sterilization argument and taking away peoples right to reproduce. Cruel and Inhumane vs. Sensible for the furthering of a slimmer populace.

Hey KA how's the symphony coming?

Freaking fantastic, thanks for asking, Thucy.

Whooaaaaa BB just went off the deep end.

Come one dude, mandatory sterilization? Have you heard of the failed eugenics movement? You know, our national atrocity (with eerie similarities to the Nazis)??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

Maybe instead of sterilizing people, help get them wage jobs. Lol. Jesus.

You make it sound as if these people who have so many kids are stupid. Not in the slightest. In their positions, it makes perfect sense. And they don't know, or don't care, about the world's population as a whole. Would you if you were worried about your harvest failing or suchlike?

"where people dont have any vocation in life but to produce children."

No, their only vocation in life is to have sex, not produce children. There's a huge difference.

Well I don't like it. It probably wont fix the issue anyways, its morbid as hell. But like how can we really train low intelligence people to value life for something other than childbearing?

Oh, and since when is Eugenics a bad thing? The preservation of life through the bottlenecking of the populace is a great way to ensure that a more sophisticated, higher evolved culture is produced. The only reason that it didn't go far in America is because there is no way to define American culture. Everyone is like everyone else, unless you're not white.

Let me ask Stressedlines, is that family hiding in the mountains with 40 kids needing those kids for harvest or are they just sadly lost as far as what to do with their life, so they just keep making kids?

"No, their only vocation in life is to have sex, not produce children. There's a huge difference."

aaaaaaand KA joins him......

Oh, and BB, it is sort of the proles' lot in life to be forced into creating the new generations. forcing them into carrying the children of their greaters has been an ocurance since Rome fell. In Nazi Germany, Hitler set up programs so that mothers who had large families received medals and honorary positions in neighborhood communities. And besides, such actions are the only ways to ensure a large military is produced and regulated.

I have a sneaking suspicious that KA's symphony will either be:

-utter amateurish garbage, or
-a masterfully crafted, terrifying glimpse into the mind of the composer

Ugh. Why is this becoming a eugenics debate. I am perpetually amazed by the internet and its population of wackos. Back to AGOA, shall we?

In Africa, those people keep making children due to less birth control options, what is the excuse fr people in America. In india a big family is a huge status symbol. In Morocco vast droves of people make tons and tons of children (just like the rest of the arab world mind you) and its because of a disbelief in birth control, and its literally driving up poverty, violence and civil unrest ( just look at the arab spring).

The problem is Americans just dont have a viable excuse for this behavior. Birth control is readily available here out the ass. Condoms arent that expensive, we have abortions and many other forms of prevention here, but poor people dont want those options.

Watch Hoarders sometime, im pretty sure these people are just hoarding children.

I'm fairly sure the people stressedlines described are so far out in the country and so uneducated they may not know about or have access to condoms. Much less want them on account of what I imagine is their rural lifestyle.

Also please stop saying "making" children. You say "have" children, not "make."

Reminds me of the kind of funny, kind of creepy, freudian slip me and my friends would make when playing real time strategy games like Age of Empires: "build a soldier". No, you don't "build" soldiers, you build bridges. Soldiers are trained, not built. Lol. Sorry for that diversion. :P

Im not so sure these people aren't just reclicking the button allowing them to keep building children.

"Train Peasants!" ahahah

There is a saying in the charity world - think global, act local.

@BB - In America (and anywhere Catholicism dominates) big families are encouraged by the church. It's bullshit that some rich white foreigner who probably hasn't had sex with a female in years if ever can tell lower and middle class America to "be fruitful and multiply" even if they don't have the means to pay for the kids.

Yes, Draugnar, it's a good saying, and my post here, as well as support for AGOA, is an example of "think global." How is it not?

Act local. Sure, I care what happens to every person in the world. But I *act* to help those around me. My resources go to those around me. Those around me are *local*. Get it?

Yes..... I'm still not seeing the point. "Act local" isn't a free pass to stop giving a shit about other people. Congress' actions affect the whole world hugely. They don't exactly operate under the same paradigm.

On that same note, my own, "local" actions have effects on people all over the world. When you "act local" you are supposed to act in such a way that takes people all over the world into account, this is the "think global" portion.

Thus, when I hear something on my local radio about stateless people in Pakistan and Bangladesh, I wrote my Congressman, because he is the one who can do something about it, and writing him is what I can do to influence him, being un-rich as I am. (http://www.statelesspeopleinbangladesh.net/home.php in case you were wondering what I mean).

So it doesn't mean you don't have to care about, or even advocate on behalf of, people in need elsewhere. It just means you do it locally. The other side of the coin is that just because I study international development and want to go into African aid work, doesn't mean that when I walk down my street in Austin, I shouldn't pick up litter or give my local homeless guy a bottle of water (he tells me really good jokes in exchange for the water haha). The point of the saying is not to neglect either. And the point of the blog post is that the US Congress and the American people are neglecting the 'global' aspect and letting down the people we had previously helped.

I am from Pike county Kentucky. Outside the city of Pikeville. I currently reside most of the year in East Tennessee and the rest in Western Virginia (not the state West Virginia, but the western part of virginia).

That was like 6 families, with the 40 kids, and yes, all worked the gardens, hunted, fathers were mostly coal miners I guess, did not ask much. I had seen it enough growing up, to know the story.