The Defiling Excrement is Human

In associating two articles and a series of video discussions, one could easily draw further inferences.

The first article is titled The Devil's Excrement written by Moises Naim. In a way it attempts to blame the abundance of natural resources such as oil or valuable mineral deposits to the lack of progress in third world countries. Although it seems counter-intuitive, history shows that it has happened with great regularity.

One key paragraph in the article gives some explanation.

Once in power, oil-rich governments are deadly hard to dislodge. They stick around by spending their vast public resources to buy out or repress their political opponents. Statistically, it is far less probable that an authoritarian oil country will transition to democracy than that a resource-poor autocracy will. Oil-rich governments spend two to 10 times more on their militaries than countries without oil and are more prone to go to war. Most oil-exporting countries that do not have strong democratic institutions before they start exporting crude inevitably create an inhospitable environment for democracy.

The series of 5 videos is from the Uncommon Knowledge archive at NRO. In this portion of Mr. Robinson's neighborhood, he interviews Dambisa Moyo. Ms. Moyo argues against the wisdom of all the foreign aid given to African nations over the past decades. She could have written the above quote and substituted 'foreign aid' in the place of 'oil' and drawn a similar conclusion.

The second article, written by Tsegaye Tadesse, is titled 'Africa wants $67 bln a year in global warming funds.' African leaders are putting a guilt trip on wealthier nations in order to squeeze even more aid from them; International entitlement.

What strikes me as so familiar in these productions is that it so reminds me of the Obama Administration/Democrat controlled Congress. Slight adjustments to the above 'Excrement' quote yield:

Once in power, Liberal-rich governments are deadly hard to dislodge. They stick around by spending their vast public resources to buy out or repress their political opponents. Statistically, it is far less probable that an authoritarian Liberal country will transition to democracy than even a resource-poor autocracy will. Power-rich governments spend two to 10 times more on their militant base than countries without Democrat control and are more prone to go to fascist. Most Democrat controlled countries that do not have strong democratic institutions before they start promoting policies that inevitably create an inhospitable environment for democracy.

Perhaps Barack Obama was not born in Kenya, but his policies more highly resemble those of modern African leaders than Constitutionally based American ones.