Compulsory "charity".

ITEM: In an editorial entitled, "Are We Stingy? Yes," the December 30 New York Times agreed with the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who characterized the U.S. as "stingy" in terms of giving foreign aid, specifically aid to the tsunami victims. "The American aid figure ... is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid," the Times said.

CORRECTION: It is easy to be generous with other people's money, especially if you are a UN bureaucrat who gets nearly a quarter of his salary from American taxpayers. The UN official in question, Norway's Jan Egeland, presides over the "distribution of aid and money conscripted from Americans," commented columnist Patrick Buchanan, "while denouncing them as 'stingy' and preening as a great humanitarian. He is a dispensable parasite who insults the nation responsible for his exalted lifestyle."

Another "international humanitarian," Clare Short, berated American government efforts for supposedly undercutting the United Nations. Short, Britain's former International Development Secretary, said the U.S. effort to coordinate tsunami aid "sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the U.N.... Only really the U.N. can do that job. It is the only body that has the moral authority." Yes, she's talking about the ethics of the folks who ran the Oil-for-Food-for-Dictators program.

Meanwhile, most American aid is not being "counted" in our favor--such as the $6 million a day the Pentagon is spending for a fleet of U.S. vessels and aircraft as well as at least 13,000 military personnel. By the first week of January, while international bureaucrats were still working on press releases to prove their concern, the U.S. military had delivered more than 610,000 tons of relief supplies.

And privately given U.S. aid has been massive. Aid through private channels, in fact, responded almost immediately. "Private giving is usually faster, nimbler and more directly accountable than government aid," notes Carol Adelman, the former assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Writing in the New York Times, she explained, "Overhead costs are lower, and it can better avoid interference by corrupt officials. It's no surprise that some of the first groups on the scene were private.... " (For more on U.S. giving, see "Swept Away," page 24.)

Critics grossly downplayed American assistance, especially when privately given--which is how all of it would be if the powers-that-be paid attention to the Constitution. Consider President Grover Cleveland's vetoing of a bill for drought-stricken Texas farmers in 1887: "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution," he explained, "and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated."

Indeed, this continues to be shown today, even when most victims are not Americans. As we write, voluntary donations by Americans to private charities dealing with the tsunami disaster are nearly outstripping official government aid.