Not In My Back Yard

Every human being is familiar with hypocrisy; it's the price of admission to the human race. But there is a special type of hypocrisy reserved for European societies of the past half-millennium. Despiser of white guilt that I am, I must make it clear that Europeans were simply in the right place at the right time; had the Chinese dominated the Earth for the past 500 years, they would be guilty of the same sins.

This brand of hypocrisy can be branded the "not in my back yard" ideology. Usually, this phrase is applied to things that a person wants no part of. In this context, these are things that we ABSOLUTELY want part of; we just don't want to see it. It's like the old saying about how everybody likes sausages (I'll update it to hot dogs) but nobody wants to see how they're made.

For example, the Europeans had a "moral" objection to American slavery between the Revolution and the Civil War. And while slavery was indeed morally objectionable, the most cursory assessment reveals the "not in my back yard" component to this stance.

For while the Europeans denounced their American cousins for slavery, the Europeans were enslaving the entire Southern Hemisphere of the Earth. The Americans enslaved millions of Africans. The Europeans enslaved Africa.

So, the real objection of the Europeans was that it was somehow vulgar for the Americans to practice slavery in their own back yard. The kidnapping, forced relocation, enslavement, and arbitrary murder of Africans was not the issue; the issue was the lack of taste and class in making those hot dogs where you slept.

The Holocaust arouses universal condemnation from all civilized people. But what faux outrage from the Europeans. The Europeans had spent centuries invading small, defenseless countries and exterminating all or part of countless societies lost to history. But Hitler had the poor taste to do these things IN EUROPE. And that's just barbaric.

"No blood for oil" is a (usually) self-righteous cry du jour at any anti-war rally. But why are Americans so repulsed by blood for oil, when our entire postwar "richest country in the history of history" run has been literally fueled by oil whose absurdly low prices are ultimately guaranteed by the very real threat of blood?

So, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, we let loose the bloodbath because he had us by the balls in terms of oil prices. And there was outrage among some in this country, including myself.

But why are oil-rich countries responsible for 90% of the dictatorships left on Earth? In part, it's because no democratically responsible government would ever sell oil at such low prices.

So we recruit dictators. And where was our outrage when Saddam Hussein was using American guns, money, and intel to murder Iraqis who opposed him (especially communists)? There was none, of course, because those hot dogs were being made at an appropriate distance from American mouths.

And what of when we go to Wal-Mart? Americans assume that $20 mp3 players are their birthright, but many of them are horrified at the prospect of the people who make the things Americans consume actually being allowed into this country.

I think guilt trips are usually pointless and often narcissistic, but introspection is a different and necessary beast. We should think about how the hot dogs make their way to our tables. Personally, I don't eat hot dogs, but I drive, I wear clothes, and I occasionally use a computer.

Free people for all time have had their freedom made more secure and luxurious by the enslavement of others. But when one man is in chains, none of us are free. And if we were all truly free, the American standard of living would plummet. Sorry for the buzzkill.