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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Red Africa?

Is it just me or do the US and China make odd bedfellows? Fifty years ago, our country was plagued with a red scare over the threat of communism. Today, we're plagued with cheap imports from a communist country. Women are forced to comply with a one child per family policy and Catholics are imprisoned. Yet, we willingly give favored nation status to China and give them a slap on the wrist, a wink and tell them we're concerned about their gross human rights violations. We willingly export our jobs and import tons of junk that no one in this country even needs. This article details China's growing interest in Africa. Great. I don't know what's worse, an African continent run by radical Muslims or communists. In our war on terror, defending against communism has become passe'. We're no longer afraid of communism to the point where we just ignore the plight of people suffering under its thumb. Castro is on his death bed, the wall came down long ago and capitalism is on the grow in Russia; all is rosy. Communism is a 20th century relic. How I wish that were so. However, Africa needs help. If Christian countries and organizations do not act fast, the entire continent will become cogs in the Marxist machine or a hotbed of suicide bombers bent on destruction. Can we not offer them a better option? Tired of civil wars, famine and genocide, African countries are hungry for a solution. We cannot allow China and radical Muslims to offer the only choices for stability. They are only band aids which will lead to further suffering in the long run. We know colonialism created many problems, but guilt over the past shouldn't prevent our efforts now. I do not know if it is possible to return Africa to a time before it's resources and people were claimed and managed by foreigners but I have to believe Christ offers a better solution than atheism or Muhammad. Because I support distributism, I believe the US should work to exist without economic ties to China. We should also strive to help developing countries become self sufficient and less susceptible to outside influence. We can go in and offer assistance, however we need to know when to back off and let the locals take over. And assistance doesn't count if it's in the form of loans with astronomical interest. As I've mentioned before, Lucifer portrays the worst options in the best light to make them more palatable and in an effort to obscure the path to truth. Lucifer is most definitely at work in Africa and I fear he is holding a candle up to China.
"Pere Regamey issues a call to change the world, "the world of capitalism and communism" which he equally condemns. "The Christian who is obedient to the spirit of Christ wonders which he hates most, capitalism or communism, so hostile to each other, so fundamentally alike. He holds the same grievance against both, that they have taken from the poor the spirit of poverty, and so cast them into despair. This crime shows most clearly in capitalism; but communism and all other materialist systems which promise paradise to these little ones produce the same results, for to give rise to a hope placed in the things of earth, and a false hope at that, is to give rise to almost a double despair. We certainly have a job to do of restoring earthly justice to the disinherited; the Church has been calling us to it through the mouths of recent Popes; but she keeps her scale of values constant, she always holds the Godward life of the soul highest of all.""
"Poverty Without Tears"
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, April 1950, 1, 3, 6.

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