Yeah, I know, Live 8 — I’m not exactly on the vanguard of realtime journalism (or, well, any journalism at all). Since Live 8 was covered pretty extensively about a week ago, there’s really no sense in me tossing yet another rant about its utter futility and thinly-veiled conceit onto the pile (and one that wouldn’t be nearly as articulate as some of the others out there; see Chrenkoff, Timothy Burke, and Reason Hit & Run, for just a few examples).

On July 5, though, I happened to catch about 15 minutes of Rush Limbaugh on local radio during lunch. I tuned in to hear a caller accuse Rush of being “cold-hearted” in his discussion of African poverty. I didn’t hear Rush’s initial comments, but I thought his response to the caller was worded so well (and falls so close to my own opinion on the topic) that I wanted to share it.

Yeah, Carl, I don’t need to go home and listen to tapes. I listen to MP3 files. Tapes, I don’t use anymore, and I don’t need to listen because I remember myself doing the program since I host it. This just points out the great disconnect that I’m talking about that’s out there. Carl, you know, you hear certain things and you have knee-jerk reactions. You are hearing things I did not say. You are assigning to me emotions I do not have. You are reacting based on your own template. You are unable to hear one thing I said. Everything I said was oriented on success in Africa. I’m tired of failure. I’m tired of people dying, and I’m tired of people with good intentions failing getting all the credit for caring. I’m tired of never-ending efforts to prop up socialist regimes with relieving debt or sending more money over there and all it ends up is the same. I’m tired of do-gooders like Rachel Carlson getting DDT banned because it supposedly kills while it’s wiping out a continent from people dying from mosquito bites, Carl. Mosquito bites! I don’t know how much money in the world is going to stop that. I don’t know how much caring in the world is going to stop mosquito bites. The only thing that’s going to stop mosquito bites are insecticides that do-gooder liberals in this country have seen fit to ban around the world. You know, you see something totally different than I do when you hear these stories coming out of Africa. You see the efforts and the intentions. You see the beauty of people finally getting together to “do something,” and I look at results, and I see that despite all the efforts and the good intentions, no progress has been made at all.

Yet here we go. More LIVE 8s, more caterwauling, more protests — all from the same people who have failed over the years, demanding that more be done with somebody else’s money. Meanwhile, this current administration has done more for Africa in terms that you probably would appreciate than any of his predecessors. He’s done more than any rock stars and their concerts. Yet it doesn’t seem to register with people. We still don’t do enough. We’ll still calculate, “Weeeeeeell, we don’t give enough according to GDP. We don’t give as much as the Netherlands do, as a percentage of GDP.” Try this. As I said, Carl — I don’t know where you were — over $600 billion from this country alone to Africa alone, in 43 years, with nothing to show for it. We’ve had two genocides; we have a stateless regime in the Sudan where another genocide is going on. We have the destruction of capitalist countries all over. We’ve got Robert Mugabe running wild, taking land away from private property owners. Nobody complains. Nobody says a word. Nobody makes an effort to get rid of people like Mugabe — and yet the efforts of LIVE 8 and others with big hearts and great intentions continue, as though they’re new and unique. It’s like war on poverty in America, as I said. We’re not allowed to “impose our form of government to people” — but it’s not an imposition to impose freedom.

What’s needed in Africa is capitalism. What’s needed in Africa is personal income. The only way we’re going to wipe out poverty anywhere is with individuals and increasing personal income. You do that with jobs not with roads and bridges and clean water. You do it with a growing economy. You do it with imports and exports. You do it with trade. You do it with a time-honored techniques that have happened here. You do it with freedom. But you don’t do it with people like Robert Mugabe. You don’t do it with dictators, thugs like existed in Somalia, Rwanda and currently in the Sudan and Zimbabwe — and sadly, slowly becoming the same in South Africa. You don’t do it with people like Moammar Khadafy up in Libya. You just don’t do it. You’re never going to reform a country that has leadership like this in such a great percentage of the country. This continent is beyond the realm now of just forgiving debt or throwing money at it. And yet, like I say, what is this, 40 years, folks. Forty years, $600 billion hasn’t accomplished a thing. Still got the problem. Still bellyaching about the same circumstances and the same situation. Yeah, I’m sick and tired of it. Damn right I’m tired of it. But where you’re wrong, Carl, is that I’m not tired of trying to actually fix it. I am tired of people dying, and I’m really tired of people who are doing nothing about it getting all the credit for trying to stop it because as long as they keep getting credit, their efforts, which have failed, are going to continue, which all equals failure and I’m fed up with failure.

I’d just note that it wasn’t Bush’s generosity, per se, that provided all the aid money to Africa; it was his willingness to cave to the repeated calls of leftists, as well as general political pressures, and dispatch taxpayer funds. Instead, it would be nice if an American administration would adhere to American principles and take actions that would benefit Americans, while simultaneously assisting Africans, like ending agricultural subsidies.