Another Journey from Left to Right

Another journey from the left to the right comes from excellent bloggist "The Quietest:" As do so many, he realizes that the empty promises of the left do no great service to mankind and it led him to become conservative, where good outcomes matter more than good intentions.

When I defined myself according to my angry revolutionary politics in college, it was, more than anything else, less an infatuation with "social justice" and more a means of feeling good about myself in a context where you aren't allowed to be yourself, where the only good Latino is an angry one (or else you're "selling out"), and where official and unofficial recognition depends on how loud you are. Working in the favelas abroad, however, I found nobody gave a shit about all the injustices I'd assumed they were simmering about (and which my professors had taught me about). That kind of hyper-ideological world CAN ONLY EXIST in situations of excessive wealth and leisure -- that is, an American university campus. In the favela, people simply wanted GOOD JOBS, and were willing to vote for whomever promised them.

Several years abroad, working for idealistic NGOs doing "international development" and "community building" -- terms that sound great but usually consist of paying bribes to local officials and/or sitting around and boozing with unemployed locals -- and I became "conservative." Not "conservative" in the sense that I don't desire to alleviate poverty and end injustice where it is so obvious in the world, but "conservative" in the sense that in my experience, many of the leftist/activist solutions to those problems had ended up doing nothing at best, or much harm at worst.

My organization built solid, brick houses for people living in shacks in the Brazilian favela. A good thing, right? How can that be bad? Most of the families that had to live in shacks were those whom the father had abandoned, or who the father came around once a year, impregnated the mother, and then took off again to who knows where. Sure, globalization, capitalism, free trade, and whatever Bob Geldof and the comfortable professional protesters in Edinburgh are angry about might be part of the problem. But the most immediate, the most direct problem was the fact that the family didn't stay together. Those families that had a strong religious faith stayed together, and they lived in real houses in MUCH better conditions. They were equally as poor -- nobody has any money in the favela -- but because they worked as a coherent family unit they were able to improve their living conditions. The difference was profound. So what was helping people in the most direct, most effective way -- partying protesters in the rich countries or the local neighborhood church that kept families together?

One time, my organization built a house for an abandoned mother and her four small children. They had been living in a little shack made of scrap metal and cardboard. They moved into their new house and it was a happy occasion. Then the NGO left. At some point, the father heard that his "wife" had a new house. He moved back in and turned the place into a drug-dealing center for the favela. The family I lived with told me that crime skyrocketed in the neighborhood almost immediately, and all kinds of people from outside came in and caused problems for all the local families (favelas are extremely close-knit communities where everybody knows each other). But nobody could do anything about it because they were afraid of the drug dealers. Drugs are a huge problem in those communities. It took them years to get rid of it, and mostly because they let the house fall into disrepair and they simply moved their operation to another area.

So my question is: did my NGO help the people in that neighborhood with their aid? Or did they worsen it by merely dealing with the symptom of a deeper problem: the breakdown of the family?

So then the people in the neighborhood refused to help build these houses unless a) the father (if alive) had a job, b) the mother wasn't on drugs or alcoholic, and c) any able-bodied unemployed men in the family had to help build the house. Many people cried foul, calling this unfair and a punishment and cruel. How can you deny people housing simply because they have a drug problem? Maybe if they had a house they would be able to kick the drugs! Etc. etc. etc. But there it was: sometimes you have to set these limits or else you step on the toes of good citizens in order to temporarily help the law-breaking.

If you agitate all through college for "social justice" (without ever stopping to think what that even means), and then move directly onto K Street in Washington when you graduate, or go directly into law school and onto the do-gooder busybody groups, you will never be forced to deal with the reality. Nobody in the favela is clamoring for socialist revolution; no, the educated children of the wealthy who have never been in a favela do that. Nobody in the favela wants revolution, they want JOBS, and no pampered rich college kid from the US is going to give that to them by calling Bush a fascist and writing for the Socialist Worker newspaper. Every campus activist and rich angry leftist ideologue should be forced to live for a year in a Brazilian favela. If they still insist on socialism, then I'd like to hear their arguments. But until then, I'm convinced, like Phillippe above, that they're full of shit.

I learned conservatism not because I was taught that way in school or at home, but while watching my most cherished leftist ideals and principles sink into (and contribute to) the impoverished swamp of the Brazilian favela as I volunteered there. So I ask my leftist friends, am I a "racist" now? Am I "anti-worker?" Screw you.