Citizenship as a Moral Question

[peacewithoutgod]

I agree that given our wealth and resources Americans do a poor job of caring for each other but do you feel a child born in America is inherently more deserving of support than a "foreign" child? Is there a number of foreign children whose welfare would equal the welfare of one American child? I work in community mental health and I'm very familiar with social services and healthcare. I want a system in the US where everyone has access to food, healthcare, employment, education and other services. I agree that the current system is broken but I am not going to judge any individual as immoral because he or she chooses to help children, no matter which country that child is born.

It matters not which child is most deserving, that isn't for any of us to judge as citizens of the country which that child who must, through no choice of yours or mine, share with us. Our responsibility as fellow citizens is first to our own. We are morally responsible to make our country a better place for as many of those who are in it as possible, and the same moral obligation applies to those living in other nations. If the wealthy and powerful of other nations fail in their obligations, it isn't a failure on our part when we don't pick up their slack. We really need to drop this nonsense which has made Americans the global gophers to all of this planet's worst fuckup societies. I know America is responsible for making some of the problem nations what they are, but China created their own shit all by itself.

[TomFoolery]

It matters not which child is most deserving, that isn't for any of us to judge as citizens of the country which that child who must, through no choice of yours or mine, share with us.

But as I pointed out, why is it a country issue? Why is that where you draw your personal line of decency with who needs help? Why not make it a state issue? A county issue?

Our responsibility as fellow citizens is first to our own.

But this sets up a construct to ensure that we never help anyone else and no one ever helps us, because at what point is it good enough? Will it be good enough when all children have loving two-parent homes, all the food and clean water and education and healthcare they could want?

We are morally responsible to make our country a better place for as many of those who are in it as possible, and the same moral obligation applies to those living in other nations.

Ok, so where do illegal immigrant children fall? They are in this country, it's not their choice to be here, but nonetheless they are on this soil. Where do they fall on the list of deserving?

If the wealthy and powerful of other nations fail in their obligations, it isn't a failure on our part when we don't pick up their slack. We really need to drop this nonsense which has made Americans the global gophers to all of this planet's worst fuckup societies. I know America is responsible for making some of the problem nations what they are, but China created their own shit all by itself.

You're right: it's not failure on our part when we don't pick up their slack. But it does make us assholes to say we could help but chose not to because they got themselves into it. Children don't ask to be born.

I really feel like I should stop here because there's no point in going on about how much worse children in other countries have it compared to children here because of course foster care sucks but most Western countries have foster care and those systems suck too. They suck slightly less than orphanages and less still than countries that have no systems in place for taking care of displaced children. But there's no point in arguing who has the most misery, because the winner is really just the biggest loser.

I guess I can rationalize where your feelings about not wanting American tax dollars to go toward non-Americans. I don't personally agree with it, but I can at least understand the perspective. I just can't understand this:

There is no such thing as a child in a different country who is receiving less care than an American in the foster system - if there was, they could mail you the kid, already dead.

Because that's just complete horseshit. As is this:

While I respect the rights of the individual to make his own choice regarding who they will help, I cannot respect any American's claim to morality for bringing in a foreign baby while American children still go uncared for, rotting in the cruel foster system.

Because at that point, it's not about tax dollars, it's about individual choice. You're saying Americans are immoral and undeserving of your respect if they choose to help a foreign baby, which implies a bizarre nationalistic idea that American babies are somehow relatively worth more.

[Hydra009]

I have friends that are attempting to adopt a baby from China and so far the reaction has mostly been negative, because a lot of people in their lives seem to feel that they are misguided for taking in a baby from overseas when there are millions of kids in America in foster care.

I don't see why a Chinese child is any less deserving of care than an American child.  I'd just be happy that they're adopting at all.  Shame on them.

I have some close relatives who adopted a couple kids from Russia who most definitely would've had horrible lives otherwise (very bad circumstances).  I'm proud of their decision.

And that extends to pretty much anything we do offshore. Any time the U.S. sends so much as a bag of rice to Liberia or grants asylum to human trafficking victims, there always seems to be a rather angry group of hecklers pissed because we're feeding starving people somewhere else when there are hungry people here in the states, or we're letting people stay here and take jobs and government assistance when we have Americans who need jobs and homes too.

Do you feel like it matters? Do nations have a moral obligation to support their own citizens before helping others?

Unless I'm tremendously mistaken, we generally do support our own citizens first - the recipients of foreign aid tend to be in a much more dire need of humanitarian aid than Americans.  It's not like we're blowing the bank on famine relief in Somalia while there's a worse one over here.  We have problems of our own, sure, but not anywhere close to that.  Our problems shouldn't put a stop to foreign aid any more than it should put a stop to NASA.  Considering that each uses less than 1% of the budget, we're not exactly bleeding ourselves dry.  A lot of people believe this myth that foreign aid is some huge federal expenditure - which it isn't.  We don't have to choose between some Somali village or our own homeless, we can help both!

[Hydra009]

And isn't it ironic that there is such a hue and cry about the welfare state of our country?  If somebody wants to help in another part of the world then I've heard people, just as you state above,  put it down with statements like--why not help the needy people in this country?  Then the same people put down welfare.

It's almost as if they are actually against any assistance to the less fortunate at all and their arguments are just how they try to justify it to themselves and others.

[peacewithoutgod]

Orphanages were (and in many countries are) worse.

I'm really not sure that is true - it would depend on who runs the orphanage in question. A foster child is completely alone in this world, kept separate from peers which s(he) could commiserate with in an orphanage. If an orphanage child is passed over for adoption, s(he) stays in the orphanage, no disruptions. A foster child experiences an endless cycle of rejection, forced to move from one indifferent family to another as they decide it's just too inconvenient for them. Foster children live in the shadow of children who are loved, while always denied this. Frankly, I cannot imagine anything more cruel.

I don't reserve my respect for people that help American children because the American foster care system sucks. I respect people who support the welfare of any child without regard to what flag happened to be flying nearby on the day they were born.

I don't play patriot games, it's not about that. It's about the fact that we live in the society of America, the society of China, or of whatever country we happen to be living in. As c-i-t-i-z-e-n-s of our inherent societies, there are certain social obligations to our own society which come prior to that of people who are running other societies. You don't have my respect for shirking this responsibility when you choose to allow children who I must share the future with in my society to rot on the streets, becoming a liability to us all, when you make a choice which displaces that child. Your worldwide idealism does not excuse you of this negligence. China should be handling its own social problems, but why should they when they can always count on stupid Americans to act as their social janitors?

[peacewithoutgod]

Who said any child is less "deserving" than an American? Not I, and that's not what the issue is, so please don't distort it in that direction. Social obligation to one's society is what directs us to give those in our own priority. If Chinese society did that, then they wouldn't have more orphans per capita than we do.

Which society is more deserving? Is it the one that you live in, or one of any foreign societies? If your answer is none of the above, then you are surely correct, but how does that excuse you from social obligations to the society which you live in? This worldwide child adoption bit isn't about the child, whose home society should be doing better by their children than exporting them. It's about not displacing the child in your country, your city, your village, or your neighborhood by adopting foreign children instead - and usually for the wrongest of reasons, such as it's easier, and worse that it's politically fashionable. It's the child on my work commute that I must share the future with, not the child in China, and I will hold you responsible for increasing the misery in my home community by exporting jobs to China and importing their children at the expense of that child on my work commute!

[drunkenshoe]

Who said any child is less "deserving" than an American? Not I, and that's not what the issue is, so please don't distort it in that direction.

That's exactly what you are saying.

Those Chinese babies grow up to be Americans. And considering the standing those parents need to prove to adopt them, they highly likely to get a good upbringing and education and become functional individuals to contribute to your society.

So what is it that you define with 'our own' ? what is your own, people who were born in the USA? Let me remind you that USA is an immigrant country. Literally in every meaning.

Any children adopted and grew up in your country is an American. People do travel there as adults and become Americans.

Social obligation to one's society is what directs us to give those in our own priority.

That's called nationalist propaganda. Doesn't really matter how you put it.

The only social or other kind of obligation, if anyone feels that is, goes through contribution. Rest is politics.

If Chinese society did that, then they wouldn't have more orphans per capita than we do.

It's not those children's or babies' fault what Chinese society did or did not.

You have a difficulty to understand that a human's birth is a random event. Considering this^ and your reaction to where mine took place. 


So as long as orphans get adopted, it really doesn't matter where they come from.

[drunkenshoe]

This worldwide child adoption bit isn't about the child, whose home society should be doing better by their children than exporting them. It's about not displacing the child in your country, your city, your village, or your neighborhood by adopting foreign children instead - and usually for the wrongest of reasons, such as it's easier, and worse that it's politically fashionable. It's the child on my work commute that I must share the future with, not the child in China, and I will hold you responsible for increasing the misery in my home community by exporting jobs to China and importing their children at the expense of that child on my work commute!

You hold them responsible, I'll alert the media. You are a racist piece of shit.

[peacewithoutgod]

But as I pointed out, why is it a country issue? Why is that where you draw your personal line of decency with who needs help? Why not make it a state issue? A county issue?

Well, why not? Give the children on your streets first priority, for the benefit of your community - that's a no-brainer!

But this sets up a construct to ensure that we never help anyone else and no one ever helps us, because at what point is it good enough? Will it be good enough when all children have loving two-parent homes, all the food and clean water and education and healthcare they could want?

Pure bullshit. You used to have my respect, but now you've made it clear that all you care about is using the world's children as pawns in your ideological game.

Ok, so where do illegal immigrant children fall? They are in this country, it's not their choice to be here, but nonetheless they are on this soil. Where do they fall on the list of deserving? Is this your weak attempt at a strawman argument? I would never turn back an orphaned child who was brought here by his parent's choice, no matter how.

What about the orphaned children on alien planets? If we had contact with civilizations accross the galaxies, and could adopt their orphaned children, then where would this globalism/universalism stop?

You're right: it's not failure on our part when we don't pick up their slack. But it does make us assholes to say we could help but chose not to because they got themselves into it.

Just as this makes you an asshole for infesting this discussion with your strawmen. Taking the best care that they can of their own first is what the people who deserve to live in the society of their inheritance do! We don't have to say anything to foreign nations regarding the decisions of our individual citizens. But then I don't suppose you really considered how it ever happened that foreign nations are putting their children on the worldwide adoption market, expecting those in the US to take them. Do keep in mind that we specifically discussed children from CHINA, not Bangladesh! China is not a poor nation at all, and they are rapidly pulling ahead of US economic power.

I really feel like I should stop here because there's no point in going on

You really should. People who think so little of their home society aren't half as considerate of others as they pretend to be.

I guess I can rationalize where your feelings about not wanting American tax dollars to go toward non-Americans. I don't personally agree with it, but I can at least understand the perspective. I just can't understand this:
Because that's just complete horseshit. As is this:
Because at that point, it's not about tax dollars, it's about individual choice. You're saying Americans are immoral and undeserving of your respect if they choose to help a foreign baby, which implies a bizarre nationalistic idea that American babies are somehow relatively worth more.