To be entirely frank all of the publicity around Bob Geldof’s ‘Live 8’ concert series, designed to push for Third World debt relief (among other things) is really starting to get on my nerves. Over the last few days it’s been practically impossible to escape the overwhelming publicity for this grand display of celebrity egoism and ignorance. The combination of the moral arrogance of fame, the cluelessness of vapid whores, and the general willingness of the general public to be led along on this march of folly is enough to make one sick.

Now, what’s wrong with ‘Live 8’ and the associated “Make Poverty History” campaign? Well, I have two particular issues with them.

First, I object to the concept at its heart. The whole point of ‘Live 8’ isn’t to raise money for aid – a goal admirable in its aims, though often dubious in its results – but rather to use the power of celebrity in an attempt to bully national leaders (and, by extension, the populations which they serve) into forcibly transferring a portion of their country’s wealth to various undeserving Third World cesspools.

The fundamental idea behind this – that musicians and movie stars are, by virtue of their artistic “talents” our moral betters – is both absurd and offensive. The notion that they should use their cultural influence in an attempt to, in essence, force the implementation of policies that the general public has little or no interest in – and do so with the full assistance of a compliant media is anti-democratic at its core.

More than anything else, what upsets me is the often repeated statement that the people running this damnable enterprise aren’t trying to get at our wallets. This self-evidently untrue assertion is best exemplified by the “Make Poverty History” commercials now being aired on television here in North America. At the end of one commercial, an earnest-looking (but when isn’t he?) Tom Hanks says, “We're not asking for your money. We're asking for your voice.” Yah-huh. Sure.

They’re not “asking for our money.” Instead, they’re trying to bully the government into giving away our money. Billions and billions of dollars of it, in fact, to be poured into about fifty bottomless pits. The organizers an emphatic about this “not asking for your money” thing and, I suppose, in this they’re technically correct. They’re not “asking for your money” they’re asking for your government to simply take your money from you, in the form of taxes, to hand it over to undeserving people who will promptly waste it, and to throw you in jail if you fail to pay up.

Of course, these objections ignore the obvious fact that both debt relief and direct aid to Africa are, for the most part, fundamentally bad ideas.

The African borrowed the money – let them pay it back, or let them default on their debts. It’s only fair. More to the point, providing Africa with debt “relief” would, in the long-term, be bad for Africa as a whole. The reason for this is simple: though various African nations might, in the short-term, be helped by receiving the forgiveness of debts, in the long term it would do nothing but further reinforce a general reluctance to lend money to or invest in Africa.

At its core, the whole impulse behind these “Make Poverty History” campaigns is itself far more paternalistic than anything believed by evil conservatives such as myself. The basis idea behind “Live 8” and other such ventures is that Africa and Africans are fundamentally incapable of caring for themselves, or building a decent life for themselves, and must therefore be cared for by Western taxpayers.

Of course, if we really believe that, then the only reasonable solution is for all of the Western powers to go back to Berlin, sit around a table with a map of Africa, and give it another go. Since, if we can’t trust Africans to make a decent life for themselves, I’m quite sure that we can’t trust them to manage the aid that it’s proposed that we send them.

Liberals, in their capacity for double-think, seem both to blame Western “colonialism” for Africa’s troubles and to believe that a form of Western neo-colonialism (massive aid distributed by the United Nations) is the solution. What stuff.

Perhaps the left has good reason to think that Africa isn’t able to care for itself. After all, were it not for Europeans heroes, it seems doubtful that the Dark Continent would possess either electricity or the combustion engine today – let alone any technology developed after the year 1900. Without the West, it may be fairly confidently asserted, Africa would still be the same sort of tribal hell-hole that it was before the Europeans came.

Africa’s problem isn’t that it was assisted by the West in the last few centuries – it’s that modern Africa is governed, for the most part, by morons whose incompetence is exceeded only by their corruption. Add to that the fact that, thanks to a few generations of idiotic government policies, the only educated people in Africa are Western-educated socialists, and it is little wonder that African governments aren’t even capable of performing elementary tasks such as educating the public on the nature of a major disease or controlling its spread.

That being said, I see no reason to believe that modern Africans, with full access to modern science and wisdom, should not be able to make something of themselves if left to their own devices. After all, most of Asia went from being the poorest part of the world to competing with much of Europe in about fifty years. The only reason to think that Africa would not be able to replicate Asian results is to believe that Africans (who certainly don’t lack natural resources) are somehow inherently incapable of organizing and discipline themselves for modern life. I certainly wouldn’t claim that – but one does wonder if that’s just what some part of the left thinks.

Of course, that would presume (and it’s a mighty big presumption) that most of the left, especially the sort of people on stage and in the audience at those ‘Live 8’ concerts does think which is a mighty presumption indeed. It’s more likely that, rather than having given any real thought to the nature of the African problem the majority of the people involved have simply concluded based upon what they’ve seen on TV that there’s a problem and that he solution should be to get the government to throw other people’s money at it. The people on stage at these things, after all, have enough money so as not to worry about where their tax dollars are going and, from the look of the crowds on TV, I’m fairly confident is suggesting that most of people in those crowds don’t pay taxes at all.

Fortunately for all of us, the G8 has any easy way out of this. They can come out of the Summit, make all sorts of lavish promises about aid to Africa, and then fail to keep them. By the time anyone notices, all of the celebrities will have moved on to their next scandal and their various acolytes, most of whom can’t remember what day it is, let alone hold any sort of coherent political agenda, will have moved on.