Even if you disagree with him, you gotta give Jimmy Carter credit for bluntness :

In a speech to a human rights conference in Atlanta, Carter said increasing financial assistance was critical to battling malaria, AIDS and other common diseases that disproportionately affect the poorest parts of the world.

“Unfortunately, in the rich countries like ours, we really don’t give a damn,” said Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981 and who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

He especially criticized the United States for failing to follow other Western nations which are increasing spending.

Although America tops the foreign aid donor list in dollar terms, it falls behind the Netherlands, Canada and many other smaller, less affluent nations when contributions are measured on a per capita basis.

U.S. foreign aid is approximately 0.18 percent of gross national product, the lowest of any G-7 nation and far below a 0.7 percent United Nations target that 22 of the world’s developed nations have agreed to meet by 2015.

Which reminds me of this quote that my friend Josh has in his email sig file :

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man?s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

-John Kenneth Galbraith

Now the reason I bring this up is that the standard conservative response to criticism like Carter’s is to resort to the “we gave X dollars more than every other country” defense, conveniently putting aside notions that generosity should be judged not by what we give, but the size of those gifts in relation to our wealth². Being the kind of patriot that doesn’t fall into the trap of believing my country is above criticism, I think it’s only fair to ask that we at least be as generous as our peers if we want to continue living under the pretense that America is the most compassionate country on Earth.

Remember back when we used to greet every Bush misstep with jokes about “compassionate conservatism”? That was back when he pretended to give a damn about the poor. These days, he still dusts off some of the old rhetoric from time to time, but I don’t think even he believes it anymore…

^{1 : Carter gained a spot on Rush Limbaugh’s “Excrement List”. Apparently the “empty-brained Neanderthals” of the left aren’t the only ones who resort to ad hominem attacks.}

2 : I know it’s become a bit of a theme around here lately, but the President’s favorite philosopher agrees.