File this under, You said it
John Allen of Word From Rome conducted a great interveiw with the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, James Nicholson. One of the Q/A:
Is there something the Vatican still struggles to understand about the United States?
We could do better in trying to foster more understanding and more appreciation for our system of business, our free market, highly competitive, highly capitalistic society. There are still too many really wonderful people who are totally faithful to the magisterium of the church and all that means, love of humanity and a desire to help, who have a jaundiced view about American capitalism. They see it as being exploitive, especially of people in the Third World. That's one of our challenges.
Go ahead and call me a communist. You won't be the first. But Nicholson isn't doing himself any favors when he refers to us as highly competitive and the need to foster more appreciation for that. How can you not be jaundiced about the U.S.'s system of highly victorious and rich winners? Winners must be few, and losers plenty, in a highly competitive system. If he wants to play the Third World Card, maybe he could have focused on U.S. corporate investments in developing countries, raising the standard of living, yadda yadda yadda.
To be fair (which I don't really have to be, because this is my blog hahahaha), here is teh next Q/A where Nicholson explains himself a little bit, but I don't think he gets out of the hole. He should have used stronger language in this answer, and wussier language in the earlier answer. Of course, it won't matter too much, as this will probably only be read by less than 200,000 folks anyway.
How do you get at that?
It's an educative endeavor that has to go on. With that are these stereotypes that some of them possess, and you just have to disabuse them of these notions, that all we're about is creating markets for these new products and intellectual creations that we have. If you break it down, it just isn't that way. Take AIDS, and the billions of dollars that shareholders spent to develop these anti-retroviral regimes, and are now forsaking any profit interest because of the severity of the problem in Africa. They're not only making the pharmaceuticals available at cost, and in some cases free, but making their patents available to whoever can ensure a minimum of quality. That's really extraordinary. I think they should be thanked and given a great deal of credit and acclamation for that, and not be looked on as somebody who wants to exploit these poor suffering people. Food is the same way. There are many who feel that the makers of these genetically modified seeds just want to create dependencies and markets. It's not a quick fix, but education, continuing to do the right thing, and show that our policy is humanitarian-driven. It is. We know that food is one of the basics for a life of any kind of hope, a vision for the future, and self-value, which are prerequisites for a life of freedom. We know that the more people taste freedom, the more they want it. When they become free and democratic, they're not so interested in attacking other people.
Is there something the Vatican still struggles to understand about the United States?
We could do better in trying to foster more understanding and more appreciation for our system of business, our free market, highly competitive, highly capitalistic society. There are still too many really wonderful people who are totally faithful to the magisterium of the church and all that means, love of humanity and a desire to help, who have a jaundiced view about American capitalism. They see it as being exploitive, especially of people in the Third World. That's one of our challenges.
Go ahead and call me a communist. You won't be the first. But Nicholson isn't doing himself any favors when he refers to us as highly competitive and the need to foster more appreciation for that. How can you not be jaundiced about the U.S.'s system of highly victorious and rich winners? Winners must be few, and losers plenty, in a highly competitive system. If he wants to play the Third World Card, maybe he could have focused on U.S. corporate investments in developing countries, raising the standard of living, yadda yadda yadda.
To be fair (which I don't really have to be, because this is my blog hahahaha), here is teh next Q/A where Nicholson explains himself a little bit, but I don't think he gets out of the hole. He should have used stronger language in this answer, and wussier language in the earlier answer. Of course, it won't matter too much, as this will probably only be read by less than 200,000 folks anyway.
How do you get at that?
It's an educative endeavor that has to go on. With that are these stereotypes that some of them possess, and you just have to disabuse them of these notions, that all we're about is creating markets for these new products and intellectual creations that we have. If you break it down, it just isn't that way. Take AIDS, and the billions of dollars that shareholders spent to develop these anti-retroviral regimes, and are now forsaking any profit interest because of the severity of the problem in Africa. They're not only making the pharmaceuticals available at cost, and in some cases free, but making their patents available to whoever can ensure a minimum of quality. That's really extraordinary. I think they should be thanked and given a great deal of credit and acclamation for that, and not be looked on as somebody who wants to exploit these poor suffering people. Food is the same way. There are many who feel that the makers of these genetically modified seeds just want to create dependencies and markets. It's not a quick fix, but education, continuing to do the right thing, and show that our policy is humanitarian-driven. It is. We know that food is one of the basics for a life of any kind of hope, a vision for the future, and self-value, which are prerequisites for a life of freedom. We know that the more people taste freedom, the more they want it. When they become free and democratic, they're not so interested in attacking other people.
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