[COLUMN] No authority to aid Burma

People motor down the river at the cyclone hit town of Bogale, in the delta region, of Myanmar Saturday, May 10, 2008. Getting supplies to survivors of a brutal cyclone in Myanmar is now a "race against time" to prevent a disease disaster, as many impoverished victims continue to await help a week after the storm, experts warned Saturday. (AP Photo)

It's bad enough that American government officials like to fall over each other in the rush to unconstitutionally hand out money when a disaster strikes, now they are considering doing so even though the nation they want to help is rejecting the offer.

While I cannot find a single clause in the U.S. Constitution that permits such governmental largesse, it becomes even more outrageous when the nation needing the help doesn't even want the aid.

I am, of course, talking about Burma and Tropical Cyclone Nargis, which hit that Southeast Asian nation May 3. Some are estimating the death toll could surpass 100,000. Nargis is, without a doubt, a human tragedy of biblical proportions.

Still, that is no reason to violate our charter.

Americans are a generous people and that is a commendable trait. However, generosity should be voluntary, not taken at the point of a gun. Every dollar the U.S. government gives away is a dollar it forcibly took from its citizens.

Let's look at this another way.

Imagine your neighbor's home burns down. Your other neighbor, wishing to help, comes to your house and pulls a gun on you and demands money to help the burned out neighbor. Does that seem right to you?

That is exactly what foreign aid is. The government takes money from you and decides which cause is worthy of receiving the cash.

Perhaps U.S. Rep. David Crockett, an Anti-Jacksonian from Tennessee, said it best. In a speech that has not been authenticated, he spoke out against a bill to appropriate money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer.

"I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living ... as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for ... the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living," he said, according to biographer Edward S. Ellis.

After that speech, according to Ellis, Crockett said he was convinced of the unconstitutionality of governmental largesse a few years earlier by Horatio Bunce, a constituent farmer who criticized him for voting to give aid to residents in Georgetown who were victims of a fire.

"The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man. ... You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other," Bunce reportedly told Crockett. "The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."

For this same reasoning, I have long been a critic of U.S. foreign aid and the current disaster in Burma is no exception. Two wrongs do not make a right. Paraphrasing Crockett, harming Americans to help the Burmese people is neither generous nor moral.

Besides, as mentioned before, the Burmese government does not want our help.

The Burmese government, which prefers to call the country Myanmar, is a ruthless military regime. The Burmese government is by far more evil than Saddam Hussein's regime ever was in Iraq.

Burma, however, has the good fortune of not having oil or some other valuable natural resource so it has been safe from U.S. military aggression. After all, the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy by forcibly removing the leaders of totalitarian states only applies to those nations that have a valuable natural resource. Dictators in countries without resources or who claim to be fighting terrorism are free to subjugate their populations without sanction.

Still, it is easy to understand why the junta would not want U.S. military and aid workers unfettered access to the country.

We should respect that request unless we are prepared to invade and occupy yet another country.

Besides, there is the bigger constitutional issue, which is more important than the immediate concerns of the people of Burma.

As Bunce told Crockett, "When Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people."