Is it Ever Wrong to Do Right?

That is the question at the heart of the 2009 Great American Think-Off this year.  The event is held in a small town in Minnesota and asks people to send in essays of up to 750 words answering the question.

While I'm still debating writing a submission, I would like to take three stories from the news to say both yes and no.  I can say both yes and no because I am a politician and that kind of double-speak comes as second nature.  Deal with it.

December 10, 2008 was a very important day for many in the country.  Do you know why?  It was Day Without a Gay.  Advocates of homosexual marriage in California wanted to stage a national protest to Proposition 8 in CA and similar same-sex marriage bans in Florida and Arizona by showing the country just how important homosexuals are to the economy.  If they would have wanted to do this a year prior it would have been perfect, but their timing was off.  By December 08 the country was in the middle of a recession and people couldn't afford to lose their jobs.  What if Day Without A Gay, which ended up not doing very well for these very reasons, went off without a hitch and employers realized that while they were hurt by the loss of employees, they were not only still making money but they no longer had to make the painful budget cuts because they could just fire the striking workers.  Good for the businesses but detrimental to the cause of same-sex marriage, which I personally support fully (more on that on another day).  By trying to do right and improve the nature of their cause, the founders of this movement could have caused irreparable harm to the economic status of homosexuals; which in this country is almost synonomous to power.

I might touch on this at a later time but the issue is too expansive to discuss in this particular post, but the Civil Rights Act followed by Affirmative Action were started with the best of intentions.  However, at the present they are unintentionally falsely affecting the market and repressing those people they are supposed to help by widening the gap.  Read about it here.

Libertyhound and I have had many conversations about the ability of charities and coorporations to carry on just fine without the government.  This argument lies at the heart of the libertarianism v. statism debate.  One man has decided to make money by doing things that are good, taking what would otherwise be charitable and making it profitable.  Several organizations have booed him, however his tactics have brought more money to his causes than most aid organizations can dream of.  How dare he make almost $400,000 a year for helping people.  Why can baseball players, movie stars, and congressman make large sums of money doing nothing other than play silly games involving balls, imagination, and lies but one man can't make a buck helping people with cancer?

It is, I suppose, not a question of ends justifying means or intentions being good or bad.  Hitler wanted world peace and he killed countless millions of blacks, gyspies, homosexuals, and... oh yeah, Jews.  Andrew Carnegie wanted to make money and he connected the nation with railroads.  I guess sometimes you just have to hope for a little providence and luck to decide.