Virtue and Value in Haiti

In an otherwise thoughtful op-ed piece about Haiti in today's Washington Post, Bob Shacochis opines that one cause of the failure of American pro-Aristide policy was the appointment of "emissaries diplomats and bureaucrats who did not genuinely believe in the fundamental goodness and potential of Haiti's long-suffering people."

I can think of no evidence supporting belief in the "fundamental goodness", or, to use an equivalent phrase, "fundamental virtuousness", of any people, Haitian or otherwise. I can think of a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

What is needed is not a counterfactual belief in the virtuousness of a people, but a committment on the part of each member of a people to value the life and well-being of every other member of that people, expressed in the form of a government wielding effective sanctions with overwhelming popular support against any who act in ways incompatible with the committment. Such a committment does not depend on belief that the others who are to be valued are virtuous, and it is the lack of just this committment, not on the part of citizens of the United States, but on the part of citizens of Haiti, which is at the root of Haiti's political turmoil.

It is a political virtue conducive to the enjoyment of life, liberty and prosperity - and contrary to the normal human inclination to unreasonable self-preference - for every member of a society to regard every other member as an ultimate value. Until Haitian mothers and fathers, schools, churches, and political parties begin inculcating this virtue in Haitian children from infancy till maturity, it is a virtue which no amount of American belief in the goodness of Haitians, no quantity of American money, and no American force of arms however large or long deployed, will be able to impart to Haitian people.