Guilt is a powerful and expensive emotion. We all suffer from it on occasions throughout our lives. Attempts to assuage guilt have led people to do some very stupid and counter-productive things…the racist election of B.O., migrants let into Germany, the Khmer Rouge trial in Cambodia, Somalis in Minneapolis by Lutherans whom I suspect have never been welcomed into Lutheran neighborhoods, etc. The U.S. Presidential election of 2008 is a clear example. It was probably the most racially charged and biased election in U.S. history. Barrack Obama made a point of distancing himself from any inferences that might be construed to play upon the guilt of White people for enslaving Black Africans. In fact, he and his minions made a point of it many times...over & over & over Obama reminded the voters that Race should not be a factor in the election. Eventually, it became the dominant factor. What failed to be mentioned was that Black Africans who ended up as slaves on the plantations of America were slaves before they arrived. They were initially enslaved by their Black African chieftains. The Portuguese, British, Spanish, Dutch and Americans did not kidnap Negroes from Kenya and Senegal, etc. They bought them and that is why the nefarious business was referred to as “The Slave Trade”. Despite the eventual condemnation and prohibition with regard to slavery by White people, it still flourishes in Africa…southern Sudan, for example. Black Americans are notorious for failing to participate in the political process. Yet, they turned out in record numbers to vote for Obama. Guilt drove White Americans to do likewise. Of course, people were also enchanted by Obama’s prancing rock-star persona. There’s no question that he is a very likable character with an engaging personality. There is also no question that he was the least qualified person to ever be elected President of the United States if for no other reason than that he had little administrative experience. That obviously didn’t matter to the guilt ridden voters. He had Negro blood in him, Negroes had been unjustly abused ergo, let’s make up for all that by electing the guy President. And, oh yeah, we like the way he delivers a speech. His deficiencies were amply demonstrated over the past 8 years…especially in foreign affairs. Angela Markel is another politician who exploited the guilt of her citizens to enact an immigration policy that is destined to wreak havoc upon the political, economic and cultural landscape of Germany and Europe at large for generations to come. To date, more than a million Middle-Eastern and North African Muslim refugees have been allowed into Germany (a predominantly Christian country) with scant regard to the likelihood of their peaceful and productive assimilation. Why? Because so many Germans are ashamed of the way the Nazis mistreated Jews and others that were considered undesirables. They are perfectly justified to be ashamed of that heritage. However, they are not justified to enact policies that are most likely to be detrimental to their own nation and their neighbors. The vast majority of Muslims are probably decent human beings. The problem is that Islam is an ideology at odds with most of the political, social and religious principles upon which Western democracies have been established. People who have trouble understanding that need to read the Koran. The point to be made here is that Merkel and her compatriots who supported the ill-advised immigration policy were not motivated by a genuine and compassionate desire to provide a better life for displaced refugees. They did so simply to assuage their own guilt and thus make them feel better about themselves. And the real conundrum is that the guilt-ridden Merkel has welcomed hordes of people into Germany who hate the Jews more than the Nazis hated the Jews. Go Figure... The last although, not least, example of this reckless behavior has occurred recently in my home of Cambodia. Born in Chicago, I have lived in S.E Asia for a quarter century. I first visited Cambodia in 1996 and have lived there for the past 8 years. My wife, the mother of our daughter, is Cambodian. This is a country that suffered enormously. First, in the early ‘70s from the heinous bombings orchestrated by Nixon & Kissinger, secondly, by the four year reign of terror by Pol Pot and his ruthless Khmer Rouge thugs and, thirdly, during the civil war that erupted in the 1980s. Weary of its involvement in the Vietnam debacle, the U.S. and its Western allies stood by idly and did nothing to intervene on behalf of those being slaughtered and starved to death. Two million Cambodians died. As a committed Libertarian, I am generally opposed to foreigners interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries. However, I believe that the U.S. bombings of Cambodia helped pave the way for Pol Pot and thus, the U.S. should have assumed some responsibility to check the terror of the Khmer Rouge. Well, three & a half decades later, the U.S. and its Western allies did step in…and for all the wrong reasons. They organized a so-called ‘crime trial’ for a man named Duch. He was superintendent of Toul Sleng, a high school in Phnom Penh that had been converted into a detention and torture center. Of the twenty thousand people detained there, only a very few survived. Duch admitted his guilt before the trial began and, yet, $150,000,000 was spent for the trial to continue. Now, it’s fair to assume that 15% of that money went to Hun Sen, the current Prime Minister (who has done much good for his country during the past 30 years) but, a former Khmer Rouge cadre, and his cronies. The rest of the loot went to lawyers and interrogators, mostly Westerners. Not one penny went to compensate the victims or their survivors. It was nothing more than a charade…a travesty of justice. And, it was never meant to be nor would it have been allowed to be. It was simply a farcical pageant designed to assuage Western guilt…to make Westerners feel better about themselves. These are simply three of many cautionary tales that illustrate the hazards of people whose actions are motivated primarily to assuage their own guilt.