■"America, the Indifferent," editorial, New York Times, 23 December 2004, p. A26.

■"When the Right Is Right: For the left, this is no time to sulk," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 22 December 2004, p. A31.

The New York Times sees the U.S. essentially short-changing on aid while wasting money on foreign interventions, and by doing so, the editorial board there fundamentally misses the military-market nexus. To shrink the Gap is to engage in both building up security inside the Gap and increasing its market connectivity to the Core. Does the U.S. specialize in the former more than any other Core power? Yes. Can the U.S. be expected, therefore, to keep pace with the rest of the Core on foreign aid? No. Does that make America "indifferent"?

Ask someone in America who's lost a loved one in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Ask them if they can easily equate higher taxes to the death of a child, or spouse, or parent. America has sacrificed a significant number of their "only begotten sons" in this global war on terror, signaling thatóin the truest senseóthey love their enemies more than themselves.

Tell me Jesus wouldn't understand that one.

Tell me Jesus wouldn't also say, put your money where your mouth is. Does America pull its weight on foreign aid? Not in terms of official developmental aid. But frankly, that's a drop in the bucket anyway when compared to far more important and larger aid flows.

Take America's willingness to let in foreign workers and immigrants. What they send back in remittances is routinely 5-6 times what we spend in aid. Remember that when those immigration-hating Europeans lecture us on foreign aid.

Also remember that "crazy," "far too religious" America also gives a huge amount of private charity aid to the Gap. Foreign policy "experts" are constantly decrying the "indifferent, ignorant" American public that cares not for suffering throughout the Gap, and yet, where is all this charity coming from? Faith-based groups are the biggest providers. These red-state types are also the ones who agitate most regarding human rights abuses in places like Zimbabwe and North Korea. They're the ones who scream the most about the effective genocide going on in the Sudan.

Where are the liberal street protestors on any of this?

Here's Kristof's interesting take:

Ö a larger shift is also under way. Liberals traditionally were the bleeding hearts, while conservatives regarded foreign aid, in the words of Jesse Helms, as "money down a rat hole." That's changing. "One cannot understand international relations today without comprehending the new faith-based movement," Allen Hertzke writes in "Freeing God's Children," a book about evangelicals leaping into human rights causes.

Uh Ö I mean, except for Kristof, of course, who frankly is kicking Friedman's ass right now in terms of being the foreign affairs interpreter of note on the staff.