Conversation with two Canadians and a socialist

This weekend I had the distinct pleasure of discussing tsunami aid with two Canadians and a socialist. The conversation went something like this:

[all paraphrased]
me: Did you know private individuals have given over $12 Million dollars at Amazon.com?

them: Yeah well, the US started out with less money than the inauguration will cost.

me: WTF does that have to do with it? Monetary aid from the US has increased tenfold, and we immediately sent a carrier battle group and a secondary ship group with urgent supplies, personell, and aircraft to deliver them to the hardest hit areas.

them: The US is stingy, after all - they give far less per GDP than other countries. Japan is giving $500 Million

me: You have to be kidding me, right? Japan has the modern luxury of having it's seas patrolled by the US, while avoiding the cost of a military. Tell me, how much of that $500 Million has already been given? Has Japan actually delivered anything?

Basically - you get the idea. The rest of the conversation was "inauguration this", "bush on vacation that", rinse, repeat. When confronted with the idea that the US - including public and private money will be the largest monetary giver, and already is the largest military-aid rending giver, they still repeated anti-Bush vitriol.

How have people, no - sheeple (thanks to Michael Savage), become soo blind to the truth. Leftists would rather believe something bad about President Bush than do something good for the relief efforts. Of the three people I had this conversation with, two have brand new cars purchased in the last year. I have an 11 year old car purchased from my family. I had already made my first donation to the relief efforts, and will give more if it looks like it is needed. They had given nothing, but were happy to spew forth silly quotes from the lefties about the US being bad.

Back to the start of the conversation. I didn't mention the US, USA, citizenry, etc. I mentioned how cool it was that one of the online retailers made most of it's front-page a donation button, and had collected soo much money in such a short period of time. That's it - nothing political, just wow - cool, people are giving and companies are trying to do the right thing. For leftist, this is not a good thing. People giving to charity undermines the socialist agenda of a government controlling everything. People giving to charity when needed, and focused on a specific need undermines the idea of giving 100% of the fruit of your labor to someone else to decide what to do with. The socialists have lost - human beings can decide for themselves when to keep and when to give.