Earlier this week, I attended Charlie Rose's conversation with world-renowned economist and author Jeffrey D. Sachs at the 92nd Street Y, and I came away from the event torn with alternating currents of outrage and hope -- precisely the reaction I think Dr. Sachs intended.
After riffing about the current domestic downturn in the economy -- for which he partly blamed Alan Greenspan's imprudence and lack of foresight -- Sachs got rolling on the need for governments to fulfill their promises to fight extreme poverty.
For someone unfamiliar with Dr. Sachs' work, the above description may make him sound like a humanitarian activist. While he does make a moral appeal -- human beings after all are dying needlessly and en masse in the third world -- his argument for aid and infrastructure is rooted in shared economic and geopolitical interests. In other words, building roads, bringing medical clinics and vaccines, supplying bed nets to protect against malaria, and providing nutrients to nourish the soil of intensely suffering regions in Africa, Asia, and Arabia will strengthen our economy and keep us safer from terrorism.
We have the resources and have made the promises to help these helplessly languishing regions get on that first rung of the ladder of development to pull themselves up and thrive. (Dr. Sachs referred to aid to India in the 1960s as a case-in-point of this kind of aid working wonders.)
As the richest country in the world, we need to follow though. We possess the tools to save so many lives and improve our own standing in the process.
Perhaps the most affecting moment of the evening came when Sachs said, "John McCain has said the Islamic extremism is the transcendent threat of our generation. [pause] If McCain becomes president he will make Islamic extremism the transcendent threat."
The logic here is that, while there are many miscreants out there that need to be rooted out, many would-be peaceful people resort to violent extremism when they are impoverished and hopeless. By engaging Muslim nations in perpetual war rather than helping them with infrastructure, we are fanning the flames of extremism, not defeating it.
This brought to mind the idea that helping poor Muslim countries -- like Greg Mortenson's work to build schools in Pakistan, documented in the bestseller Three Cups of Tea -- is our strongest tool to "fight" terrorism.
"You can't do it with force," Sachs said, with his own measure of vocal force. Then he repeated it to the silent, riveted auditorium.
I picked up a copy of Dr. Sachs' new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. His previous book, The End of Poverty: Economic Solutions for Our Time, is one of the most powerful reads I've encountered, and does not require prior expertise on economics.
Sachs has many allies and supporters, including Al Gore, Kofi Annan, and Bono. McCain's dogma is well-documented, but will the Democrat nominee embrace Sachs' humane and sensible proposals?
It's up to the voters and the media to insist.
Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of the memoir, "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle."
