The day’s darkest brought upon us a Viqueen named Egeland—working for the United Nations, what else—who slammed the United States among other rich countries as “stingy,” because, well, 99.8% of the income of these countries, quite remarkably, stays within these countries instead of being redistributed as foreign aid. Frontpage magazine has a powerful takedown of this attitude:

Aside from betraying abhorrent manners, the UN bureaucrat’s comments sounded a common theme of the Left: No matter how much time, money, or resources America commits to a humanitarian effort – and no matter how demonstrably unselfish our motives – greedy capitalist America never lifts a finger to help the downtrodden. Indeed, by our disproportionate consumption of the world’s resources and contributions to environmental degradation, we are the cause of the world’s suffering.

The left-wing blog TalkLeft anticipated Egeland. After accusing America of not doing enough to warn the victims, a blog entry from last night accused President Bush of responding to the tragedy at his Crawford ranch by “‘clearing brush’ and playing cowboy.” Upon hearing of the evidently unexpected financial aid heading to the disaster site, it added pathetically, “Update: The U.S. has pledged $15 million to the relief effort.” Ho-hum.

DailyKos and other leftist blogs have noted America’s efforts to help tsunami victims, without praising said undertakings. All miss the obvious point: America chooses to succor the world’s afflicted with millions of dollars of its own treasure because America is a generous, philanthropic, and altrustic nation.

That was after author Ben Johnson noted that the initial pledge—tip of the iceberg as it is—of fifteen million was bigger than what the European Union said it would give, at four mil. This is not, and never has been, a contest about who can help the downtrodden the most. The heart of this nation feels not grandeur nor self-aggrandizement in giving what it is willing to to help those of this tragedy, nor do we dwell on the numbers that we may buy our way into greatness. I for one join the author in noting this disparity, if only to stress the hypocrisy of people like Egeland, and others like him.

That reports exist (one of which is in the New York Times, big surprise) whose headlines indicate that the aid that we are giving to the affected nations of this natural disaster is an “irate reaction” to Egeland’s statement is a testament to just how much the people who hate America for its true good and bad qualities do not get it.

Rather than faint constantly over this kind of powerless criticism, our countrymen have continued to do what we can to help those across the world. Aid efforts in California started long before someone called us stingy, long before the news cameras were pointed away from Sri Lanka and towards our people. Our countrymen did not wait for the TV cameras to be trained upon them; they did not wait to be asked “what would you do,” rather, they did. And so do we continue. In the six hours that Instapundit noted that Amazon.com is accepting donations and had a total of $112,000 it has risen to a quarter of a million dollars and counting. We put our help where our mouths are, and many of us do not even talk of what we have done, which is more than what we can say for the distinguished Viqueen with a penchant for intellectual masturbation.

We are doing this not because the pesky words of an insignificant Viqueen struck a nerve in us; I for one knew that there will be those for who our impoverishment will not even be enough to satisfy their lust for forcible egalitarianism. We are doing this because we can and because we want to. A society that is free to be kind and generous usually tends to be so, and that is what we are seeing today, and what we will further see in the days to come, despite the “misunderstood” haranguing of socialistic Viqueens.

“Offensiveness alert,” yes, I am calling that Nordic prick a girlie-man.

UPDATE: The epitaph at the Korean War Memorial, which reads “Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met,” could not be any more relevant than it is to the events of today.