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Why You are Wrong to Donate to the #BorderWall GoFundMe Campaign

Photograph of President Trump looking at a book with other people gathered

As of the writing of this story, the federal government has been shut down for just over forty hours; similarly, as of now, the GoFundMe campaign attempting to raise money for President Trump’s wall across portions of the southern border of the United States has raised over $16 million after just six days of funding (differing considerably from the president’s proposed plan of Mexico’s paying). Much has already been said about the current administration’s unusual inability to accomplish its agenda, despite its party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress; much has also been said about the irresponsibility of a nearly-unprecedented third government shutdown in one calendar year (particularly in the face of a unilaterally controlled Congress and the impending holiday); and much more has been said of the ill-conceived nature of the “Border Wall” itself (whether concerning its cost, its desirability, its efficacy, or its morality). I aim to discuss none of that.

Instead, I want to argue that, regardless of whether the so-called “Border Wall” is a good idea on its own terms or not, it is morally inexcusable to give a charitable donation to fund its construction; at this point, nearly one million people appear to disagree with me (judging from the minimum estimable number of times that the GoFundMe’s site has been shared). Put bluntly: if you are able to give money to charity, then there are only bad reasons to donate to this one rather than to others.

There’s a popular philosophical thought experiment that helps to illustrate the choice of humanitarian aid: imagine that while you are on your way to work or school you must pass by a shallow pond. One day, you see that a child has fallen into the pond and is drowning; you can easily rescue the child without putting yourself in any physical danger (you are much taller than the water level and also know how to swim), but if you move to do so, you will ruin your shoes (or cell phone, or some similarly valuable item) and perhaps make yourself late to wherever it is you are going. Do you believe that you have a moral obligation to, nevertheless, help save the child, even at the expense of your shoes? Many people will, unthinkingly, answer ‘Yes,’ to such a question – we tend to value human life over things like possessions or schedules.

What, then, should we think of the child who is drowning in a shallow pond that is not directly in front of us – say, one in the war-torn landscape of Syria or the water-stricken neighborhoods of Flint, Michigan? If we are able to act in a way that is similarly inconvenient to our possessions or schedules at the cost of saving a child’s life, how could the geographical location of that child bear any weight in the moral calculus? In the words of Peter Singer, “we are all in that situation of the person passing the shallow pond: we can all save lives of people, both children and adults, who would otherwise die, and we can do so at a very small cost to us: the cost of a new CD, a shirt or a night out at a restaurant or concert, can mean the difference between life and death to more than one person somewhere in the world – and overseas aid agencies like Oxfam overcome the problem of acting at a distance.”

It is indeed possible to criticize the utilitarian assumptions behind Singer’s argument in an effort to deflect a conclusion which obligates charitable action, but if you are already committed to donating your money somewhere, then such criticisms are irrelevant to you. That is to say, if you are already willing to get your shoes wet, then you are already on board with Singer’s basic point.

As far as I can tell, there are essentially two reasons why you might want to donate to the “Border Wall” GoFundMe campaign:

  1. You believe that the “Border Wall” is the single greatest good towards which your money could be directed.
  2. You believe that there are other good purposes towards which your money could be directed, but you happen to value the construction of the “Border Wall” above all of them.

(Again, I am taking for granted that the “Border Wall” itself is morally unquestionable; a premise I could not possibly hope to defend, but simply assume for the sake of argument.)

Therefore, the “Border Wall” GoFundMe conundrum offers an extra wrinkle to the pond scenario: imagine, now, that there are two children in need of your help: the first is about to drown as before, but the second is older, knows how to swim, and is merely in danger of muddying his own shoes. If you are willing to act, but only able to save one, in what world could it possibly be better to help the second rather than the first? This is essentially what you are doing if you ascribe to option (2) from the above paragraph; if you instead prefer option (1), then you are simply denying (against the evidence of your own eyes) that there is any second child to even consider.

Surely, there are many different, well-established aid organizations that could put $16 million (and counting) to demonstrably better use. The drowning child in this scenario could be long-established relief efforts in Afghanistan or Syria, malaria prevention in sub-Saharan Africa, eye care programs in nearly two dozen countries, or even just your local food pantry preparing to help feed your city’s unhoused population a Christmas dinner. Despite frequent cries that “veterans should be helped first,” this campaign is not directed to the Wounded Warrior Project, the Fisher House Foundation, the Semper Fi Fund, or any of the other nonprofit groups geared towards helping members of the military and their families in need. The many victims of the  hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the continental Southeast could certainly benefit from these funds and, it’s true, Flint still does not have clean water.

So, even if we grant that a “border wall” would do what its supporters want (which it wouldn’t, but, again, that’s beside the current point), the idea that hundreds of thousands of donations should be directed towards such a wall’s construction cannot be affirmed without tacitly claiming that all of these other causes (and many more) are less important. That is to say, you cannot donate your money to the #BorderWall GoFundMe campaign unless you are willing to agree that it is, in fact, the most important current charitable need – a proposition which is, clearly, false.

Because it’s one thing to argue about whether hurricane relief or veteran’s medical bills better deserve your money, but both are a level of need apart from hollow attempts to salvage broken campaign promises by a politician whose term is swiftly coming to a premature end. Either we must conclude that all $16 million was previously earmarked by its owners to be donated somewhere else or that it was not originally intended to be donated at all: neither of these options entails that diverting the money towards the “Border Wall” is morally commendable. If you are willing to donate your money, it is better to help those currently suffering than to cast it hopefully towards the promise of constructing a toilet paper tiger.

Syria and the Limits of Moral Options

image of a missile being fired from a battleship

Last weekend, the United States and its allies carried out air strikes in Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces. Announcing the strikes, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, “Clearly, the Assad regime did not get the message last year. This time, our allies and we have struck harder.”

There has been violence and civil war in Syria for over seven years now, leading to migration and humanitarian crises across three continents. The terrorist organization Isis has risen amongst the crises.

It is difficult to determine the correct way to intervene in conflicts abroad. Because a major method of intervention is militarily, which involves destruction of property, military life and almost certain risk of civilian life, the moral cost of such intervention comes with a heavy justificatory burden. There are also wide-reaching side effects to be considered – will intervening in how another nation-state is operating yield more unrest by delegitimizing the inherent authority of their due processes or by mistakes made by the intervener-as-foreigner?

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The Moral Complexities of Helping Refugees

"Refugees queue for hot food in a camp on the Serbia Hungary border" by Trocaire liscensed under CC BY 2.0 (via Flickr)

Since May 2011, around 5.1 million people have fled Syria and the Assad regime. Additionally, another 6.1 million people reside as internally displaced peoples (IDPs) within Syria. Because of this, many of the surrounding countries have fronted many of the refugees, including 3 million in Turkey, 1 million in Lebanon, and another 660,000 in Jordan. What are the moral complexities surrounding these nations and what responsibility does the rest of the international community have in this crisis? Continue reading “The Moral Complexities of Helping Refugees”

Just War Theory and the Aims of Trump’s Airstrikes

The guiding concern of just war theory is that it is wrong to harm people, therefore it is wrong to harm people en masse, as we do in war. Thus, just war theory stems from the observation that aggression of all kinds requires justification, and the theory attempts to lay out the justification for acts of war. War is aggressive, and it harms and kills individuals as well as damages nations, and therefore we should take seriously the moral weight of the obligations to avoid it. The two principle realms that just war theory addresses are jus ad bellum (justified principles for entering war) and jus in bello (justified principles of conduct within war).

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On Syria: Humanitarian Aid

The United States and Russia announced on February 11 a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria. The plan includes increased humanitarian aid, in addition to the ceasing of hostilities, and does not include ISIS or the Nursa front as they are both UN-recognized terrorist organizations. The plan, if executed as announced, will be the first formally declared end to fighting in Syria since 2011. While the plan is a step forward in stopping the five-year conflict, is this humanitarian aid and tentative cessation really enough?

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Aylan Kurdi and Ai Weiwei

Under ideal circumstances, the dinghy should have only held eight people. The same could have been said of the many boats that preceded it, in search of beaches in Greece. Yet, just as those before them, the rubber dinghy left the shores of Turkey’s Bodrum Peninsula in the early hours of the morning. Among the twelve people onboard were three-year-old Aylan Kurdi and his family, refugees from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane.

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Call them Daesh: Names, Meaning and ISIS

One thing that I noticed when I first heard media coverage of an Islamist group rising to power in Syria was that it was continually referred to as “the group calling itself ISIS” or “the group known as ISIL”.  If it had been one media outlet or one program, it might have slipped by.  But it wasn’t: it was a standardized fixture of official coverage of the group.

In recent months, particularly since the deadly Paris attacks that claimed the lives of 129, there has been a seemingly strategic shift to the word “Daesh” to describe the organization.  Why does this matter?  And what impact does it hold for the future of Western relations to the Middle East?

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Syria’s “Devil’s Gambit”

With no clear end in sight, the Syrian Civil War continues to ravage the country, sparking a refugee crisis that has displayed large divisions within the member states of the European Union. The outcome of this conflict is unforseeable, as there are several factions vying for power, each representing different view and interests (for a run through of the conflict click on this link). In his article for The Atlantic, Dominic Tierney outlines a scenario which he calls “the devil’s gambit”: a pragmatic approach by the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to create a binary conflict by empowering ISIS to remove both of their opponents.

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Lack of Educational Enrollment Drives Militancy in the Middle East

On September 2, the Associated Press reported sobering statistics detailing the predicament of middle school age children in five conflict-scarred Middle Eastern countries. According to UNICEF, forty percent of children from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Sudan are currently unenrolled in school, with a strong likelihood that this figure will continue to increase to fifty percent in the near future as a result of enduring conflict in the region.

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The Price of Being a Refugee

reating Refugees as the problem is the problem - Refugee Rights Protest at Broadmeadows, Melbourne by Takver via CC 2.0 (via flickr)

recent tragedy in Austria, where 71 decomposing bodies of refugees, including 3 children, were found in the back of an abandoned truck, is yet another in the ongoing saga of Europe’s refugee crisis. Due to severe instability in much of the world today, the number of refugees seeking asylum has drastically increased.  Most come from the countries of Kosovo, Syria and Afghanistan, and some from  Iraq, Pakistan and Ukraine. In addition to the influx of refugees, the practice of  the human trafficking of refugees is on the rise as well.

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