Back in May, here at The Stream we posed a deadly serious question: “How Many African and Asian Kids Will Leftists Starve Just to Beat Donald Trump?” We weren’t just being partisan or blowing smoke. We relied on the gravest warnings from the United Nations, global food experts, and other professionals. They feared the collapse of food exports, especially from the U.S., caused by the reckless lockdown in response to China’s biowarfare attack on the world. Unchecked, that would have left millions starving.

Regional experts predicted that food insecurity, shortages, and hunger could collapse the fragile governments of several poor countries. And that would spark civil wars. The number of food insecure people at the height of the lockdown food crisis was a staggering 130 million. We included a warning from the Atlantic Council. 

Up to 300,000 people could starve to death every day if the COVID-19 pandemic ruptures global food supply chains — even more than the roughly 275,000 people who have died of the disease worldwide so far.

A Tragedy Prevented

You know what didn’t happen? Massive global hunger, unrest, and civil war. You know why it didn’t happen? The work of heroic figures in the Trump administration, especially David Beasley. He was Trump’s nominee for executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme. Beasley issued dire warnings which we quoted in our article. He repeated them to anyone who would listen. Beasley wore himself out flying around the world, repairing the broken links in the food distribution network. He and his agency reconnected farmers with wholesalers. He re-linked transportation networks, connecting farmers to hungry customers in threatened, impoverished countries. The UNWFP moved mountains, and prevented a massive human tragedy—though we are far from out of the woods, as Beasley warns.

That’s not our conclusion, but the verdict of the Nobel Prize Committee, which just awarded Beasley’s agency the Peace Prize for 2020. How much have you heard about this effort, led by Trump’s handpicked man, to save millions of lives in black and brown countries?

Not much, we bet.

Pharisees Virtue Signaling in Rome

You’re more likely to have heard about the latest efforts by Pope Francis to “cure” capitalism of its ills. As Church Militant reports:

[T]he “The Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican” (CICV) is comprised of 27 of the world’s top business leaders and intends to “create a more equitable, sustainable and trusted economic system.”
…

A majority of the pope’s “guardians” (as the council members are called) include the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kering group, Allianz, MasterCard, Estée Lauder, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, California state treasurer Fiona Ma and Johnson & Johnson — who are on record promoting abortion, pansexuality, the Marxist Black Lives Matter (BLM) and uncontrolled immigration.Alexander Tschugguel, director of the St. Boniface Institute, is warning Catholics to “be deeply concerned by what is currently being sold to us under the slogan of ‘inclusive capitalism.'”

…

Speaking to Church Militant, Tschugguel explained: “I think it is no coincidence that this new council was founded shortly after the World Economic Forum (WEF) started to promote the idea of the ‘Great Reset.’ The proposals being put forward by the WEF and this new council seek to undermine free initiative and private property.”

Spending Other People’s Money

The billionaires and multi-billion-dollar foundations partnered with Francis aren’t spending their own money to help the poor. Instead they seek political and economic power, using the poor as a pretext.

Pope Francis signed an alliance with Communist China, aimed against the West. His top authority on Catholic social teaching, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, praised China as living out that teaching better than the United States does. He praised the Chinese model again at a conference of Communist Party organ thieves, who steal kidneys and livers from living political prisoners and sell them for profit.

Francis has said virtually nothing about the internment of more than a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, where they face slave labor and forced abortion. But then, Francis has said almost nothing about the persecution of millions of Christians inside China either.

We Must Stand with the Vulnerable

As Christians it is our calling to stand at the foot of the Cross. In practical terms, that means seeking out the most vulnerable and unprotected, and interposing ourselves between them and their tormentors. That’s why both of us have been active in the pro-life movement for decades. It’s why we speak up against religious persecution in all its forms. It’s why we favor a free economy that generates sufficient wealth to raise the prospects of the poorest people on earth. And oppose elitist, top-down schemes like the corporatism (fascism, really) Pope Francis and his allies seem to favor.

The Parable of the Two Sons

Looking at Trump’s allies and Francis’, we really are reminded of one of Jesus’ parables. We’ll quote it here, and leave it for you think about. Jesus asked His followers:

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matt. 21: 28-32)

Keep that parable in mind the next time some virtue-signaling Christian preens about his purity.

Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker. You can follow him at @JasonJonesShow.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.

Together, Jones and Zmirak wrote The Race to Save Our Century.