Earnest but Inhumane

Over at PhilanthropyDaily.com, I have a piece on a trendy bit of philanthropic foolishness known as “Effective Altruism.” In part it’s a movement of earnest young people out to prove P.J. O’Rourke’s dictum, “Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.” But the more disturbing part is its intellectual guru, Peter Singer, the Princeton “philosopher” best known for justifying infanticide and bestiality.

I admit that

Anyone who observes the parallels between Singer and the Nazis isn’t necessarily calling Singer – himself a descendant of Jewish victims of the Holocaust – and his followers Nazis. But the similarities in the two ideologies surely require Singer’s allies to address the questions raised. Yet as far as I can tell after searches of major Effective Altruism sites, no one even mentions Singer’s notorious views on, say, infanticide and bestiality, either to justify those views or to distance their own views from Singer’s. As usual in the philanthropy world, silence camouflages ideology and prevents honest debate.

Read the whole article here.