A constant theme here at the Acton Institute is the idea that good intentions are not enough…they need to be connected to sound practice.
In a reflection on fair trade at WORLDmag.com, D. C. Innes commends Victor Claar’s monograph, Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution.
Stanley Cohen, the Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, is quoted as saying that “good intentions become bad practices.”
In his critique of rather lame attempts to realize justice in the world (related to faulty definitions of justice), Herman Bianchi writes, “Even more dubious is another frame in which the formula is often couched: ‘Justice is the constant intention to give everyone his due.’ Never is it said, ‘See to it that everyone really gets his due!’ No, the constant intention apparently suffices; the result of the action is not worth mentioning. As Ovid suggests, ‘though strength may fail, intention should be praised.’” Bianchi concludes that there are many such examples of this kind of thinking in the modern world.
You’ve heard it from us before: Good intentions are not enough.
Now hear it from a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, “The Obscured Continent,” which takes a look at the special issue of Vanity Fair devoted to Africa (HT: Poynter Online). The piece begins by depicting the two major approaches to international development (compare to my “Henderson” model).
