I was a member of Amnesty International for a while. For a long time, it seemed like they had two core issues - freeing prisoners of conscience, and fighting the death penalty. I grew to feel less strongly about the death penalty with time (though I'm still not a big fan of it), but who wouldn't support freeing prisoners of conscience?

And then they got political. Maybe they'd always been and I never noticed it - but the last straw for me was when they referred to Guantanamo as the equivalent of a Soviet Gulag. That blatant lie has forever soured me on them. They're just slimy lying punks who betrayed their core beliefs - they care more about scoring political points than in gaining broad-based support for their core mission. How many prisoners languish today because AI has lost all their moral authority?

I, for one, will never forgive those bastards.

I second Ethan's remarks about Amnesty International. I too was a member briefly, back around 1990. I'm not as bitter as Ethan is about how AI has become corrupted, but I still don't like the corruption and the low state it's fallen into.

About the leftward movement of non-profit "do-good" organizations generally-- I think it's all about the "benjamins". The people who are drawn to these outfits in the first place are those whose sense of idealism burns rather hotter than it does in most of us, and as they are just as prone to little vanities as the rest of us, they seek affirmation of their idealism from others like them. Pretty soon, the whole universe of "do-good" organizations becomes a mutual-admiration society, with everyone getting sucked into a black hole of conformity: collectivism good, freedom bad; fascism/communism/socialism good, the United States bad; and so on.

And since a lot of the positions at these organizations pay well, or at least don't require very much effort from the low-paid rank-and-file, I suppose it can be said to be "good work, if you can get it".

So, like I said, it's all about the benjamins-- money easily had for not much work, and lots of "psychic income" from the approval of your peers in the business.

Duh. I should have read the next post first, before I left a comment here.

So, add "influence" to the list of "bennies" I cited, John.

Another curiosity of our curious age, as Peter Drucker has pointed out, is that people move between sectors. If you are a lawyer or accountant or IT or HR person, you might go from a job at GM to a job at the Ford Foundation or at MIT or at the Mayo Clinic.....so what are you? A capitalist? An anti-capitalist? An educator? A healer?

Personally, I'm an Aspiring Curmudgeon...just need to find the right fit in the "Sit Around And Read, Bourbon In Hand" sector of the economy...

I was assuming your question was rhetorical, John, but since Ethan answered it, I guess I will too.

I'm a Cranky Arrogant Bastard(tm)-- mechanical engineer by training, warehouse worker-bee by default. (I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. The problem is, I'm 44.)

Yeah, I assumed it was rhetorical too, but few things in life are more satisfying than answering rhetorical questions with smart-ass answers!

And at 44, you've got what, around 33.6 years left, on average. You've used 26 of your adult years so far, so that means you're not even halfway through them - plenty of time to figure out what you want to do!