THE GUTSY Ann Coulter.

Ann Coulter wrote a column raising hard questions about the sort of global philanthropy practiced by Dr. Kent Brantly, who went to Liberia to help and ended up contracting the Ebola virus and being flown home, together with his nurse, for treatment, at the cost to his charity of $2,000,000 and counting. This column has enraged many, including many of the evangelical Christians Coulter surely knows comprise a large percentage of her readers. But Coulter’s wondering why Dr. Brantly couldn’t serve Christ in America echoes Mother Teresa, who told a Milwaukee woman offering to volunteer in India “to do good in her own hometown, to find Calcutta in Milwaukee.”

I am quoting not Mother Teresa but Tom Fleming, who devotes chapter 3 of his excellent The Morality of Everyday Life to a critique of global philanthropy. Fleming states the problem succinctly: “Many people who actually prefer to live in a traditional society have nonetheless come to believe that life on the human scale might be selfish and immoral. Taking care of our families, doing our jobs well, giving alms to beggars, and being loyal to our friends is not enough. We are called upon to cultivate global awareness and to accept responsibility for the entire world.” Fleming proceeds to show how such “global awareness” can all too easily lead us astray, and notes that “the private efforts of charitable individuals in their own neighborhoods and cities will never attract newspaper headlines.” Fleming also reminds us that Thomas Aquinas wrote that “In what concerns nature we should love our kinsmen most, . . . and we are more closely bound to provide them with the necessities of life.”

The column in question: Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded To ‘idiotic’.