{"id":463912,"date":"2021-05-02T09:20:24","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T13:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=463912"},"modified":"2021-05-02T09:20:26","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T13:20:26","slug":"ben-affleck-my-search-for-humility-means-i-have-to-recognize-that-we-have-our-own-governance-issues-in-this-country-before-we-cast-aspersions-on-the-governance-of-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ben-affleck-my-search-for-humility-means-i-have-to-recognize-that-we-have-our-own-governance-issues-in-this-country-before-we-cast-aspersions-on-the-governance-of-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck: My \u2018Search For Humility\u2019 Means \u2018I Have To Recognize That We Have Our Own Governance Issues In This Country Before We Cast Aspersions On The Governance Of Others\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">60<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fben-affleck-my-search-for-humility-means-i-have-to-recognize-that-we-have-our-own-governance-issues-in-this-country-before-we-cast-aspersions-on-the-governance-of-others%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=463912&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Ben-Affleck.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>Speaking at The Sedona Forum, where he appeared virtually with former Arizona GOP senator Jeff Flake, Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass of California, and the late senator John McCain\u2019s wife Cindy McCain, actor Ben Affleck <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y1xX9eKfwrw\">insisted<\/a> his own \u201csearch for humility\u201d forced him \u201cto recognize that we have our own governance issues in this country before we cast aspersions on the governance of others.\u201d He also stated \u201cthe countries that are run primarily by women, societies that are run by women tend to prosper more. \u201d<\/p>\n<p>The title of the discussion for the panel was \u201cAfrica: Innovation, Investment, and Opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Affleck was prompted by Flake, who asked, \u201cWhat are you advocating for, both in the Congo and elsewhere?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Affleck answered:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"39\">\n<p><em>One of the things that I\u2019m advocating, most broadly, is to develop a different perception of Africa. If you have any real value in terms of being able to use a microphone or loudspeaker and project to a large group of people, it\u2019s to help share your understanding with them. It may be a little too complex to explain to a broader audience but I will mention here that this notion that we\u2019ve thrown a lot of aid at Africa and nothing\u2019s worked is a profound and dishonest way of looking at the situation. What Europe and North America have in fact done is extracted a great deal of wealth from Africa, disenfranchised Africans, oppressed them. Even in Congo, for example, the only country ever owned, owned by a human being, which [sic] is King Leopold, in the 1900s, during which the ownership period of which country 10 million Congolese died, and the gigantic amount of wealth, in terms of rubber, was extracted for advancement, in terms of the economy of Europe, during the Industrial Revolution, that alone so far dwarfs all the aid ever spent on Africa in its history.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So it\u2019s extremely disingenuous to suggest that somehow we\u2019re frittering all this money and we\u2019re not doing anything with it. That\u2019s just dishonest. What we\u2019ve done historically, and what we continue to do \u2014 and when I say \u201cwe,\u201d I mean the Chinese, who are making unfair deals with the Africans to extract minerals today, or the Russians, and so forth, that historically, this kind of exploitation is in fact what has continued to happen. \u00a0A small amount of aid has been spent, granted, some of it spent not very well.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThis is not a hopeless place, and by the way, my faith compels me to try to seek humility, and in the search for humility, I have to recognize that we have our own governance issues in this country before we cast aspersions on the governance of others,\u201d Affleck continued. \u201cThere is no country that is immune to corruption or to people who seek power at the expense of what is right. And therefore I think it is really not an effective argument to say you can\u2019t deal with this country because there\u2019s poor leadership because what if we have poor leadership? Should we then be abandoned? Should we give up on ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Flake asked Affleck if he testified before Congress as he has previously done about Africa, \u201cWhat would you say are its biggest challenges and where should the United States be spending its time and resources?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say, for one thing, I would be very grateful to be invited; I would invite as many members of Congress to come and visit Africa and see for themselves what works and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d Affleck replied. \u201cAnd I think they would find and see the ways that American taxpayer dollars are being spent and how they\u2019re being spent effectively and how they\u2019re being spent ineffectively. I think that, in and of itself, would be quite revelatory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He concluded, \u201cI would, lastly, encourage Congress to be thoughtful and really examine what has worked and what hasn\u2019t, and look at what models may work well in the future and I would encourage them to stay involved and I would tell them that I\u2019m going to continue to try to build a constituency around people who are interested in this topic, and cultivate other people to do so. And it has been my honor to be inspired by Ms. McCain, and I will continue to work in the vein in the way she has diligently and on behalf, largely, of women who I have to say, I don\u2019t know what this says about us men, but it is factually correct that women, the countries that are run primarily by women, societies that are run by women tend to prosper more. So, well, there you have it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking at The Sedona Forum, where he appeared virtually with former Arizona GOP senator Jeff Flake, Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass of California, and the late senator John McCain\u2019s wife Cindy &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2277155,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Ben-Affleck.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Ben Affleck: My \u2018Search For Humility\u2019 Means \u2018I Have To Recognize That We Have Our Own Governance Issues In This Country Before We Cast Aspersions On The Governance Of Others\u2019","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Ben-Affleck.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Ben Affleck: My \u2018Search For Humility\u2019 Means \u2018I Have To Recognize That We Have Our Own Governance Issues In This Country Before We Cast Aspersions On The Governance Of Others\u2019","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}