Meandering through Lerner, I happened upon a table of students selling brightly colored t-shirts. Students for Hillary, I wondered? Nope. Socialists? Not them either. Spartacus Youth? Negative.
I drifted towards the table, neck craned, eyes glaring, head bobbing, struggling to see past the mounting commotion. I pressed on and soon found myself faced with the merchandise. There, stenciled in ample, pallid wedge lettering, rested woeful witticisms: "Jeffrey Sachs is my homeboy," "Sustainable Development is sexy!" Then it dawned on me: Jeffrey Sachs, a brilliant, charming young man and President Bollinger's newest toy, had successfully instituted his own "cult of personality."

A pejorative term, the "cult of personality" applies to those humans presented and accepted as saviors of humankind and raised to levels of near-divinity. They are usually glorified in print, have their name and image well-publicized, and, more often than not, hold positions of power. Traditionally, they hold utopian visions and have fiercely loyal followers. If I may go to the metaphorical checklist:

How many weeks have passed by without a mention of Sachs on the Columbia home page? Negligible. What student isn't aware of Professor Sachs, who he works for, or what class he teaches? At the most, a handful of SEAS students. How many days have you gone without walking past a poster for a Sachs event, with the compulsory photo of Sachs cuddling poor African orphans or walking on water to feed small, furry animals? Zero. (It's only a matter of time before Professor Sachs starts hosting English department events.) Lastly, does he have a legion of students buying and selling shirts venerating his name? Indeed.

Any remaining facade of mere adoration long since shattered, we're left with quite the conundrum. How can astute and well-educated individulas devote themselves to the false notions that Professor Sachs and his U.N. Millennium Project embody?

The U.N. Millennium Project's goals read like God's to-do list: "end extreme poverty, gender equalization, universal primary education," and tucked in there near the end, "environmental sustainability." With one fell swoop, the bumbling bureaucrats of an ineffective and corrupt United Nations will solve all the world problems... in 15 years. Not only is it ridiculous, it's simply impossible. Is that an outlandish prophecy? No, just the truth, but people will continue to invest so long as they truly believe that a utopia on Earth is feasible if we only "give a little bit more." Until they change their ways, they will continue to follow brilliant men like Professor Sachs who claim to have "the" solution.

Yet, America--the greatest, wealthiest and most developed nation in all of human history--couldn't even sustain similar measures: the miserable failure of progressivism we call the Great Society. This "War on Poverty," the product of the socialist politicians and leftist intelligentsia, also attempted to eradicate poverty. It was not a "redistribution of wealth," they clamored, it was an "investment for the future," support for never-before-tried programs--the pet projects of Ivory Tower social engineers who had done the impossible and reduced all human suffering to equations and theories. According to the Senate policy committee, from 1964 to 1973, state and federal welfare spending topped $1.1 trillion (adjusted for inflation), with some $300 billion earmarked for Great Society programs. The Statistical Abstract of the United States reveals that the poverty level, 10.1 percent in 1970, would fall a meager .1 percent to 10 percent in 1998, with the economic boom in full force. Progressive policies, notions of big government and tax and spend, will always fail; 30 years and some $3 trillion later, you would think we would have learned our lesson. Sadly, we're doomed to repeat history so long as America's intelligentsia continues to devise such schemes and individuals are willing pursue noble ends through ignoble, inefficient means.

Professor Sachs, U.N. member nations, and Columbians cannot seriously believe that a new generation of programs, no matter how well researched and noble they are, can help resolve the problems of backwards and corrupt nations like Togo and Zambia when the United States failed to improve even her own cities. While Professor Sachs and I both agree that internal changes towards a free and open market are prerequisites for positive change, they must remain that way--internal. To borrow from trusty Wikipedia, "For Sachs a key element is raising aid from the $65bn level of 2002 to $195bn a year by 2015." No matter how much economic theory goes into these plans, it always ends up reverting to those inescapable and failed notions of "how much money can we collect," and, as a corollary, "what centralized institution will we grant the powers of enforcing redistribution."

In ten years, you'll know where to find me. I'll be at the U.N. building waiting to hear Professor Sachs' concluding remarks on the Millennium Project. There, among tempered qualifiers of "success" and the proverbial "step in the right direction," I'll pick out the calls for "400 billion a year by 2025" and laugh. Hopefully, by then, he'll tell us the real reason he got behind the project: to spend a week with Angelina Jolie.

Chris Kulawik is a Columbia College sophomore. Chris Shrugged runs alternate Wednesdays.