Trump Must Finish Off the National Endowment for Democracy

Writing elsewhere last month, I suggested that Donald Trump end the National Endowment for Democracy once and for all. Like most so-called “non-governmental organizations,” the NED is in fact an all-governmental organization. It depends absolutely on a subsidy from the state department, i.e., from the federal government, i.e., from the taxpayer, i.e., from you. The NED began life in the Cold War as a way of projecting “soft power” against our Communist adversaries. But as James Piereson noted in February of this year, the NED has undergone a familiar process of mission creep and moral and political entropy. “With the...