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Forty Years Bashing the National Endowment for Democracy
Libertarian Institute ^ | February 4, 2025 | James Bovard

Posted on 02/08/2025 5:44:43 AM PST by Twotone

@elonmusk: Those who know, please reply to this post listing all the evil things that NED has done. It’s a long list. https://x.com/elonmusk/statu

After that merciless arm-twisting, I have no choice but to recap my National Endowment for Democracy bashes going back to shortly after it was launched in 1983.

In a November 29, 1985 piece in the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as “one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac.” But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things—an International Political Action Committee, the Taxpayer Funding of Foreign Elections Program, and a slush fund for political hacks who like to travel to warm climates in cold weather. In less than two years, NED has lived up to all these epithets.” My op-ed concluded, “The sooner NED is abolished, the cleaner our foreign policy will be.”

The following year, after fresh NED scandals, Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) howled, “This thing is not the National Endowment for Democracy but the National Endowment for Embarrassment.” Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) complained, “From its very inception, the National Endowment for Democracy has been riddled with scandal and impropriety.”

But it was a “jobs for the boys” program that enabled politicians to launder money to plenty of their aides and donors, so it survived one pratfall after another.

In 2006, in “Defining Democracy Down” in The American Conservative, I wrote:

“In 2001, NED quadrupled its aid to Venezuelan opponents of elected president Hugo Chavez, and NED heavily funded some organizations involved in a bloody military coup that temporarily removed Chavez from power in April 2002. After Chavez retook control, NED and the State Department responded by pouring even more money into groups seeking his ouster.

The International Republican Institute, one of the largest NED grant recipients, played a key role both in the Chavez coup and also in the overthrow of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February 2004, an array of NED-aided groups and individuals helped spur an uprising that left 100 people dead and toppled Aristide. Brian Dean Curran, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, warned Washington that the International Republican Institute’s actions ‘risked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government.’

The U.S. pulled out all the stops to help our favored candidate win a ‘free and fair’ election in 2004 in the Ukraine. In the two years prior to the election, the United States spent over $65 million ‘to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won a disputed runoff election,’ according to the Associated Press. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) complained that “much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and…millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.’ Yet with boundless hypocrisy, Bush had proclaimed that “any [Ukrainian] election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.”

In a 2009 piece for the Future of Freedom Foundation, I wrote, “NED is based on the notion that its meddling in foreign elections is automatically pro-democracy because the U.S. government is the incarnation of democracy. NED has always operated on the principle that ‘what’s good for the U.S. government is good for democracy.’”

In 2017, Donald Trump’s first administration dropped “democracy promotion” from the list of official goals of U.S. foreign policy. In a USA Today op-ed with the headline, “End Democracy Promotion Balderdash,” I wrote that the reform “could sharply reduce America’s piety exports…It is time to recognize the carnage the U.S. has sown abroad in the name of democracy.” I warned:

“Democracy promotion gives U.S. policymakers a license to meddle almost anywhere on Earth. The National Endowment for Democracy, created in 1983, has been caught interfering in elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Haiti and many other nations…Rather than delivering political salvation, U.S. interventions abroad more often produce ‘no-fault carnage’ (no one in Washington is ever held liable).”

In a 2018 op-ed headlined “Time for the US to end democracy promotion flim-flams” in The Hill, I wrote:

“Democracy promotion has long been one of the U.S. government’s favorite foreign charades. The Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for democratic evangelism is being denounced as if it were the dawn of a new Dark Age. But this is a welcome step to draining a noxious swath of the Washington swamp…

Unfortunately, many Washingtonians are blinded by self-serving sanctimony. National Democratic Institute president Kenneth Wollack claims that equating U.S. and Russian interventions in foreign elections is like ‘comparing someone who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison.’ But the opiate crisis illustrates how easily therapeutic concoctions can produce vast carnage…

Democracy often provides a vast improvement in governance in foreign lands but bribery, finagling, and bombing are poor ways to export freedom. Can Washington politicians and policy wonks explain why the U.S. government deserves veto power over elections everywhere else on Earth?”

Since that 2018 op-ed, NED became a top funder of the worldwide Censorship Industrial Complex. It has also continued trying to rig foreign elections. NED tacitly justifies itself because “God wants democracy to win.” The U.S. government is simply doing God’s work—or doing what God would do if he knew as much as U.S. government agencies.

In 1984, Congressman Hank Brown (R-CO) provided a single sentence that should have nullified NED’s right to exist: “It is a contradiction to try to promote free elections by interfering in them.” But contradictions never stopped the growth of Leviathan. NED’s continued existence is a testament to the perpetual perfidy of U.S. foreign policy. With pressure from Musk and from the Trump administration, Americans may soon learn of far more NED scandals.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; US: Michigan; US: South Carolina
KEYWORDS: ernesthollings; falseflagfreepers; hugochavez; jamesbovard; johnconyers; liberaltarians; libertarian; libertarians; michigan; ned; ronpaulsucks; southcarolina; venezuela

1 posted on 02/08/2025 5:44:43 AM PST by Twotone
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To: Twotone

📌


2 posted on 02/08/2025 5:49:33 AM PST by griswold3 (Truth Beauty and Goodness)
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To: Twotone

NED is a taxpayer funded mechanism for the GOP and the Democratic Party themselves to directly conduct “foreign policy”. Yet, what really happens is a confluence of like-minded Leftist and globalist groups and individuals has taken over all the mechanisms of NED.


3 posted on 02/08/2025 5:56:28 AM PST by Wuli
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To: Twotone
--- "Forty Years Bashing the National Endowment for Democracy"

Translation by a skeptic: The Libertarian Institute says, "notice us, notice us and notice us."

Their website dates from 2016. An "About" page states "Whatever it is, we're against it." Clever stuff. Which Libertarian candidates have attracted any traction among conservative voters? Remember Chase Oliver, the Libertarian candidate for president? Even other Libertarians didn't support him.

Their "charitable" filing for tax purposes shows them to be a small outfit, while having a website makes small groups look like big deals.

for fiscal year ending April 2022 Form 990 for 2021

4 posted on 02/08/2025 6:00:42 AM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

The Libertarian Institue may have only been around for a while, but James Bovard has been writing for years.

Wikipedia bio:

James Bovard (/bəˈvɑːrd/; born 1956) is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist[1] and is a frequent contributor to The Hill. He is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and nine other books. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, The American Conservative, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.


5 posted on 02/08/2025 6:09:21 AM PST by Twotone ( What's the difference between a politician & a flying pig? The letter "F.")
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To: Twotone

NED is dead.


6 posted on 02/08/2025 6:12:11 AM PST by exnavy (See article IV section 4 of our constitution.)
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To: Twotone
--- "James Bovard "

I make no challenge to the author, per se. But it is interesting that his website bio, like the Wiki also, states in part: "He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Washington Post, among others." Writers make their living writing, if they can. From any and every perspective. He has his own website, by the way.

Here is a James Bovard article from years back to flesh out his views: Donald Trump didn't create danger of presidential dictatorship, he inherited it USA Today, 18 October 2017.

Nonetheless, Chase Oliver for president this last go-around?

7 posted on 02/08/2025 6:29:22 AM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

Capital L libertarians tend to be quirky. :-)


8 posted on 02/08/2025 6:33:24 AM PST by Twotone ( What's the difference between a politician & a flying pig? The letter "F.")
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To: Twotone
--- "Capital L libertarians tend to be quirky. :-)"

Agreed. As Otto von Bismarck from so long ago and far away observed, politics is the art of the possible.

Extremely overjoyed for this nation that idiot Harris did not win. Very, very happy that President Trump is in office. Cannot imagine what a Libertarian president Oliver could have done. Quirky is a nice word. I think the party is like the idiot Left, farming unicorns with pretty words. Should have endorsed President Trump to being with, and it is amusing that news of Libertarians show most of them, rank and file, voted for him, not Oliver. It is an amusing world. Best wishes.

9 posted on 02/08/2025 6:43:09 AM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Twotone
--- "Capital L libertarians tend to be quirky. :-)"

Agreed. As Otto von Bismarck from so long ago and far away observed, politics is the art of the possible.

Extremely overjoyed for this nation that idiot Harris did not win. Very, very happy that President Trump is in office. Cannot imagine what a Libertarian president Oliver could have done. Quirky is a nice word. I think the party is like the idiot Left, farming unicorns with pretty words. Should have endorsed President Trump to being with, and it is amusing that news of Libertarians show most of them, rank and file, voted for him, not Oliver. It is an amusing world. Best wishes.

10 posted on 02/08/2025 6:43:09 AM PST by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Twotone

Another website headed for 404 status


11 posted on 02/08/2025 7:09:18 AM PST by bigbob (Yes. We ARE going back!)
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To: Twotone
December 21, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its four core grantees, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Solidarity Center, and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) are deeply gratified that the U.S. Congress has shown strong bipartisan support for our work with a substantial increase in NED’s annual appropriation.

On Tuesday, December 17, the House of Representatives approved a spending package that increases annual funding for the National Endowment for Democracy from $180 million to $300 million. The Senate approved the measure on December 19 and it was signed into law by President Trump on Friday, December 20.

https://www.ned.org/national-endowment-for-democracy-ned-ndi-iri-cipe-and-solidarity-center-welcome-increased-funding-from-congress/

"Spending package" -- 3,000 page Omnibus?

Damon Wilson president/CEO of the NED speaks at the Atlantic Council's Frontlines of Freedom meeting

…the strategy [of consolidating control over Eastern Europe] is not meant to create new dividing lines in Europe. The aim is to anchor a vulnerable, insecure zone in the certainty of a stable and prosperous and free Europe, and over the long time [sic] this vision includes a democratic Russia. But the pathway to reform in Moscow might just begin with choices that are made in Kiev, Chișinău, Yerevan, and Tbilisi.

https://youtu.be/kI4QDm5G-pE

Wilson, who lives with his husband in DC, has worked for/with NATO for years

12 posted on 02/08/2025 7:58:20 AM PST by Pollard (Zone 6b)
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To: Pollard

The UniParty at work.


13 posted on 02/08/2025 8:59:11 AM PST by Twotone ( What's the difference between a politician & a flying pig? The letter "F.")
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To: Twotone

Thanks
BKMK


14 posted on 02/08/2025 9:37:10 AM PST by Faith65 (Isaiah 40:31 )
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