On foreign aid and the U.S. Agency for International Development

In his Inauguration Address, the best such oration I’ve ever heard, John Kennedy said:

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

In today’s world, I would reverse this statement. We should aid people in poor nations not because it is right (though in principle it is), but because the communists are doing it.