If you haven't noticed, Bush tends to speak in front of crowds that are already receptive to his viewpoint. Sometimes they sign a loyalty oath, other times they're in uniform. On Thursday, he spoke to the National Endowment for Democracy and eventhough they don't wear uniforms, and didn't sign loyalty oaths, he knew that he wouldn't hear catcalls or boos when he started up his tired old rhetoric about making us safer and spreading freedom across the globe. Bush new that the NED crowd still buys into his crusade, eventhough a majority of Americans now think his war has made us less safe, we shouldn't have gone there and that it isn't installing a democracy. I read no mainstream reports or op/ed pieces about this curious fact. A discussion about the NED is necessary post 9-11, more so than before, because the American people need to be informed about what can happen when you ignore the foreign policy of our government.
Now before bloggers start deriding any discussion of the NED as a "conspiracy theory", I would like to remind them of Florida voter roles, billions missing from Iraq funds, a "free press" complicit in repeating administration lies and distortions, and a money laundering scheme spanning Washington to Texas at the highest levels of government. So conspiracies happen, it's like denying that Enron existed, or arguing that CEO's don't play golf together, or that the Bilderberg Group publishes the minutes of its meetings. You can't pick and choose what's a "conspiracy theory" regardless of the facts and strictly on partisan lines. In other words, Democrats have been involved in the NED, even potential 2008 candidates that are regarded highly by the Kos community. And the NED's policies effect how the world views the US. As an organization, the NED's actions affect our "GWOT", our national safety and our government.
The NED only sponsors neo-liberal policies that promote "top-down" ideological free-market fundamentalism that caters to US multi-national interests that has created a legacy of the rich getting richer at the poor's expense. They do not support "bottom-up" grassroots democratic movements based on popular movements, they try and crush them. You know how Chavez claims that we tried to overthrow him? That was your tax dollars at work, through the NED. The NED only supports opposition groups that cater to this ideology, even when a majority of the people in said nation opposes those policies. Here's the right-of-center Cato Institute complaining about how both parties use this "loose cannon". Frankly, in a post 9-11 world, it creates ill-will toward the American government and provides proof to those who feel that America has imperial intentions. I don't think the Kos community would be in an uproar if I said that this administration favors the powerful at the expense of the powerless, so it shouldn't be that controversial when I state that the NED is a part of a system that exports the same ideology. Do you hate the idea of privatizing social security, as most Americans do, because you feel it's a scheme to give money to Wall Street? Now imagine a foreign country trying to privatize your water and utilities and your hospitals. And I'm not talking about a "few bad apples" who've hijacked the otherwise compassionate NED. There isn't some debate inside of the NED that competes to alter these goals. The Democrats and the Republicans in the NED agree on these basic goals and have been very consistent in their application for decades.
We have a big enough deficit, we don't need to be throwing millions of dollars towards the NED. We have enough hostility towards our international policies, some of which create terrorism, we don't need to have an organization that is promoting more of it. And we definitely don't need to run a Democratic candidate that is a currently listed as a director in the NED. He should denounce their policies publicly, or he should resign and explain why. As a party, it will send a clear signal that we stand against these type of policies that generate hostility, waste tax-payer money and are contrary to the principles of American democracy.