"Now, while free trade should be embraced..."

"Now, while free trade should be embraced, foreign aid should be absolutely rejected.  Constitutional, moral, and practical arguments compel such a view.  Constitutional authorization for such programs is at best dubious.  Morally, I cannot justify the violent seizure of property from Americans in order to redistribute that property to a foreign government- and usually one that is responsible for the appalling material condition of its people.  Surely we can agree that Americans ought not to be doing forced labor on behalf of other regimes, and that is exactly what foreign aid is.

For people who find arguments like these abstract and remote, there is a more practical argument against foreign aid.  International welfare has not worked any better than domestic welfare, despite the trillions spent in each case.  Foreign aid, however pure the intentions that may have motivated it, has been a reactionary device by which truly loathsome leaders have been strengthened and kept in power.  Trillions of dollars later, the results of development aid programs are so bad that even the New York Times, which admits nothing, has acknowledged that the programs haven't worked.  No wonder Kenyan economist James Shikwati, when asked about development aid programs to Africa, has been telling the West, "For God's sake, please just stop." " - Page 99 of The Revolution, A Manifesto