1776: When Freedom From The State?

[grarpamp]

The People Crafting US Policy Aren't In America

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-people-crafting-u-s-policy-arent-in-america/
Authored by Joseph Solis-Mullen via The Libertarian Institute/Mises.org,

In a piece of news that shocked the mainstream media, but which
shocked no one familiar with the academic industry writ large, retired
US Army general John Allen was forced to resign as president of the
Brookings Institution after it was revealed the FBI was investigating
him for lobbying on behalf of the Qatari monarchy.

Of course, the real news, scarcely noted by The Washington Post, New
York Times, or any other purported paper of record, is that Allen was
only really in trouble because he hadn’t fulfilled the pro forma legal
requirements for those lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of a
foreign agent or government.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), under which such
activities are regulated, includes several exceptions that allow for
such activities without declaring a conflict of interest. Think tanks,
a misnomer if ever there was one, operate under an "academic
exception" that allows for engagement in "bona fide religious,
scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits or the fine arts."

Anyone who has ever picked up one of the many deadly dull social
science journals where actual, bona fide empirical academic work is
done knows this constitutes perhaps a fraction of what think tanks
almost daily churn out. Rather think tank commentary, touted as
objective analysis, is regularly featured or cited by publications and
outlets as apparently diverse as The Wall Street Journal and NPR.

    Ukraine has stepped up pleas for U.S. fighter jets, as two of the
country’s top pilots left combat with Russia to lobby Washington, D.C.
lawmakers.https://t.co/6mAmltCpo0
    — FLYING Magazine (@FlyingMagazine) June 27, 2022

Of course, think tanks are hardly alone. As Ben Freeman, a specialist
on foreign influence on U.S. policy, has documented, such democratic
bastions of liberal values as the UAE and Saudi Arabia donate hundreds
of millions, even billions, to universities around the country.

Of course, from a libertarian perspective, who is to say who should be
giving money to whom and for what? Further, FARA’s provisions are so
nebulous that virtually anyone could be targeted for virtually any
reason, an obvious opportunity for unaccountable federal officials to
impinge on Americans’ civil liberties.

But the blatant hypocrisy of it all is what really stands out, as the
same universities and think tanks regularly decry the apparently
perfidious influence of countries like China, which they breathlessly
warn uses our "open institutions" for its own gain. Should any of
their number dare to go off message and report, for example, on the
well-documented and wholly negative influence of countries like Israel
on US foreign policy, they are tarred as anti-Semites, racists, or
foreign agents themselves!

The truth is the powerful Israel and Saudi Arabia lobbies have been
able to steer US policy in directions clearly at odds with the best
interests of the American people for decades. Unsurprisingly, perhaps
nowhere has the deleterious effect of their money been more felt than
in US policy toward Iran, with the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis
dumping literally billions of dollars into attacks on a country the
United States should have normalized relations with decades ago.

The Uyghur lobby is another such interest group that enjoys an open
door in Congress and the op-ed pages of prominent papers—this while
its nakedly paramilitary arm advocates the violent overthrow of the
Beijing government! And what are we, or foreign governments like
China, to think when the parent organization of such extremists, the
World Uyghur Congress, takes funding from the US government itself? We
aren’t supposed to think about it at all.

Just like we aren’t supposed to question any of the other nakedly
self-serving policies. Who, for example, is surprised to learn there
is a large and active Ukraine lobby in Washington? That has paid off
handsomely, with our government now handing over $130 million daily to
Kyiv with little to no oversight.

And of course, most maddeningly, any critically thinking American who
even dares to question the US government’s obviously dangerous and
counterproductive policies, bought and paid for by literal foreign
agents, are themselves accused of being in the pay of Moscow, Beijing,
or Tehran.

Never mind that all the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Again, the American people aren’t expected to think at all, only to
stay in line and keep the money flowing. This is the sad state of
foreign policy in America, and it happens right out in the open.