Make them follow the money
: After I posted about the Advance Democracy bill, I kept thinking that we’re not using the economic power of the developed world in the right way to spread democracy and freedom.
Simply put: We should be rewarding countries that are democracies and withholding those rewards from countries that are not.
Now here’s CNBC’s Larry Kudlow on the same topic (my emphasis):
Thereís no question Paul Wolfowitz would make a fine World Bank president. But letís be clear: the issues confronting the Bank are financial and economic in nature. Crucially, the Bank has to quit making loans to third world countries with totalitarian leaders who steal the money and never undertake appropriate reforms. New steel mills and mining factories will only work within the context of a free-market environment that emphasizes private property laws and other conditionality requirements, such as tax, regulatory, and trade liberalization. Bank lending policies must emphasize capitalist conditionality. And hopefully Mr. Wolfowitz will ask why the Bank should make loans to dictators and despots. In other words, freedom and democracy should be a condition of bank aid. Bank policies should be consistent with Mr. Bushís broader pro-democracy and pro-freedom foreign policy vision….
: Still catching up…. See also Kudlow’s post applauding the Ebbers jury:
Their conviction of Mr. Ebbers was a great victory for investors and the general public. The Ebberís jury contributed to a new era of rising standards for corporate ethics….
The dumbo defense is finito.
