In this excellent article Doug Bandow butchers a sacred cow — foreign aid. Actually, the argument that foreign aid is counterproductive is not new (the late Peter Bauer made a splendid career of debunking all the warm and fuzzy notions about foreign aid), but Bandow neatly encapsulates the unconventional wisdom on this topic.

Foreign aid is another of the many wasteful programs we owe to the fact that Washington doesn’t take the Constitution seriously. Nowhere does it confer upon any branch of the federal government authority to give our tax money away to foreigners. They do it anyway.