Breitbart, October 27, 2017
Former President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, Senator Bob Corker and other Republican luminaries have publicly criticized President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in recent days.
Yet, long before Trump took over the national political conversation, the conservative foreign policy establishment had systematically betrayed conservative principles and abandoned intellectual rigor for ideological rigidity in foreign policy.
Many individuals and institutions participated, but one example of how a major conservative think tank went about the task shows the insidiousness of the betrayal and offers insight into the intellectual disorderliness that led to Trump’s rise.
It was the fall of 2005, and the Iraq War was raging. I had just graduated from Stanford Law School and given up a lucrative Wall Street law firm salary to spend a year as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
A few weeks into my fellowship, AEI issued what I perceived as a very unsubtle threat against me. I was told to stop conducting research on national sovereignty and international law and instead work on democratization in Asia. AEI understood that I was exploring opportunities in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, and if I did not listen they would make sure I did not succeed.
I had been a conservative my entire adult life. Never did I imagine that this venerable institution of conservative thought would threaten me for attempting to put conservative thoughts on paper, but it did.
(Read the rest of the article HERE.)
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