This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 27th, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

The US has a long history of supporting so-called democratic movements in various parts of the world.

Cato's Ted Galen Carpenter in his no book,

Gullable superpower, examines the most prominent cases where well-meaning Americans have ended up supporting misguided policies.

He spoke at the Cato Institute last week.

The United States at least officially has always stood for promoting freedom.

That was certainly true of the founding generation

and the generations that immediately followed.

But there was an important distinction,

and it was one that John Quincy Adams,

who is Secretary of State for James Monroe,

made, and that was that America was the well-wisher to the freedom and

independence of all, but she is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

And he did not make that distinction arbitrarily.

There was a very important reason for it, and he stresses that. She well knows that by once enlisting

under other banners than her own were they even the banners of foreign independence,

she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication

in all the wars of interest and intrigue of individual avarice envy and ambition which assume the

colors and usurp the standard of freedom. And that was a key point, and I think it is a distinction that has been forgotten by subsequent generations of American policy makers.

We saw signs of a more active involvement

and almost imposition at times of the values of freedom and democracy.

We saw at first with Woodrow Wilson and his 14 points, which not only led to the League of Nations, but I mean

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