The weapon of choice of these wealthy activists was philanthropy. The early concerns that private foundations would become undemocratic forces of elite political power were long forgotten a century later. Leapfrogging beyond a failed political experiment by the liberal Ford Foundation in the late 1960s, the conservative rich created a new generation of hyper-political private foundations. Their aim was to invest in ideology like venture capitalists, leveraging their fortunes for maximum strategic impact. Because of the anonymity that charitable organizations provided, the full scope of these
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