There has been a divide in our nation about the wisdom of foreign aid ever since we became rich enough to offer it.

That divide splits pretty much down the same line as the traveler/non-traveler one.

Some Americans see us as part of the world and thus a participant in it. While we are a big country, and the richest one, there is an elsewhere worth seeing. And, where necessary, or at least possible, doing something about. This line of reasoning, to which I subscribe, is at least partly based on the ordinary charitable human impulse. But we would argue that aid from the richest to the poorest can also be eminently practical. Deep instability, debilitating poverty, epidemic disease in developing nations doesn’t just affect their citizens. Through wars, forced emigration and the inevitable spreading of sicknesses that can reach our shores, the fate of people elsewhere affects the lives and health of people here. One of the jobs of the rich is to help the poor, and the work is not entirely altruistic. Chaos in the world creates chaos here.

The other American side, in a partisanship also aligned with a basic disinclination toward intervention in anything foreign, holds that we are better when we go it alone. Let others work out their own problems; we have plenty of our own. Manifest destiny doesn’t have to be our destiny. We’re big enough and beautiful enough from sea to shining sea — and up to Alaska, and over to Hawaii — to contain sights enough and plenty of culture to satisfy anyone’s wanderlust.

The Venn diagram of the divide includes plenty of intersections, because it is by no means a merely conservative-liberal one. And the political tension in Congress between proponents and opponents of aid programs is what has kept a governor on the largesse: it’s about 1% of federal spending. Perhaps that’s about right.

It’s not right by the Trump administration, and at the behest of the president, the DOGE boys have embarked on a campaign to greatly diminish, if not outright end, United States foreign aid to other countries. They have literally taken the sign with its name down from the Washington building that houses the United States Agency for International Development, which oversees — oversaw — much of our foreign aid. USAID was established in 1961, a kind of sweet-spot year for an America involved in the greater world, by President John Kennedy. It implements — implemented — work on “global health, disaster relief, socioeconomic development, environmental protection, democratic governance and education.” It disburses — disbursed — about $23 billion in aid every year.

But Donald Trump has in recent weeks ordered a near-total elimination of foreign aid. Almost all of the thousands of employees of USAID have been laid off, including many stranded overseas, though a federal judge’s ruling has put a temporary stay on that. The president’s henchman, Elon Musk, formerly a furriner himself, from a Canadian by way of South Africa family, says he will put the agency “into the wood chipper,” never to return.

That’s an eccentric, dangerous, lousy idea.

John Simon, who served as ambassador to the African Union in the George W. Bush administration, says the agency is one of the best ways to keep America safe from its enemies.

“We’re taking away this incredibly valuable arrow in our quiver to build support and respect and influence around the world,” Simon told NPR.

As a lifelong newspaperman who believes in the power of the press, I’m proud as an American that USAID funding went to investigative journalists covering the authoritarian regimes in Mexico and El Salvador, uncovering corruption and human rights abuses by their governments. Those countries complained such funding merely helps their political opposition. Fine by me. By the way, USAID money almost never goes to governments, but to local NGOs and private clinics and schools.

As a moderate internationalist and a taxpayer, here’s what really ticks me off: This costs me money, because when sanity returns to Washington, USAID will have to be rebuilt. Talk about government waste and inefficiency.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.