 
|
11A009
Another Non-Cut Cut
by Jim Davies, 1/9/2011
The new Congress is lying as vigorously as the old one. The whole theory that a government is needed for any purpose at all, even "defense", is absolute nonsense from the ground up; if you or I feel unhappy about defending ourselves with our own resources, including such weapons as are appropriate for rationally anticipated dangers, we will, in the coming zero government society, be able to hire someone else to do the job - a security company. Being in competition with others for our business, each will strive to offer attractive terms of price and performance. The best defense, of course, is to provide no motive for offense; and no foreign government eager to preserve itself will be motivated to attack a society without a top representative able to surrender it. The cost of suppressing 300 million well-armed individuals would be far higher than any possible gain an invader might anticipate. In that light, one must look at the FedGov's pretense of defense with the kind of bewilderment Dorothy felt when encountering the Wizard of Oz. In its CBO pie chart the FedGov claims to spend 20% of its budget on "defense", and in FY 2009 that would be $530B out of the obscene $2.65T total. The War Resisters League reckon that 20% greatly understates the military spend, and they may be right. But whatever the spend, it's 100% too high; that's the point. Nobody would pose a threat to America without a government, and even with one there is no evidence of a threat absent overseas aggression. The whole trouble is that it does not abstain from such foreign aggression, and therefore it does make enemies, and therefore it does need a military to discourage retaliation. Maybe there are some VFW branches in your neighborhoods: clubs for Veterans of Foreign Wars. Have you ever seen one for Veterans of Domestic Wars, a VDW Post? Me neither. There is not a shred of pretended authority even in the US Constitution for the FedGov to police the world, yet that is precisely what it has been doing for most of the last century, and the result is the biggest empire, the biggest killing machine and the biggest military budget the world has ever known. Robert Gates, "Defense" Secretary, appeared on-camera on Thursday to celebrate a "cut" in his "defense" budget and answer questions from PBS' Jim Lehrer. Take a look at part of the transcript: ROBERT GATES: ... This budget for the next
five years does return about another $78 billion [to taxpayers]
to trying to tackle the budget deficit and the debt problem,
but... Only government people could so convolute the English language as to take a 0.3% reduction in a planned increase and call it a "cut."
|
|
