I realize as a Veteran writing about the military, that I am truly biased when it comes to our National defense. I may also be preaching to the choir. But bear with me, and load up on some solid reasons why Federal budget cuts should rarely (if ever) affect military spending.
Reason 1: The main job of the Federal government is to do what states cannot do. The states cannot run National defense.
That’s the idea behind the meaning of the word “Federal.” It is a form of government where responsibilities are shared or parceled between the individual States and our National government. Individual States cannot “provide for the common defense” as stipulated in the preamble of our Constitution. It’s the job of the Federal government.
Reason 2: Except for conducting foreign affairs and regulating interstate commerce, just about everything else the Federal government does is wasteful, inefficient and often just plain unconstitutional.
Americans today don’t fully realize this, but our society has been victimized by the false promises of progressivism. Beginning with Woodrow Wilson and set in concrete by the social activism of his successors Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Federal government has veered off track to do what it was never intended to do.
Progressives don’t need the Constitution. In fact, many would prefer to just do away with that inconvenient document. By the same token, progressives have had willing accomplices in the Supreme Court, whose past rulings have found social and moral issues like school busing and abortion of unborn children somehow supported by the Constitution and wholly compatible with the wishes and intent of our Founders.
Reason 3: The world continues to remain a dangerous place with forces and people out there whose power is threatened by what we stand for.
If there is one main disagreement between social progressives and the rest of us, it is on this point: You cannot reason or empathize with those who want to kill you. You simply have to be ready for them and be able to kill them – preferably first, but always afterwards.
You don’t cut the defense budget because those people are off hiding in caves trying to figure out how to get to us again. If you don’t think they hate us, just listen to what they say they’d like to do to us. Evil twerps like the president of Iran and that dangerous little psychopath who somehow is allowed to rule North Korea know what will happen if they translate their threats to action. They sincerely hope that we will once again become complacent, less capable and less vigilant.
How all that meshes into protecting the military budget…
To recap: National defense is the most crucial thing our Federal government does. The rest is just special interest or entitlement-driven things that are sucking our country dry. Those social (and other) programs will probably stick around because they are the lifeblood of political power. But take them away, and their beneficiaries will have to tighten their belts and get by — like the rest of us.
Cripple our military with radical spending cuts, though, and everyone is endangered. The preamble to our great Constitution says that its purpose is “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility … promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty…” None of those things can happen without filling in the missing part of the quote with “… provide for the common defense.”
At *your* service,
