Origanalist
02-27-2013, 10:10 PM
Ivan Eland explains how taxes and entitlements begin with militarism. It's a self-feeding loop we've explored on this site before: Big government exploits both foreign and domestic policy to advance its power:
Conservatives should be leery of jumping into wars not only because American power may become overextended—especially in a time of fiscal crisis—but because war makes government expand rapidly at home, even in areas outside of national security. Although conservatives routinely criticize Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for ushering in the era of big government, the deeper origins of the American welfare state lie in the warfare state.
During wars—especially big conflicts that require mobilization of the entire society to fight them—interest groups see the government doing things it didn’t do, or wasn’t allowed to do, previously. After the conflict, newly empowered bureaucrats and constituency groups benefiting from wartime expansion lobby to keep at least some of the new measures in place.
The bottom line is that we can't have both an aggressive foreign policy and a laissez-faire domestic policy. The patriotic chest-thumpers who screamed for pre-emptive war against Saddam (and now against Iran) don't understand that big government at home is the flip side of the big government abroad.
What can we do? Well, for starters, let's not dig that hole even deeper by letting ourselves be talked into yet another war.
http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2013/02/from-war-to-welfare.html
Conservatives should be leery of jumping into wars not only because American power may become overextended—especially in a time of fiscal crisis—but because war makes government expand rapidly at home, even in areas outside of national security. Although conservatives routinely criticize Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for ushering in the era of big government, the deeper origins of the American welfare state lie in the warfare state.
During wars—especially big conflicts that require mobilization of the entire society to fight them—interest groups see the government doing things it didn’t do, or wasn’t allowed to do, previously. After the conflict, newly empowered bureaucrats and constituency groups benefiting from wartime expansion lobby to keep at least some of the new measures in place.
The bottom line is that we can't have both an aggressive foreign policy and a laissez-faire domestic policy. The patriotic chest-thumpers who screamed for pre-emptive war against Saddam (and now against Iran) don't understand that big government at home is the flip side of the big government abroad.
What can we do? Well, for starters, let's not dig that hole even deeper by letting ourselves be talked into yet another war.
http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2013/02/from-war-to-welfare.html