Why I love the Fed. Govt (longish)

[rogervw]

You have come to the base of all government ..... they will protect you from bad people. But that is the lie they teach you. You become their slave.

I am not a slave to the gun under my bed. 
Do you disagree with the postion that a "protector force" is needed?
Or do only disagree with any type of forced support?

[Spencer]

Having the biggest stick in the world makes you the target.

[Minsk]

I guess what it really comes down to is this:

Do you feel that it is moral and necessary to point a gun at people who do not want to pay for the military your propose?

Remember that the gun requires not only that everyone pay for the defensive military, but also:
- the government that decided the rules regarding who should pay and how much
- the taxation service that determines who is not paying enough
- the police who go to those people's houses and arrest them
- the court that tries and sentences them for tax evasion
- the prison in which they will sit, not contributing to the economy

And because the police must outgun the civilians for this to work, you also require gun laws, and the inspectors and enforcers for those, and SWAT-like units to deal with armed civilians.

Dude... all to force a few pacifists to pay for a military, when you could just refuse to do business with them?

[Minsk]

Having the biggest stick in the world makes you the target.

I don't think it's so much having the stick as the continual poking of said stick into hornet's nests...

[Caleb]

Roger, welcome to the forum! 

The threat of military force is not new.  Mankind has struggled with warfare for millenia.

However, I think you are wrong that an armed populace is not capable of repelling a foreign invasion.  Look at what has been done in Iraq by an insurgency, against the most powerful empire in history.  Surely the Mexican or Canadian forces would be no match against an even more powerful insurgency.

Some people might be willing to pay for a military voluntarily.  Some will NOT.  What are you going to do with those people (like me) who find funding a military morally repugnant?  Throw me in a cage, and if I resist shoot me dead? The penalty for standing for peace should be kidnapping or murder?  That doesn't seem very free or very fair to me.

[Russell Kanning]

Russel - instead of leaving the convention I would rather have you there helping to shape it.

But how could I stay .... it is not right for me to decide how others should live. I can't be involved in shaping policies for a government ..... since it is based on stealing and killing.

[Russell Kanning]

Do you disagree with the postion that a "protector force" is needed?

I don't think it is right for me to resist evil by force, so ... yes.

[Lex]

http://www.mises.org/story/805

The Military Option
By Robert Blackstock
Posted on 10/16/2001

I told my mother that I do not support military action in Afghanistan and that I absolutely do not support the idea of the draft being reestablished.  My mother paused and said, "That disappoints me . . .  I thought I had raised a patriot."

Hold it right there. I love my country, and if it were to be invaded by a foreign power, I would be the first volunteer to protect it. However, I also believe that the Constitution still matters. Therefore, the first thing I must ask is, "Has Congress proclaimed war on Afghanistan?" The answer is, "no," and that's only the first problem.

The attack on the World Trade Center was carried out by a group of criminals, and, like most others, I agree that the criminals should be brought to justice. Murder is murder; if you commit murder, you must pay the price. Unfortunately, the nineteen people who were certainly involved are all dead, so all attention has turned to getting Osama bin Laden, who stands accused of having masterminded the plot.

But is using the military the way? When the U.S. invaded Panama in 1989 to "arrest" Manuel Noriega, 3,000 Panamanian civilians were killed (this is a number that is still hotly disputed by the U.S. State Department, as shocking as that may seem), and it seems our justice in Afghanistan will be little different. A small village and a Red Cross storage house have already been hit. Thank goodness that the bomb that hit the boys' school didn't detonate.

Making matters more confusing, Afghanistan doesn't really have a government. They've been fighting a civil war since the Soviet withdrawal, and now all of the weapons are in the hands of two factions. The faction that controls the largest territory is the Taliban, a group which is an extremely small percentage of the population.

Think of it this way: if 1000 people are stranded on a deserted island and two of those people have machine guns, who will be the leaders? The civilians may complain at first, but after a few examples have been made, the surviving population will be far more docile. The same applies in Afghanistan.

The majority of the population are plain folks like you and me who just want to make a better living for their families. Now the U.S. is dropping bombs on them.  (For a good, short article on how the average Muslim around the world is not a fanatic, gun-toting American-hater, see the article, The Varieties of Muslim Experience, located on the Jewish World Review Web site.)

In 1993, Ira Einhorn was tried in a Pennsylvania court and convicted in absentia for the 1977 murder of his girlfriend.  Mr. Einhorn had fled to France, which refused to extradite anyone to the U.S. to face the death penalty.  Now I ask, the next time France refuses to extradite a murderer, should we bomb their civilian population?

Adolf Eichmann, who masterminded the deportation and murder of millions of Jews, deserved to be brought to justice if anyone ever has.  After the Second World War, Eichmann fled to Argentina to hide with his family.  The Israeli government finally located him in 1960 and had the Massad quietly "liberate" him; i.e., they kidnapped him and returned him to Israel for trial.  He was sentenced to death by hanging in 1962. By present U.S. standards, Israel would have been justified in carpet-bombing Buenos Aries unless the Argentine government had quickly complied.  Obviously, it would have been a ridiculous thing for Israel to do, so why are we, the Americans, doing it to the Afghans?

And why are we concentrating on Afghanistan? Well, that's where the now infamous "terrorists training camps" are located. But the Taliban are educated at a special religious school in Pakistan. Why haven't we insisted that Pakistan shut down the Taliban school and hand over the teachers? Could it be because, unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan has the bomb?

When I mention my disapproval of military action to some of my friends, they always say, "Don't worry. The military's weapons can take out a chosen target and not disturb a single flower in front of the orphanage next door."

Really? Then why did NATO planes "accidentally" bomb the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo a few years ago? Why did U.S. planes "accidentally" bomb a residential neighborhood in Afghanistan this past weekend, or a Red Cross food storage facility a few days later?

Whenever the military is used, no matter how noble the intentions, civilians die, and I am bitterly opposed to bringing even more misery to an already miserable people. Furthermore, who actually believes that military power will stop terrorism? If the military was all it took to wipe out terrorists, Israel would have long ago shut down the PLO, and Britain would have made Northern Ireland a vacation mecca even before my birth.

A small group of terrorists has done despicable things, and they should be brought to justice.  I'll even volunteer to pull the switch after their trial. But I see absolutely nothing honorable in bombing innocent families (whose only crime is being born in the wrong place) when other options are available. I see nothing patriotic in answering the suffering of our citizens with the suffering of someone else's.

So yes, I am a Patriot, but I am a patriot who is against the actions of his government, and I am reminded of the last paragraph of George Orwell's Animal Farm:

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

[Lex]

The Myth of National Defense
http://www.mises.org/store/product1.aspx?Product_ID=171

With eleven chapters by top libertarian scholars on all aspects of defense, this book edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe represents an ambitious attempt to extend the idea of free enterprise to the provision of security services. It argues that "national defense" as provided by government is a myth not unlike the myth of socialism itself. Defense services are more viably privatized and replaced by the market provision of security.

From the introduction:

"Even aside from day-to-day security risks, the reality of terrorism and its resulting mayhem has demonstrated the inability of government to provide adequate security against attacks on person and property. The lesson of September 11 is indisputable: government had not only failed to act as a guardian of security and protection but had actually been the primary agent in creating insecurity and exposure to risk, and, moreover, did not achieve secure justice once the crime had been committed.

"However, this was not the lesson that was drawn from the affair. Instead, the political elite successfully exploited public fears to vastly increase government spending, central credit inflation, bureaucratic management, citizen surveillance, regulation of transportation, and generally wage an all out attack on liberty and property.

"Meanwhile, US foreign policy pursued in the aftermath became more aggressively interventionist, violent, and threatening (the US refused even to rule out the employment of nuclear weapons against enemy regimes) than it had been before, thereby increasing the number of recruits into the ranks of people who are willing to use extreme violence as a means of retribution.

"In the same way that government intervention in times of peace can generate perverse consequences in markets that do not tend toward clearing, in times of war, military intervention can thus have the effect of harming the prospects for peace and security and bringing about a permanent state of violence and political control. Truly, the political affairs of our time cry out for a complete rethinking of the issues of defense and security and the respective roles of government, the market, and society in providing them."

    * Introduction by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
    * The Problem of Security; Historicity of the State and "European Realism" by Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri
    * War, Peace, and the State by Murray N. Rothbard
    * Monarchy and War, by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
    * Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation or Monopoly? by Bertrand Lemennicier
    * Is Democracy More Peaceful than Other Forms of Government? by Gerard Radnitzky
    * Mercenaries, Guerrillas, Militias, and the Defense of Minimal States and Free Societies by Joseph R. Stromberg
    * Privateering and National Defense: Naval Warfare for Private Profit by Larry J. Sechrest
    * The Will to be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
    * National Defense and the Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Clubs by Walter Block
    * Government and the Private Production of Defense by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
    * Secession and the Production of Defense by Jrg Guido Hlsmann

ISBN: 0-945466-37-4
464 pgs. (hardcover)

[Lex]

Long article about the book mentioned above.
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1356

[tracysaboe]

I Don't Owe the Military Anything
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds177.html

I Still Owe the Military Nothing
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds181.html

Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds182.html

Tracy

[Lex]

August 1997
Volume 15, Number 8

The Costs of War
John V. Denson

Amid media fanfare, the Pentagon has released its report on U.S. military and foreign policy into the next century. The report says that the U.S. should retain the military capability to fight two foreign wars at once. The Cold War may be over, the Pentagon admits, but it warns against any attempt to pare back the warfare state or cut the cash flow to arms dealers.

It is no surprise that a bureaucracy would study itself and conclude that neither its budget nor its policies should change. Neither is it a shock that the Pentagon has bypassed the question of why we need to involve ourselves in any foreign wars. After all, the U.S. long ago abandoned the Constitutional ideal of a strictly defensive military posture.

What is truly disturbing is that the report treats the subjects of war and military empire so casually. War is the most destructive government program. But to read the Pentagon's case, you'd think there are no costs associated with war and no downside to permanent empire. Have we learned nothing from a century of wartime bloodshed?

The conventional view is that all U.S. wars have been fought to protect freedom. In fact, war has been the main source for the expansion of the power of the federal government. War has eroded our economic liberties, debased our money, increased the national debt, and radically transformed the political structure of the original American republic. The result of these wars has been the loss of freedom for Americans, not its protection.

This would have been no surprise to the framers. "Of all the enemies to public liberty," warned James Madison, "war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

What's more, wars are not usually fought for any of the stated idealistic reasons. Once you get past the government disinformation that bombards us during wars, you find that wars are most often fought to protect the economic status of special-interest groups.

For example, the Civil War is said to have been about abolishing slavery. But most people at the time recognized that as mere cover. The real purpose of the war was to preserve the federal government's revenue base and the economic privileges enjoyed by Northern industrial interests at the expense of the agricultural South. Lincoln favored the tariff while Davis condemned it, but neither disputed that it was central to the war.

After the South was conquered, the swollen Union Army was not dismantled but rather put to other purposes. Under the principle of use it or lose it, the Army was sent to massacre the Indians so the West could be made safe for more government-backed industrialists. It was exactly as English historian Lord Acton predicted: a Northern victory led to empire.

The next war was just as pointless. It was over the Spanish possessions in the New World, a war Secretary of State John Hay labeled as "splendid." Mark Twain originally supported it because he thought its purpose was to free Cuba from Spanish tyranny. Then he discovered that the war was actually fought so that the U.S. could have coaling stations in the Philippine Islands for trade with (and control over) China. Twain then turned against the war, and issued his famous phrase: "We cannot maintain an empire in the Orient and maintain a republic in America."

President McKinley provoked the Spanish-American War by sending the battleship Maine to the harbor in Havana (recent evidence confirms that the hull was blown outward, not inward, so the Spanish were not responsible). At the same time, he sent the Navy to the Philippines. He helped the Philippines throw off their Spanish rulers, and once they had gained their freedom, McKinley turned the guns on citizens themselves, murdering more than 3,000 in cold blood. McKinley then sent 5,000 Marines to China to help suppress the Boxer Rebellion, which was led by Chinese patriots who wanted foreign invaders and opium dealers off their soil.

Neither was America's entry into World War I necessary. And had we not intervened, the war would have been negotiated to a close in the traditional manner. Our entry cost American citizens dearly in lives, taxes, inflation, and lost freedoms. The government was vastly expanded, and wartime agencies later became the core planning apparatus for the New Deal.

The greatest costs of this war stemmed from the Treaty of Versailles, made possible by America's entry. Its Carthaginian terms bred intense resentments, and virtually guaranteed another European-wide conflict in the future. Yet the allies continued to insist upon the terms of the Treaty until the next war.

World War I brought Communism to Russia (the draft and bloodshed were the Bolsheviks' main issues), Nazism to Germany (Hitler preyed on real grievances), state capitalism to America (the central bank funded the war and nationalized industry supplied the munitions), and Fascism to Italy (the war had destroyed the old order). In its cataclysmic effects, it compares only to the Peloponnesian War that ended the civilization of ancient Greece.

Another cost of war is the change that has taken place in public morals and in our attitudes toward violence. During World War II, 50 million people--70 percent of them civilians--were slain for purposes of geopolitics. The war crimes ranged from the mass slaughters across Europe and Russia, to the allied terror bombing of Dresden, to the atomic bombing of Japan.

President Eisenhower, in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, issued a warning about the dangers of special interests behind the war machine. Few presidents ever spoke with the military authority of President Eisenhower. He was speaking about people and interest groups he knew all too well.

"We must never let the weight" of the military-industrial complex "endanger our liberties or democratic processes," he said, measuring his words carefully. "We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

When he said that we were already in the thick of the Cold War, but defense spending ran only $52 billion per year, compared with the $300 billion we spend today, seven years after the Cold War has ended. Even if we adjust these figures for inflation, Congress will allocate 15 percent more this year than the budget Eisenhower thought represented a grave threat to liberty.

When Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was killed in an airplane crash last year, we got a clear view of the military-industrial complex in action. Dead along with Brown were a dozen leading industrialists who had flown in a military plane over Bosnia. They all had a strong financial interest in intervening in that war and reaping profits from the "rebuilding" effort.

The military-industrial complex is at work in the attempt to expand NATO to the borders of Russia. NATO was supposedly formed to unite Europe against the Communist threat of Soviet Russia. With the fall of that regime, NATO now serves no useful purpose. Why, then, is it still in existence, let alone expanding? Because the new nations coming into the alliance will have to buy weaponry manufactured by U.S. businesses, who will in turn guarantee their investments with American tax dollars.

Beginning with President Truman, Democrat and Republican presidents alike have contended that it is no longer necessary for Congress to declare war. Presidents may send armed forces anywhere in the world without congressional authority. We could have a perpetual war in order to maintain perpetual peace and become the world's policeman without any authorization from Congress. George Orwell's book 1984 was a warning against this very thing.

Why did the American Constitution give Congress the exclusive power to declare war and authorize military action? The framers were familiar with English history and England's separation of powers in its unwritten constitution, which placed the power of the sword in the executive branch and the power of the purse in the legislative branch.

When Charles I violated this separation of powers and raised war money without the consent or approval of parliament, it sparked a civil war, and the king's head was chopped off. The framers looked to this example of why the mere separation of powers cannot prevent war. They removed all power to declare war from the executive branch, and placed it exclusively with Congress.

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, the dying king made a confession to his son who would inherit the throne. His foreign war in the Holy Land had been completely unnecessary, but was carried out for a particular political purpose. He used the oldest trick of the trade: create a foreign war to increase and concentrate power and silence your critics. His advice to his son was that he too should "busy giddy minds with foreign wars."

As Madison said, "war is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them." "The strongest passions and the most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast," he wrote "are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."

Presidents Washington and Jefferson also warned against wars in Europe. "I have deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take an active part in the quarrels of Europe," wrote Jefferson. "Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government are foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war."

The great accomplishment of Western civilization was the discovery of freedom by the effective limitation on state power. War, even victorious war, is the greatest threat to freedom. It removes those restraints on governmental power and causes immense power to be concentrated into the central government. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1833, "All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it."

The Pentagon says we need a warfare state that can conduct two foreign wars at one time--which is not to say it won't be shy about asking for billions more once those wars are begun. But if our concern is the preservation of a free society, we could do no better than to echo James Madison: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

[Lex]

http://www.mises.org/story/2252

Searching for America's Next Enemy
By Doug Bandow
Posted on 7/17/2006

Peace is boring. How else to explain the search by some conservatives for a new enemy?

After the Cold War the foreign policy establishment could have gratefully accepted peace, stopped meddling around the globe, and demobilized America's outsize military. Instead, it found other enemies.

Doing so wasn't easy. Saddam Hussein's Iraq proved to be easy prey. Now Iran is getting the most attention.

But the Pentagon has just issued its latest alarmist assessment of Chinese military spending. Former Australian diplomat Gregory Clark writes of a "China threat lobby."

In fact, had there been no 9-11, which yielded both an enemy ("Islamofascism") and a conflict ("Global War on Terrorism"), China might have ended up in Washington's crosshairs early in Bush's term. Years before joining the Bush administration as deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz authored a Pentagon paper that advocated preventing "potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

After 9-11 Bush officials apparently recognized that they needed Beijing's help and weren't likely to browbeat the PRC into compliance with their demands. But conservative hostility towards China never disappeared.

Some critics focused on trade issues. Anger over human rights violations plays a role. Fears have been rising over China's rising influence in Asia.  Now Beijing's critics point to its military build-up.

For instance, the congressionally created US-China Economic and Security Review Commission contends that "China's methodical and accelerating military modernization presents a growing threat to US security interests in the Pacific." Clinton H. Whitehurst, Jr., writes for the Strom Thurmond Institute: "For the second time in half a century the United States is engaged in a 'cold war' with a powerful adversary ? the People's Republic of China."

A number of "China as enemy" books have been hitting the American market, most recently Jed Babbin's and Edward Timperlake's Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States. Last year Roger Kaplan wrote in The Atlantic: History suggests "the result is likely to be the defining military conflict of the twenty-first century: if not a big war with China, then a series of Cold War-style standoffs that stretch out over years and decades."

You may have thought that the end of the Cold War, which left America as the planet's dominant power, meant peace. Think again. Washington must occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, attack Iran, confront North Korea, and, most importantly, beat back the yellow horde. It all would be silly if the neocons had not already dragged the United States off into one unnecessary war. Instead, it's frightening.

Yet why should we assume Beijing and the United States will come to blows? China today is more prosperous, accessible, and responsible than ever before. Although Beijing is not a close ally, it is not hostile either.

Rather, it is a significant power with a range of interests which, unsurprisingly, do not always match those of America. The situation calls for thoughtful, nuanced diplomacy, not self-righteous scare-mongering.

Unfortunately, China critics routinely overstate Chinese capabilities and misstate US interests. For instance, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently suggested that "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment. Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?"

In fact, that question would be better asked by Chinese officials to Secretary Rumsfeld. Who threatens whom?

America's increase in military outlays over the last few years alone equals China's entire defense budget. Washington spends upwards of seven times as much as the PRC, is allied with every leading industrial state around the globe, and has allies ringing China. The idea that Beijing's modest (after inflation) increases in military outlays are preparing it for a global or even regional war of conquest is simply silly.

Equally disturbing, much of the discussion of China confuses which "interests" are in conflict. Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) contended that "They don't have to be a threat sufficient to invade the United States. They just have to be a threat sufficient to go against our interests."

Unfortunately, there are "interests" and then there are "interests." In today's world, the United States purports to have an interest in everything in every country, and therefore believes itself to be entitled to go to war to make every country everywhere do what America wants.

In the case of China, the "threat" is primarily a threat to the American empire, not the American republic. The basic issue is Washington's predominance in East Asia.

The ultimate threat, in the view of analyst Ross Munro, is that Beijing's "grand strategy is to dominate Asia. And that puts the United States and China on a collision course."

But America is not alone. India also is a rising power, Russia maintains a sizable nuclear deterrent, Japan fields a capable military, South Korea is growing in influence, Australia is a regional leader, the ASEAN states are developing new cooperative ties, and more.

Washington has a hard enough time dominating this crowd. How will a nation that remains socially unstable, economically underdeveloped, and politically uncertain take over? The United States can play the role of a traditional off-shore balancer, wary and watchful, but aloof from conflicts that do not concern it.

The principal US goal should be to accommodate the rise of a likely great power, promoting mutually-beneficial cooperation while ensuring American security. Unfortunately, Washington's attempt to engage in containment (even if packaged with engagement as "congagement") encourages conflict.

Pushing China's neighbors to choose sides may not redound to America's benefit. Most importantly, treating Beijing as hostile is more likely to turn it hostile.

Washington should encourage private economic and cultural ties with the PRC, depoliticizing much of the relationship. Washington should seek China's cooperation on issues of shared interest, such as stability on the Korean peninsula. US officials should speak frankly about issues of proliferation and human rights, but should do their most contentious work behind the scenes. Most important, America's allies should take over responsibility for their own defense.

Indeed, what would offer a better constraint to China than a nuclear Japan and South Korea? Washington should not push its friends to adopt any particular defense and foreign policy. But the United States should make clear that the good ol' days when allies could ignore their military needs while expecting American troops to ride to the rescue are over.

There will be no more important bilateral relationship over the next century than that between the United States and China. Much depends on the ability of the two nations to overcome cultural and political differences to cooperate peacefully. The first step in doing so is for America not to go to Asia in search of enemies to combat.

[Lex]

Men With Two Brains
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Posted on 3/30/2006

Here is a book review of no particular book but rather a class of books that has been the ruling genre in conservative nonfiction for fifty years. Actually we can include blogs in this too, since thousands upon thousands partake of the same error.

This critique applies the nearly every tract written from the Right from Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative to the latest publishing venture of the talk show media celebrity wing nut to the statement of principles of the local College Republican club.

Here is the argument, reduced form:

On domestic policy, the government is the enemy. We need to scale back government spending and regulations that tie up business in red tape. The public schools are failing and need an injection of competition. Too many welfare programs are out of control. Taxes are too high and complex. Politicians and bureaucrats shouldn't run our lives, lest liberty be lost. Let's return to our founding principles and return government to the people.

    On the foreign policy, we are surrounded on all sides by enemies. Dangers lurk everywhere. We need to strike them before they strike us. We must not shirk our responsibilities to ourselves and the world. We need not fear the use of power, even war, even relentless global war. We cannot cut our defenses. Indeed, we must expand them. Our allies need us. We need not listen to the cowards who would recoil from this struggle against evil because freedom isn't free. If anything we need to beef up military spending.

Do you see the contradiction? Apparently it is not obvious to thousands of writers, activists, and thinkers, and not just today but dating back for decades. The problem is this. In the first paragraph, the government is rightly presumed to be the coercive enemy that takes from the people and saps their productivity. It cannot perform tasks as efficiently as property owners. It helps rather than hurts. Government does not know best. Our choice is government or liberty.

All that is fine as far as it goes. But when it comes to foreign policy, the analysis is entirely reversed. The presumption that the American people and the government are unified is integral to the analysis, as summed up in the plural pronouns "our" and "we," as if the people have direct control over the foreign-policy decisions of the political leadership.

Whereas the government is considered to be bubble-headed and ham-handed in domestic policy, in matters of foreign policy the government is suddenly imbued with virtuous traits such as courage. Taxes, in this case, are not a burden but the price we pay for civilization. The largest and most violent government program of all ? namely war ? is not an imposition with unintended consequences but an essential and praiseworthy effort at protection.

I don't mean to pick on the Right exclusively. The Left often offers the inverse of this recommendation. They believe that the government can't but unleash Hell when it is waging war and spending on military machinery. But when it comes to domestic policy, they believe the same government can cure the sick, comfort the afflicted, teach the unlearned, and bring hope and happiness to all.

Each sides presumes that it potentially enjoys full control over the government it instructs to do this thing as versus that thing. What happens in real life, of course, is that the public sector ? always and everywhere seeking more power ? responds to the demands of both by granting each party's positive agenda while eschewing its negative one. Thus is the Left given its welfare, and the Right given its warfare, and we end up with a state that grows ever more vast and intrusive at home and abroad.

What neither side understands is that the critique that they offer of the programs they do not like apply also to the programs they do like. The same state that robs you and me, ties business in knots, and wrecks the schools also does the same and worse to countries that the US government invades. From the point of view of the taxed, the destination of the money doesn't matter; it is all taken by coercion and all of it saps the productive capacity of society. Similarly, the state that uses military power to impose its imperial will on foreign regimes ? destroying property, lives, and making endless enemies ? is the one the Left proposes to put in charge of our economic lives.

It is impossible to make sense of the contradictions, particularly in the American political context, where the rise of American military power parallels the rise of big government at home. This is true from the Civil War to the present. These two parts of the state grow together. (Understand that this critique is not the usual libertarian rendering that you hear in the media that we supposedly agree with the right on economic policy and the left on social policy; there are too many problems with that apparatus to go into here, but suffice it to say that it leaves foreign policy completely out of the picture.)

Now it is perfectly true that history and present reality provide many examples of government that are invasive internally but not externally. Sweden, Canada, Italy, and a 100 other nation-states have huge welfare states but no noticeable international military presence . However: many of the world's welfare states were actually imposed by military conquest (e.g. Japan after WW2). Also, the Left would do well to observe that the best guard against a warmongering state is a state that is powerless in all aspects of life.

What makes no sense at all ? conceptually, historically, or politically ? is the rightwing view that the state should be expansionist and imperialist abroad but otherwise do nothing at home beyond the limits set forth in the Constitution or the political writings of the founding generation. It is undeniable that that warfare state will not restrict itself to harming and bullying foreign peoples. It always and everywhere does the same to the domestic population. It occupies us, attacks our property, ferrets out political enemies, and wages low-intensity warfare against us.

The suggestion of conservatives that the government engage in all-out war on the world but otherwise leave people free to manage their own affairs is completely absurd in every way. It is akin to the demand that one's left leg march in one direction and the right leg march in the other direction. If we know how the human body works, we know that this suggestion is ridiculous. So too, if we know how government works, we know that a state that is expansionist abroad will never let well enough alone at home.

Back to the leg analogy. The person who is told to march in two separate directions faces a dilemma. He cannot do both at once so he must evaluate the priorities of the instructor. He must discern what is the most important course. For American conservatives, this choice is obviously clear: so important is their foreign-policy agenda to their overall worldview that they are willing to live with Leviathan at home for the duration.

One way we can discern this is the utterly non-negotiability of the interventionist position. That the United States must wage war is surely the one point that unites the American Right. To be sure, it wasn't always so: before the early 1950s and immediately after the end of the Cold War, some intellectuals on the Right began to see that empire and liberty are incompatible.

But these were brief periods. For the most part, the political tracts of today live with the same contradictions that stained them in the 1980s and before. All the neconservatives contributed in the 1970s and 1980s was an embrace of the welfare state that had been previously rejected on the right; otherwise their foreign policy position was largely the same as that pushed by the National Review crowd since the 1950s. What's more, the end of the Cold War changed nothing.

Whereas the fear of Communism was the great reason for expansionism and the delay of liberty back then, now there is a new enemy ? radical Islam and its terrorism ? that must be beaten into submission.

In all this, conservatives are men with two brains. One sees the government as a menace, something stupid, inefficient, brutal, isolated from real life, and the enemy of liberty. The other sees government as a smart, wise, and all-knowing, a friend to all, in touch with life around the planet, and the friend to liberty everywhere. How these two brains are integrated is never explained. But the truth is that Jeffersonian-Misesian-Hayekian-Rothbardian critique of the state applies in both cases. You either embrace it or you don't. As Harry Browne said: "The government that's strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to destroy you."

In this sense, President Bush at least has consistency on his side. He has expanded both the domestic and international Leviathan more substantially than any president since Lyndon Johnson, who was also consistent in this respect. Their love of the state began differently, but it has ended in the same support of the welfare-warfare state. It is those who would keep the foreign-policy circuses but decry the domestic-policy bread who need to have their heads examined.

[rogervw]

It will take me a bit to get through all this, but much seems to have missed my point.

I think that secession/anarcy would be too weak to protect itself from tyrants.

Scissors beat paper.
Rock beats scissors.
Nuke beats traditional military

Then I want to be in the country with a nuke. 

I think it'd be great if we could all go about our merry lives without having to give the slighest thought to whether the government existed or not (assuming it does), because it is so unintrusive.

But it aint that way

But it could be

I guess what it really comes down to is this:
Do you feel that it is moral and necessary to point a gun at people who do not want to pay for the military your propose?

No I do not.  I feel that only a large enough group volunatrily supporting the milatry will be sufficient to protect me from tyrants that force their support.

However, I think you are wrong that an armed populace is not capable of repelling a foreign invasion.  Look at what has been done in Iraq by an insurgency, against the most powerful empire in history. 

This is the point I am making.  I want to be protected against the next most powerful empire in history.

I don't think it is right for me to resist evil by force, so ... yes.

Until there is no evil, sadly I will need force to protect myself from evil. 
And I will would also protect you from those same evils.

Thank you all for the repsonses.