Make Entitlements, Not War

on July 11, 2011

The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America’s annual conference recently held a workshop that called for an end to military spending and an increase in social spending. Baptist pacifist activists Thomas and June Dugdale presented their great concern for the national budget, taking many comments from their listeners. The reflections from audience members were just as telling as the lecture itself.

Before the presentation was even underway, Mrs. Dugdale reminisced, “The sixties were a golden age…Now the government’s zeroed in on social security, Medicare, education, and poverty assistance.” One lady complained, “We send Israel $10 million a day and they send us back $8 million for weapons.” Another disparaged the American healthcare system with that of military-free Japan. Someone else asserted, “Congress is under the thumb of the military!” This is rather humorous since, according to the Article 1, Section 8 of Constitution, the military has its budget updated every two years by the legislative branch, which holds the power of the purse.

How does America solve these besetting problems and supposed public ambivalence? According to the workshop, the nation needs to cut off most, if not all, military spending and pour those funds immediately into welfare programs. Echoing the Tea Party strategy, the Dugdale’s proposed that liberal activists use small grassroots organizations to petition their representatives for this solution. The Christian Left mourns that America, nay, even the Democratic Party is not liberal enough.

The BPFNA audience all thought that American military spending is exorbitant. Mrs. Dugsdale thought that, in order to survive on the Hill, “you have to subscribe to the belief that America must rule the world.” Her concern about interventionism, the fruit of Manifest Destiny and the Cold War, finds some solid foundation. The workshop pointed to a joint report by Barney Frank and Ron Paul entitled “Debt, Deficits, and Defense: a Way Forward.” The paper recorded America’s massive military presence throughout the world. Such a presence is not only expensive, but also frustrates some local populations. Moreover, history teaches that nations which take on such global responsibilities tend to fall into calamity. Frank and Paul wished to cut some of this spending and help America step down as the worried gendarme of the earth. The report’s authors, particularly from the Paul camp, wanted to use the redirected funds to bolster home security for ports, the power grid, and cyber world as well as pay off America’s burgeoning debt and deficit.

This last measure is far from the minds of the Christian Left. Instead, these newly reclaimed funds need to be applied to invaluable programs. Environmental intervention, public education, social security, housing, medical coverage, and other forms of socialist welfare should all get a piece of the pie. Most importantly, the public revenues can be used to “make jobs” (always the golden standard for Keynesian economics). The meeting repeatedly touted this last point. Needless to say, these worried progressives never learned the important economic principle of the broken window fallacy. The taxes siphoned off for this government spending could have just as easily “made jobs” in the private sector, giving Americans more freedom. Because this money would be on the free market, the funds would be handled more frugally for the sake of staying in business. These private funds would also be used to alleviate poverty in more effective ways than a variegated dole. Anyone who believes the public, especially in a culture under Christian influence, cares nothing for the poor should study the history of private charities.

In their vocabulary, the audience held the assumption that the purpose of government is provision, not protection. Clear teaching in New Testament Scripture indicates more of the opposite. An official uses the ordained sword of government to be the minister of justice. To get around this point, religious liberals used the terms of “environmental justice” and “economic justice.” Although the former has some merit as a protection for natural resources and effective stewardship, it generally translates into old-fashioned radical environmentalism. The latter term, of course, hides the barren reality of government welfare, which history shows as unviable.

At the workshop, a more insightful attendee noted that a “fundamental issue of democracy is at stake. For a lot of military budgeting, there’s not a lot of knowing where the money is being sent, although some projects need to be a secret.” Much of military and contractors spending lies in a dark shadow, rather free of public investigation. That so much money goes to who-knows-what bothered the BPFNA. The great concentration of power is dangerous to a modern democracy. Whether ancient, medieval, or modern, stable-yet-free societies have sought some kind of separation of cultural and political powers. The concentration of monetary power and research in the military-industrial complex troubles the lover of liberty. That which is small and disbursed is less likely to tyrannize a nation. However, the leftist program also concentrates immense power in their cradle-to-the-grave welfare state. The government teaches the children, the government provides housing and jobs for adults, the government supplies healthcare, the government outlaws self-defense because it provides police forces, the government takes care of the aged. In this socialist dystopia, however, not only would the American citizenry be helpless against their own government, but against outside invaders as well.

 

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