Robert Curry, continuing his examination of our heritage from the Scottish Enlightenment, makes the case that John Locke’s role was less significant than that of the Scottish moral philosophers.
It’s only fair, however, to note that Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government articulated the underlying justification for the Declaration of Independence and, in that respect, was a powerful influence. Written in 1689, the Second Treatise established a legitimate basis for ousting tyrannical king James II, namely that a sovereign is answerable to a higher law, from which flow God-given natural rights; that when a sovereign contravenes those natural rights, he forfeits his right to rule.
John Adams’s cousin Samuel Adams employed Locke’s argument in creating the Committees of Correspondence among the thirteen colonies, the agency that brought together the first Continental Congress.
Locke and America
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Liberal-progressives, beginning with John Dewey’s progressive education in the 1920s and 30s, have opposed students’ learning specific subject matter. Students are supposed to have “experiences” working in groups, being conditioned for the future socialist society that is rapidly replacing our nation’s original constitutional individualism. This is what Dewey called education for democracy
Dewey specifically wrote that history is a dead subject that has no place in a modern, progressive school curriculum.
Liberal-progressives’ nirvana of economic equality can be attained only by reducing production of goods and services and by steadily inflating the money supply. Obama’s desire to impose cap-and-trade regulation to strangle the coal and petroleum industries and electric utilities is akin to a giant bludgeon that will flatten the economy, making us all equally poorer in the name of social justice.
Jeff Lukens provides perspective for the debate about reducing Federal deficit spending and its impact upon our nation’s military capabilities.
The Strategic Debate We Need To Have
By Jeff Lukens
The U.S. federal debt is our nation’s greatest strategic weakness. As the debt continues to grow, our military posture around the globe is threatened. Defense cuts are coming, and with that reduction must come a reduced mission. In this environment, what our nation’s strategic mission should be, and what the corresponding defense funding should be to meet that need, are open questions. They are questions that need to be openly explored by politicians and the American people alike.
In a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “A smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go fewer places and do fewer things.” Ever the public servant, Gates seeks to kindle a debate the country seems reluctant, but needs, to have. It would be an invitation to disaster if we kept the same mission with reduced funding, or a reduced force. By bringing the issue to the public forum, Gates apparently seeks to avoid that calamity.
The core Pentagon budget is now about $530 billion, and accounts for roughly 20 percent of federal spending, and roughly half of discretionary spending. Defense cuts are coming, that much we know for sure, and the easiest of them have already been made. Gates acknowledged that over the past two years, “more than 30 programs (weapon systems, etc.) were canceled, capped, or ended that, if pursued to completion, would have cost more than $300 billion.”
After a comprehensive review, the Pentagon hopes to find additional savings. Whatever those might be, however, they will not be enough to meet their goal of saving $400 billion over 10 years. The pressure on the Pentagon’s budget is part of the GOP’s larger effort to cut the overall budget deficit by $4 trillion over the same time period. To meet that goal, the Pentagon is already suggesting that military missions and troop levels be reduced.
For a historical perspective, our defense budget hit a postwar high of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 during the Korean War. At the height of Vietnam in 1968, it was 9.5%, and it was 6.8% in 1986 at the height of the Reagan buildup. In 2000, military funding reached the lowest point on 3.0%. Today, 10 years into the Global War on Terror, we are spending 4.7% of GDP on defense.
In the 1980s, the Army had 18 combat divisions. Today they have ten. Many of the Army’s weapons have already missed several rounds of modernization. Many of its soldiers are on their fourth or fifth tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the Army Reserves have been on repeated deployments overseas since 9/11 as well.
The Navy has been reduced from 600 ships in the 1980s to fewer than 300 today. They now have fewer ships than at any time since the First World War. In that same time, the number of tactical air wings in the Air Force has fallen from 37 to 20. And their planes are the smallest in number and the oldest in age, ever. The useful life of the tanks, artillery, planes, ships, and missiles that date to the Reagan buildup is ending, and the cost of replacing them is now far greater than it was back then.
Going forward, the challenge for Washington is to reach a political consensus that transitions our military capability and alliances, and meets the realities of the decades ahead. As a nation, perhaps the first question we must ask ourselves is what is so critical to our security that we are willing to go to war to defend it? Upon the answer to that question lie answers to how much military strength we need, and at what amount of funding will be needed to achieve it.
Once the Afghan War is over, we would hope to see U.S. troop levels reduced in the Middle East. In Korea, the South has twice the people, and many times the economy of the North. Moreover, Pyongyang has no Soviet Union or Maoist China backing them as in the past. We may also have an opportunity to reduce our commitment there.
And what is the necessity for a U.S. troop presence in Europe? The Red Army withdrew from Germany and the rest of Central Europe long ago. Our European allies are as wealthy as we are. And while they would rather push their defense responsibilities off on us, perhaps it is time for us to step back from there too. Should we really have U.S. troops stationed in places like Kosovo? Maybe we should let the Europeans handle these places on their own.
Our military footprint is shrinking because we are broke, and we must make hard choices about what is important to our nation’s security. Some have said we should not partake in any more wars where we must endlessly explain our reasons for being there to the American people. In this time of austerity, perhaps that is the right approach.
The old axiom that peace comes through strength has not changed. When a crisis comes, we could be forced to pay in blood and treasure many times over what we save today in downsizing our military. Clearly, we must be smart about downsizing our military and optimizing its strength while undergoing this process. Our decisions today will be consequential to when that day of crisis inevitably comes.
In his AEI speech, Gates said:
I am determined that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, where the budget targets were met mostly by taking a percentage off the top of everything, the simplest and most politically expedient approach both inside the Pentagon and outside of it. That kind of “salami-slicing” approach preserves overhead and maintains force structure on paper, but results in a hollowing-out of the force from a lack of proper training, maintenance and equipment - and manpower. That’s what happened in the 1970s - a disastrous period for our military - and to a lesser extent during the late 1990s.
The biggest items in the federal budget are Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. It is unlikely we will reach any long-term bipartisan budget deal without cuts to all three. So Defense cuts are coming, and the 2012 campaign season is as good a time as any to air this issue publicly. As Gates said, “Part of this analysis will entail going places that have been avoided by politicians in the past.”
The President, the Congress, and the American people should openly decide which commitments and capabilities America should maintain, reduce, or abandon. It is a debate we need to have. Typically, most pols would kick this thorny issue down the road. In one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates has brought this vital issue to the forefront of the public attention. His service to the nation is commendable. Let the debate begin.
Jeff Lukens is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He can be contacted at http://www.jefflukens.com
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Since the imposition of socialism on our nation by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, labor costs have been kept at artificially high levels, imposing an unnecessary hurdle to higher employment. Democrat/Socialist support for labor unions and minimum wage legislation was intended to help workers, but consistently has had the opposite effect. Ironically, even the New York Times agrees (up to a point).
Blame in on the ignorance inherent in the materialistic religion of socialism.
Free markets adjust prices to reflect continuously changing supply and demand. Free markets are a source of true information. Government interventions such as Obama’s various “green” subsidies, taxes, and regulations, along with the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies, deliberately obscure the truth of underlying supply and demand, aiming to control consumers’ behavior.
Small wonder that the government’s Keynesian economic interventions have left private businesses uncertain about true underlying market conditions. Small wonder that the economy remains mired in the worst recession since similarly wide and deep tinkering under the Nixon and Carter administrations.
Regarding the pursuit of economic truth, read Robert Higgs’s essay on the Independent Institute website.
Quote:
Much modern economic theory, for example, has been used to justify government intervention in the free-market process. We might pause to reflect that this process, which operates as a price system or, seen from another angle, as a profit-and-loss system, is simultaneously a way of revealing the truth. Thus, for example, a price established on the free market communicates true information to all potential market participants about the exchange value of a good or service relative to other goods and services. If the government places an excise tax on a good, thereby diminishing the quantity demanded and raising the market price, potential buyers now react to a false signal of the good
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