The Question Behind the Question

The moderator essentially asked, “You want to cut defense spending and there are 6 military institutions in South Carolina. Shouldn’t people in SC be worried about their jobs?” Paul correctly differentiated between militarism spending and defense and accurately mentioned bring the troops home would leave bases open here instead of opening them overseas. This would save American jobs.

This was asked during the South Carolina debate. I do think it was Ron Paul’s best response on his foreign policy position in a debate this year. However the philosophy behind the question is worrisome.

The moderator assumes something with this question: we need war to keep people employed. We need to have a big gov’t or people won’t have jobs. I hope you see the problem here. The fundamental flaw of big government is revealed in this question. People become dependent on the gov’t. To cut the gov’t would “bite the hand that feeds them.”

This is in part, why we have a huge out of control gov’t and foreign policy. The Military Industrial Complex is controlling our policy just as Eisenhower warned. We need to use bombs so we have to make more and people will need to make these new bombs…so they have jobs!

When a huge percentage of the American population either is on direct welfare or indirect through employment you cannot cut gov’t. So instead politicians play politics over $38 Billion while we accumulate a debt of $1.5 this year alone. This is why we are in the mess we are in as a country!