The "Tea Party" movement has received a lot of media coverage in the last year, their rallies around the country giving the Republicans a shot in the arm while frustrating liberals.
Tomorrow, April 15th, the Tea Partiers will be in Union Square in downtown San Francisco for "tax day" from 4-7 pm (the official website is here).
I share many, many grievances with many of the Tea Party protesters (opposition to Obamacare and the size of the federal government) and almost though about attending. Almost. Then I saw who the guest speakers are going to be and was reminded of the hypocrisy of the Tea Party movement.
Melanie Morgan and Officer Vic--right-wing talk show hosts for KSFO 560 AM here in San Francisco--will be addressing the rally, which should make supporters of limited government cringe.
I first started listening to Vic and Morgan (and others at KSFO) on the radio about three years ago, and their commentary tends to be dominated by war-cheering, suppression of civil liberties, torture, Muslim and Arab bashing, and a monotonous "support" for the troops in the same breath as "limited government" and "free markets."
This is the inherent contradiction of the Tea Parties: the desire for a smaller government but a stubborn and nationalistic support for war and the military.
As the progressive author David Lindorff explains, warfare is a government program, and in terms of expense and damage, the worst of them all:
The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out war footing.
This military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53% of total US federal spending.
It’s also a military budget that is rising at a faster pace than any other part of the budget (with the possible exception of bailing out crooked Wall Street financial firms and their managers). For the past decade, and continuing under the present administration, military budgets have been rising at a 9% annual clip, making health care inflation look tiny by comparison.
US military spending isn’t just half of the US budget, though. It is also half of the entire global spending on war and weaponry. In 2009, according to the venerable War Resisters League, US military spending accounted for 47% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and military preparedness (it's probably closer to 50% now). What makes that staggering figure particularly ridiculous is that America’s allies--countries like France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan--account for another 21% of the world’s military spending. Fully 12 of the top-spenders among big military-spending nations are either allies of the US, or are friendly or completely non-threatening countries like Brazil and India. That is to say, America and its friends and allies account for more than two-thirds of all military spending worldwide.
I would argue that 53% is a very conservative estimate since this budget doesn't include expenditures on overseas bases or the projected costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But even at Lindorff's numbers, a government that eats $716 billion a year is not a small government.
Not only is a large military establishment incredibly expensive, but it's a consumer of souls: the piles of skulls, the minds of young soldiers, and of constitutional republics*. As James Madison put it:
Of all the enemies to public liberty 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. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .
The Tea Party movement was originally an offshoot of Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign; a libertarian and populist resistance to big government at home and abroad. Unfortunately, conservatives and Republicans have attached like power-hungry leeches to it, saturating the airwaves and blogosphere with their obsession with war.
This mingling with the GOP can only spell trouble for the Tea Partiers (or anyone else concerned with the leviathan in DC):
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Clash of the Teatans | ||||
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*Perpetual war has other dangerous consequences at home as well. As the stubborn Clio, the Greek muse of history, reminds us, empires inevitably turn inward.
One of the least discussed aspects of America's enormous warfare state is the militarization of domestic law enforcement. The Pentagon has centralized what has traditionally been local police functions by funding police departments with high-tech weaponry and encouraging massive displays of force and aggression. This has led to events such as this unprovoked and brutal beating of a University of Maryland student. Thanks to the empire, incidents like these are not the exception, but the rule:
Comments
Your headline is all that the reader needs to know to determine the biased point of view the article will have. Also, the video is unrelated to the poorly written column. I don't see your career taking off any time soon.
Hahaha.......exactly what I thinking.
Ron Paul invented the Tea Party. Right on the wars, right on the dollar, right on freedom. I will be there to rep Ron Paul movement, we won't go away. It was never about the man, he was the conduit.
"Not only is a large military establishment incredibly expensive, but it's a consumer of souls: the piles of skulls, the minds of young soldiers"
I stopped reading right there. You were making good points up until then. Us military families know what we were getting ourselves into; the "troops are victims" trope is old. It may be easy to say that you don't think the military is necessary from your comfortable San Francisco condominium, but others in the world are not as fortunate. I am amused that the people calling for intervention to stop genocide in Darfur are also the same people advocating for cutting the military. Which one do you want? I don't think the Janjaweed militias will stop if you threaten to join a Facebook protest group on your iPad. You can say that we should change our foreign policy; that is a legitimate argument, but your rationale of "military bad, less military good" is silly.
Good article. Government, of any sort, is the mortal enemy of liberty. The Tea Partiers have forgotten that fact (if they ever knew it). Support for government- defense of government interests- is support for tyranny.
Military spending is not 53% of the budget, the 2011 budget proposal is 3.69 trillion and total military expenditures are 738 billion, thats only 20%. I cant post the link here, but a simple google of 2011 federal budget proposal brought me to the ny times article.
Expensive as it may be it is also extremely necessary if Americans wish to continue being the worlds leader for humanitarian relief and security for areas devastated by natural disasters and violence, not to mention secure itself from attacks abroad and protect our networks throughout the world. Make no mistake, with the exploding economic activity in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, the world needs strong leadership to facilitate the transformation of our liberal trade order if it is to remain free. After all, what better way to protect freedom than to spread it anywhere and everywhere?
The federal government should be spending 100% on the military and 0% on everything else, how about we get back to State's rights and leave the federal government to protect the country like it was meant to.
face it robert, whatever republicans/conservatives do you will be there to bash them.
as long as sarah palin is in the head of this, pretty face, nice bod, nylon legs, all other political figures who are old through too much thinking (like they actually affect something), then I say, let's go with it. politicians are old because they're career minded, not necessarily into helping this nation's unemployed or providing national healthcare.
It is the role of the federal government to fund the defense of the nation. Your idea that the Tea Party's support for "the nationalistic policy for war and the military" is way off base. It is the Constitutional role of the Federal government to defend the nation. Would you have preferred if we let Europe and the rest of the world become a one nation fascist government? Perhaps you would. The discussion of the correct military policy in any given situation is different from your idea that the military is somehow the government's single largest porkbarrel handout. At the same time that doesn't mean we shouldn't heed Eisenhower warning about the military industrial complex.
Hey, pinhead, The "Tea Party Movement" is exactly what it says it is: an outgrowth of the original Independence Movement. Do the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." ring any bells with you?
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