Think of how many wars we've been in recently:

Iraq War
Afghanistan War
Libyan War
Operations in Africa
probably more that don't come to mind right now

Annnnnnnnnnd????? What of it?

What the fuck is your point? that there are wars? Of course there are wars.....and without the might of the US there would be MORE wars....

And what is the result of the wars that the US is involved in? In theory...a more just government? Democracy...or at least psuedo-democracy? A step towards?


As opposed to....dictatorship....brutality...slavery?

So you Anti-American assholes are for what? dictatorship? Slavery? What EXACTLY do you hare about us?

Wars cost a lot and that's another source of our debt.

So, now I'm Anti-American? Minus well move.

At the end of the Cold War the military-industrial complex went to great lengths to find a new enemy, and that enemy was found in radical Islam. The neoconservatives, who reached the peak of their power in the invasion of Iraq, the defense industry, and opportunistic politicians all leaped at the ability to diminish civil liberties and expand the police state by justifying these as measures against, as neocon Rick Santorum would state, "Radical Islamists." The U.S. military in the past ten years has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, is currently bombing targets in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, bombed Libya in an effort at regime change, and military engagements with Iran are looking increasingly likely. These policies aren't protecting world peace---they're undermining it.

jpgredsox -- no, you fucking idiot, - ISLAM sought out America! Pick up a fucking history book and look at how many US bases, ships, etc were attacked before the US EVER responded militarily!!

You fucking dumbass liberal college pukes need to learn your fucking history before you start mouthing off!

The fucking war in the Middle East was the result of attack after attack after attack by fucking muslin extremists. That you are either too stupid, or too ill-informed to grasp that REALITY means that you are just stupid and ignorant.

Go to hell....quit yoru liberal fucking blogs and read a REAL history book.

Yeah, nevermind the fact that our fucking secretary of state got up on the tv and said killing 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it." Nevermind the fact that we decided to place a U.S. base near one of Islam's most holy sites. Nevermind the fact that the U.S. had a tendency to support dictators (Iraq, Iran-Iraq War) and overthrow democratic governments to install dictators (Iran, 1953). How the hell should Middle-Eastern, mostly Muslim, civilians value America's "democratic government" when there is such a blatant double standard when America deals with their own people and countries.

You fucking moron....read you fucking history books. read about Pan Am flights that were hijacked. read about Islamic terrorism in the Olympics. You are such a fucking *ignorant* ducrebag it isn't even funny. \

You are one of the moronic jackholes that pretends that it was only western aggression *(what?? business??) that cuased Islam to lash out and KILL!!!!

You are a fucking retard, with *zero* sense of history, and who are just repeating the moronic mantras of your liberal teachers. God...how pathetic.

The question was not, "How do we recover the economy?" or "Does US involvement overseas result in a net benefit for US citizens?" The question was "How should we reduce our debt?" and "What departments should we eliminate?"

More spending on domestic stimulus or the military is only going to increase the deficit. We either need to raise taxes or cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. Why not remove the cap on social security taxable income ($110,100)?

ray, to answer your question, we shouldn't reduce our debt. The case point is Portugal. Portugal, like the other southern European economies, is in a lot of debt, but unlike Greece, is cooperating with the EU and making tons of austerity cuts. Because of this, its slipping into recession and its tax revenues are dropping. Maybe its simply re-stabilizing to a new level of government expenditure, but maybe it won't restabilize and will just keep sinking. The fact is that due to the weakness of the recovery so far, we can't really afford, economically, to do major austerity measures. If we do major cuts, we'll be like Japan in the 1990s, the US in the late 1930s, and countless other examples of governments cutting stimulus too soon. When the point is that we stop? Too soon to tell, in my opinion, but once we see the rest of the world conclusively picking up steam, then we can start initiating austerity measures.

Right now we are paying for the 2000s. Rule of thumb is in times of prosperity, your government should run surpluses so that in times of need it can run deficits. We ran deficits in times of prosperity and thus are in a tight situation now. Welfare payments make up the majority of the US budget, and any cuts that will be meaningful should come from there. Most of the departments are too understaffed already, and serve vital roles in the country. I don't want to see the FDA or any other regulatory bodies shut down by austerity.

@bolshoi - really, what do you find wrong with my argument? Give me a factual link, from a government website, proving that the Fed does what you say it does, and I might start to give credence to your argument. For the last person who had views like you I looked up the charter that founded the Fed and read off the exactly what I am telling you now (they still didn't believe me).

And it seems jpgredsox and krellin are having a nice International Relations Theory argument. The liberal vs. the realist.

Well, krellin just eliminated any chance I would have had at an intelligent argument with those who responded to my post.

But I will say that a large military budget stimulates the economy. (see Military Keynesianism) It takes a lot of people to manufacture war materiel, and those people will spend their paycheck on goods and services that benefit the rest of the economy as a whole.

I'm not trying to defend America's actions in Iraq. (Let's be honest, the other engagements besides Afghanistan and Iraq are trivial both in cost and loss of American life) The only indisputably justifiable war of the last 11 years is Afghanistan. We were attacked and responded to that attack with military force, which is a completely legitimate action for a nation to take.

I'm simply urging caution with regard to defense cuts. The military-industrial complex employs real people with real families with real hopes and desires, and defense cuts do hurt them.

'We either need to fully embrace freedom or fully embrace socialism.'

i deeply disagree with this view. but the previous point you made was 'we have rights' - you claim that Americans should only recognize rights based on the constitution and i think this may be flawed, the universal declaration of human rights is probably a better document.

Obviously you are free to disagree, and i am free to not live in america... but that's a seperate question.

Socialism and freedom are not opposites.

Communism as it appeared in Russia was authoritarian - big surprise there, most governments in russia are authoritarian, including the current one.

Authoritarianism is opposed to freedom.

Freedom however depends on your perspective. Taxation to provide for defence forces limits your freedom (by forcibly taking your money, whether you agree with defence policy or not) and enhances your freedom by allowing you to plan for the future in a secure country, and make certain assumptions - like assuming that your house will not be destroyed by bombs, so this is something which you can invest your money in.

Likewise, taxation to provide education/health care limits your freedom by taking your money away - likewise it enhances your freedom by making it possible to act under certain assumptions and make investments which you would otherwise not be free to make.

Now, you can prefer on type of freedom over another. But it very much depends on what you mean. I prefer to live in a society of people who choose to pay for education+medical care. (you can call it socialism if you like)

FYI: America prefers to act as a free-rider in the world by not educating their own people and offering foreigners a genius visa to supplement to come and work in America (i believe approximately 50% of the employees in silicon valley are foreign born)

@Krellin, i think you'll find that Osama Bin Laden choose to attack the US because he had failed to oust the American supported anti-Islamic regimes in the middle east, US military aid made targeting America rational.

If your argument is that Muslims would have attacked 'western values' regardless therefore we SHOULD be supporting people to repress them, then I think you have found a self-fulfilling position.

People will attack other people, yet we try to minimize the occurance of violence by providing a society which is deemed just by the majority. Thus those who are violent are seen as unjust and do not recieve the support of their neighbours...

This is not how the US is treating the Islamic world.

We will not be like Japan in the 1990s if we actually start cutting the deficit and work towards a balanced budget. In terms of monetary policy, we already are Japan in the 1990s, in that the Federal Reserve, which has pushed the limits of monetary policy to the point of heterodoxy in the forms of QE and QE2, has essentially pushed interest rates to 0% but the economy has remained sluggish. Austerity may be said to "hurt" the economy in the short term, but neglecting to cut the deficit and stop loose monetary policy will cause defaults in the long term and the destruction of the native currency through hyperinflaton (for America, the dollar). The American GDP-to-debt ration is, I believe, over 100%, which is pretty much danger zone. And truly the situation the global economy currently finds itself in is unprecedented---never have so many governments around the world held so much sovereign debt at one point in time.

@Gunfigther: you said 'I'm simply urging caution with regard to defense cuts. The military-industrial complex employs real people with real families with real hopes and desires, and defense cuts do hurt them.'

See that is a fair position to take, though you could equally take the position that defence spending could be re-allocated to education spending, and hope that a greater economic benefit would be obtained...

I guess medicare spending doesn't end up going to hard working doctors and pharma producers, who honestly work for their living and... yadda-yadda-yadda, what you said.

On the other hand, people will still pay for medical care (if they can afford it) when they are sick, so you will not see such a direct impact on the medical-industrial complex. How and ever, people spending their own money on medicine will be forced to not spend that same money in other areas of the economy... so basically someone has to suffer.

Any cuts would have this very same claim to caution, which as i've said is a fair position.

Now comparing the positive impact on the economy of those services, as was pointed out, global trade allowed by increased security benefits the economy, increased health and ability of workers to work benefits the economy, better education allows greater productivity which...

ok, so this problem gets pretty damn difficult....

"FYI: America prefers to act as a free-rider in the world by not educating their own people and offering foreigners a genius visa to supplement to come and work in America (i believe approximately 50% of the employees in silicon valley are foreign born)."

Of course, how we would characterize this is, America prefers to be the best and freest place in the world to live, where the most talented people in the world will naturally want to come work. :-)

@jpgredsox - I meant it in a loose sense, since the Japanese were almost set to recover in 1997 or so, but then cut back on expenditures and they slumped yet again. But you make some excellent points. I think almost every country in the world is in debt. That makes an economic recovery far more difficult than before. Believe me, I think we all have to tighten our belts, but we have to be careful at how quick we do it. So many people are unemployed still, and we don't want to add to that number.

Also, @orathaic, I think most Americans, or anyway krellin, probably don't use the word freedom as you are, and frankly, I don't think your use of it is ever helpful for clarifying things in political discussions.

Sure enough, one can apply the word to ANYTHING but adding a prepositional phrase afterward: "the freedom to wake up in your own jail cell every morning...." But I think the word is used here -- and, as an aside, makes the most sense -- to refer to a maximally unrestrained ability to act within the set of choices that physically confront one in life at each moment, without negative repercussions.

So for example, you give the example of certain government policies (health care policies, or perhaps propping up GM) as "expanding your freedom" to "make investments you wouldn't otherwise be able to make." This is a silly use of "freedom," though. Giving you different options through the use of force or constraint is not freedom, that is just control. Freedom is about giving you unfettered access to what options you may have.

As a rather artificial example, if a bunch of people were kidnapped and then put in a beautiful resort prison, given billions of dollars to spend how they chose (just so they didn't leave the grounds), many television channels, etc., then they would have been presented with many _options_, but they would not be very _free_ at all, even though you could say "They have been given the freedom to use all these beautiful resources," which otherwise they would not have had.

Or such, I think, is the best perspective on freedom. As you say, it's a matter of taste, but I certainly am happy to live in a land where this is how it's viewed, where practicable, and I'm proud to endorse the Constitution over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an altogether better model.

@smeck 'Of course, how we would characterize this is, America prefers to be the best and freest place in the world to live, where the most talented people in the world will naturally want to come work. :-)'

hey, i never said it was a bad/stupid policy :-) i just realised it could easily been seen in terms of a free-rider...

i guess if there would be no need for education if there is no-one competing with America (ie no-one else in the world existed) as then there would be no-one to fall behind.... (but perhaps individual states would try competing with each other... hmm)

Yeah, @ora, hopefully in that case the states would compete, as they already largely do. There's no question, though, many of our most talented people from time immemorial have been fresh off the boat. (I don't really view this just in terms of education, though. Proud as we might like to try to be, we're only, what, 4% of the world's population, and yet we've had more than 4% of the world's technological and scientific leadership in the last century. Given that there's no innate reason to expect talent to be concentrated here by birth, we're just going to have to steal people for that to work out, I'd think.).

@smeck, i suppose i was trying to highlight that there is more than one use for the word freedom.

but i don't think my definition is too far out, when i say something like "education provides you more freedom in choose of career", then i don't think i'm mis-using 'freedom', at least by your definition.

Equally, forcing people to pay taxes, because military spending need to be paid for equates to forcing them to live in an America which is secure and has many choices, but they have less of their own money to spend?? - is that not equivalent (not equal, just similar in qualities) to the kidnapping situation which you suggest (which i'll agree as a fair analogy)

Your kidnapping example demonstrates that it is possible to be free in one way by taking away another freedom... it seems like if i was born on that island, and never allowed to leave - upon being kidnapped and never being allowed to return if would also have had my freedoms eroded.

I think you are trying to simplify the concept, when i am trying to point out that it is not simple. I'm not telling anyone which values to prefer, just that alternatives exist.

And though you may prefer to live in a US, you do know that the US supported the Declaration of human rights: "Since the Declaration is not legally binding technically, there are no signatories to the Declaration. Instead, the Declaration was ratified through a proclamation by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948 with a count of 48 votes to none with only 8 abstentions. This was considered a triumph as the vote unified very diverse, even conflicting political regimes." (and the 8 abstentions were mostly Soviet Soclialist states, along with South Africa and Saudi Arabia)

'Given that there's no innate reason to expect talent to be concentrated here by birth, we're just going to have to steal people for that to work out, I'd think.).'

Both valid and perhaps commendable.

Though i don't know that the next century will leave the US in the same position as the last one did.

@orathaic, Well, that may be a passable use of the word freedom in some contexts, but I DO think it contradcits my definition of it.

And yes, so does taking your money to support a war. As I said, the US supports this type of freedom to the extent practicable -- it is not and never has been a libertarian utopia, so there is indeed some line-drawing. I was just trying to define the type of freedom we were discussing.

In the war example, of course, the calculation is that, at least in many cases, the freedom would necessarily end completely eventually if the US did not defend itself. Similar arguments might be made for some level of education, but there it's a little murkier. (Although not if the war is the Iraq war). Anyway, as I say, there's line drawing.

Oh, and I'm sure we did support the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. We've supported a lot of things I don't agree with that much.

hmm, well then i'm not sure how i can use the word freedom... but at least we are agreed that you have to draw a line somewhere... so to repeat my original point: the choice between Freedom and Socialism is a false one. (capitalization important)

You have to draw a line somewhere, but it is not simply lose all freedom and endorse socialism, or the opposite. There are many lines you could draw on the issues of medical care, education and military spending.

I might argue that an uneducated population will have very little freedom - either in terms of democratic choice or in possible job options; but at least we can agree that you have to draw a line somewhere and it can be in between both extremes.

@orathaic, I think it's clear how to use the word freedom -- simply be frank about the fact that freedom IS in conflict with such things as military spending, medical care, and the like, and then talk about where you want to draw that line.

Otherwise yes. The choice is not binary, but the two are in conflict -- opposite ends of a spectrum, I think.

America is broke, like it or not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ

Idk what you all are arguing about, but to quote William Wallace (Mel Gibson in Braveheart), "FREEDOM!"

'but the two [Freedom and Socialism] are in conflict -- opposite ends of a spectrum, I think.'

I'd almost put Anarchy on one end of my spectrum and Communism on the other, with some kind of Socialism and free market capitalism in between these two extremes...

but i don't see where Freedom is, is Anarchy the definition of Freedom which you are aiming for? Never-mind that you've agreed to draw the line somewhere else... I think there are things that i wouldn't be free to do in an anarchy...

I think freedom is more complex than just a simple one-dimensional line.

I would say more, orathaic, that complete freedom can't exist in an imperfect world -- anarchy is that direction, but you run into effects that destroy freedom if you head in that direction (kind of like making a lens aperture too small eventually starts actually destroying sharpness, due to diffraction).