Cross posted at OpenLeft
Something has been nagging me about the primary campaign of 2008 among the Democrats: The lack of direct critiques of conservatism. Both the brand, and the ideology.
Today, Glenn Greenwald crystalized one salient aspect of that, in the bi-partisan consensus on Defense spending:
Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. "Only" about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries' defense budgets.
And this gap between us and the rest of the world has widened considerably over the last 10 years. That's true because our own military spending, in absolute terms, has increased wildly during that time:
My immediate response (in Glenn's comments section) was to post two of the most important speeches ever given on this subject:
Eisenhower, "Cross of Iron" Speech, 1953:
What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
RFK, University of Kansas, 1968:
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife. And the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Now both are gut wrenching and leave me wanting to stand up and cheer, even now. What makes it gut-wrenching is that these sentiments are needed now more than ever.
These sentiments are the essence of liberalism's reluctance about military spending, even today. It's why we're painted as "soft"; soft on defense, terror, drugs, crime, immigration, commies, reds, hippies, dippies and the pod-people too. Because at the core, we know most of this is just a waste of effort and resources, and this security-paranoia mindset that conservatives have is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So that's what nailed the thought it my head. We're not confronting the ideological and psychological underpinnings of conservatism properly, which is why we find ourselves just trying to slow down the trainwreck rather than change tracks.
And the Democratic candidates aren't confronting this directly either. I know Edwards speaks well on economic populism, greedy military contractors but I find he is generally addressing symptoms, without speaking to the core issues which lead to the thinking that makes the conservative world-view appealing.
In this case, it really is all about the deeply pessimistic and cynical conservative mentality that views the entire world as a highly dangerous and threatening place, something to fear and constantly work to protect oneself against. It is a world full of machievellian manipulators and schemers, against whom one can only succeed by outscheming them, and by being willing to sink lower than them, or to outstrip them at their own games.
This is the core of why Republicans love torture and care nothing for bombing lots of brown people. There can be no floor below which standards of behaviour cannot drop because that would give away an advantage to the adversaries, who will surely gain an edge over us if we unilaterally give up on torture.
There can be no ceiling to military expenditure, or the number of police, the length of prison sentences or the absurdity of the war on drugs. Any relenting in any of these will give breathing room to the various monsters in the closet that conservatives spend their whole lives in terror of.
This is what we need to address, the conventional wisdom that needs to change.