I’m now re-reading Arthur Ekirch’s superb volume The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition. I wish that more conservatives would read this volume. If they would do so, many might abandon their strange belief that, while government interventions said to be aimed at improving the economy are typically rapacious, ill-considered, officious, arrogant, and fraught with ill unintended consequences, government interventions said to be aimed at protecting Americans from the threat of violence inflicted by foreigners are altruistic, wise, appropriate, essential, well-measured, and destined to achieve their stated goals (as long as, that is, sissy and cowardly Democrats and libertarians don’t undermine the government’s glorious crusade).
I always wonder what miracle occurs to transform the venal, myopic, hubris-slathered, office-greedy, often-corrupt, chronically uninformed, and interest-group-beholden politicians who cannot be trusted to spend taxpayer money on the likes of green-energy projects and farm subsidies into wise and highly informed Solons when they proclaim that their goal is to protect Americans from foreign threats.
Short of reading Ekirch’s volume, perhaps conservatives who trust the war-making state will read:
Sheldon Richman, or
Anthony Gregory, or
Chris Coyne and Abigail Hall, or
Bruce Fein, or
Better yet, read them all. Study them all.
