Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 21, 2008

In his Farewell Address, George Washington urged Americans to avoid both distant foreign entanglements and the ?overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.?

Such overgrown military establishments also destroy prosperity, since all government spending is pure consumption without productive economic benefit. Obviously, genuine defense is a legitimate undertaking. But the Pentagon, which now consumes 54% of all tax revenue, accounts for nearly half of the world?s cumulative military spending and dwarfs the expenditures of the next ten military powers combined.

MarketWatch commentator Paul Farrell points out that ?America?s economy is a war economy. Not a `manufacturing? ? `agricultural? ? [or] `service? economy.? Literally trillions of dollars have been spent on needless wars and to maintain an an overseas empire.

Repudiating that empire, and reducing military spending to genuinely republican dimensions, would have immediate benefits in terms of both liberty and prosperity.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.