If war truly creates prosperity through sales of munitions and war materials, why not engage in continuous full-scale war since that would most certainly guarantee unending prosperity. The country could hold hands together and jump for joy as to how much wealthier we are by devoting precious resources to the production of things that will ultimately be destroyed. The country should also engage in the destruction of entire towns and razing of cities so they can all be rebuilt and generate new shovel-ready public works programs! The possibilities are endless!

You're quite right. The myth that military spending is good for the economy is just another version of Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy. It drives me up a wall when I hear otherwise intelligent people repeat it.

The U.S.S.R. spent twice as much per capita as the U.S. on military outlays during the Cold War. President Reagan jacked up "defense" spending in the 1980s to counter the Soviet threat, which he claimed had grown under the Carter Administration's "disarmament" policies. After eight years of trying to keep up with Reagan's defense build-up, the U.S.S.R. unravelled. Movement conservatives still credit Reagan with ending the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union.

So, on the one hand, the Soviets' military spending led to their demise. But at the same time it makes the U.S. more prosperous. People hold both positions--apparently in separate, watertight compartments of their brains.

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. -Abraham Flexner, educator (1866-1959)

Pace Abraham Flexner, nations, i.e., governments, are all too happy to borrow—to say nothing of tax and counterfeit (via central bank “quantitative easing”)—for both war and education. The U.S. spends as much as the rest of the world combined for “defense,” and it still spends more per capita on education than do the enlightened, social-welfare states so esteemed by our chattering classes. Indeed, it betrays an astonishing naiveté to believe otherwise. Without their indoctrination camps (the so-called public schools), U.S. elites would be hard-pressed to brainwash the masses into so blithely embracing the permanent regime of war and empire—and all the futility, expense and (as the events of 9/11 demonstrated) very real dangers it entails.

The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God. -Andrew Dickson White, diplomat, historian, and educator (1832-1918)

The fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of Truth. Belief in God is not the sine qua non of fanaticism. History's bloodiest dictatorship was an officially atheist state.

Closer to home, I am reminded of evolutionists, hellbent on putting the kibosh to creationism, who enlist State Departments of Education in campaigns to padlock "unlicensed" schools and harass home schoolers. Remarkably, these Darwinian jihadists fancy themselves open-minded.

Rush was also saying that this trial will give Al Qaeda access to classified information. At the very least, they will be given names of all the informants of the people who were working with the military to get these terrorists.

I have no doubt that Obama and Holder are Al Qaeda terrorists themselves.

You can say Obama and Holder are terrorists, but I don't think they're al-Qaeda terrorists. Obama has no qualms siccing unmanned drones on wedding parties in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His targets differ from al-Qaeda's, but he happily embraces the collateral damage concept nonetheless. Sounds like a terrorist to me.

Obama's a multiculturalist too. The categories--terrorist and multiculturalist--are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, every U.S. president since at least FDR has been a multiculturalist and terrorist to some degree. I'd like to believe Carter and Reagan, both of whom seemed to pay more than mere lip service to their Christian beliefs, weren't multiculturalists. But they were certainly terrorists. I don't mean only in the "happily embraces collateral damage" sense of the word. I mean in the shallow, mainstream media sense of the word, i.e., they forged an alliance with real-live, MSM-defined terrorists!

Remember? Carter and Reagan provided military and financial support to al-Qaeda in Afgahanistan from 1979 to 1989. If al-Qaeda's a terrorist outfit now, what were they then? And what does that make Carter and Reagan? With good reason does the inimitable Gore Vidal call the U.S.A. the United States of Amnesia!

This is in response to Joe Ureneck's 11/13/2009 Examiner.com column "Fort Hood: Just the Beginning."

It is not at all "uncertain what the repercussions will be to the economy overall" if the U.S. abandons its morally and fiscally bankrupt empire and pursues a foreign policy of noninterventionism. Military Keynesianism--like Keynesianism in general--is a fraud. Yes, in the short run, there will be economic dislocation as troops come home and military contractors lose business. But the funds required to support those troops and contractors are extracted from the wealth-generating civilian economy in the first place: they are either taxed, borrowed or counterfeited (via Federal Reserve Bank "quantitative easing"). Taxing, borrowing and counterfeiting impoverishes the many for the benefit of the few. Return those funds to the productive private sector of the economy, and American companies can once again compete in world markets. American employees can once again enjoy a thriving job market. And American consumers can once again buy goods and services they can really use--instead of buying bombs and rockets and foreigners' undying enmity.

We live in politically correct times, but Muslims aren't necessarily beneficiaries of it. Nine Eleven changed all that.

The chattering classes once viewed Islam as Oriental: it was mystical, laid-back, exotic, enchanting and even hip. Its recurring clashes with Euro-Christianity only elevated it in their eyes. Alas, the Mohammedans sicced hijackers on the Twin Towers and Pentagon on that fateful day. As the symbols of state-directed, forced-to-be-free, welfare-warfare “capitalism” came down, so too did the semi-esteem in which the *bien-pensants* held the Mohammedans.

One may now defame Muslims in polite company with impunity. They have joined southern whites, Catholics, Baptists, Germans and, indeed, Euro-Christians in general among the eternally accursed. For it is only in advancing the unique monstrosity of such condign pariahs that we may usher in a New World Order of peace, harmony, democracy, economic justice, mandatory flu shots and publicly financed baseball stadiums.

Killing in the name of God is evil. Killing in the name of the Great God Democracy is at worst a necessary evil. Hence the One Indispensable Nation's interminable campaigns of uplift, which it wages only as a last resort, while shedding crocodile tears over the inevitable collateral damage, yet secure in the knowledge it acts only to advance a Greater Good: liberating women from their burqas, toppling dictators it previously supported, smashing fascism, containing communism, exporting democracy, and ensuring the flow of oil to thankless allies.

Reason has triumphed over Medievalism. Homicidal humanitarianism rocks! We’re all Lincoln’s children now.

Dear Ms. McQuoid:

You're right: the illustrative lentiginous face is beautiful. So forget the angel kisses. Tell your daughters the average heterosexual male finds redheads ravishing. Redheads are hot! Can you or your daughters really believe otherwise?

A redhead commands attention. A redhead looks smart, sexy, down-to-earth and exotic all at the same time. A redhead looks striking in green. Nobody but a redhead looks good in brown. In fact, a redhead looks really good in brown. For some reason or other, redheads seem to be disproportionately represented among the...ahem...stacked.

Redheads have a lower threshold for pain. (It's true: ask any dentist.) Do they have a keener sense of life's tragic-comic dimensions? It sounds reasonable enough to me.

Cheers,

Tony Pivetta
Royal Oak, Michigan

Dear Mr. Pivetta,

It is fair to say my father quite agreed with you. My mom was an instant hit with his mother too, who was crestfallen when the offspring (me) did not turn out with red hair. It skipped a generation and my first daughter got all the desired attributes. (Along with her grandmother’s quick temper too --LOL!) I think the only reason we are not having to beat the boys off is because she is so smart it’s intimidating to her male peers in school.

The “angel’s kisses” were the creative device appropriate for when my daughters were in preschool and early elementary. Couldn’t really talk about being “hot” at that age.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. Most replies were, like yours, quite positive although not all. One guy said I was “overly sensitive” and needed “to lighten up” -- LOL! I doubt there is anything to say that could enlighten that sort of attitude.

Take care, and have a wonderful day.

Meredith McQuoid-Greason

I am reminded of FDR's use of this term while thumbing his nose at the U.S. Constitution's clearly stated constraints on the powers of his office. He insisted the crises of his day--the First Great Depression, the wars in Europe and the South Pacific--demanded a new paradigm. Never mind that he himself had had much to do with precipitating them! Later--and, for that matter, earlier--presidents proved just as keen to treat this purported social contract as "just a [expletitive deleted] piece of paper," in George W. Bush's elegant phraseology. But a government without constraints is a lawless government. That's why the word anarchy is so misleading: anarchists oppose the State precisely because of its innate tendency to grow lawless. In the immortal words of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, responding to antiwar protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, "The police aren't here to create disorder; they're here to preserve it."