PULL QUOTE: “Consider, for decades the U.S. has spent more than the next 16 competing nations combined, to build the most obscene military stockpile in human history. Convert that spending into something else that resembles sanity for just a few years, and the U.S. might become a nice place to live.”

From The Final Straw

We are all vigorously trained to think we need government. The principle argument for the necessity of government is that it keeps us safe. Curiously, it’s the greatest threat to our safety. In the U.S., we would be safer if the military didn’t exist.

On September 11, people flew planes into buildings. They didn’t do that in Canada or Belgium, Finland or Luxembourg. Those countries don’t have hundreds of military based around the world. Only the United States.

The people who took responsibility for the attacks cited the injustices of U.S. military incursions and occupations as their primary motivations. Absent a military, those attackers would have had no motive and the U.S. would have been as safe as Finland or Luxembourg. Continue reading →