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When Our Politicians Buy Never-Ending War, We Get What They Make Us Pay For

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Men of US 64th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, celebrate the news of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Public Domain
Men of US 64th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, celebrate the news of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Public Domain

In 1954, Congress passed, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed, a bill transforming Armistice Day — November 11, a post-World-War One celebration of peace — into Veterans Day,  a celebration of warriors.

Personally, I stick to the original name and the original purpose in my observation of the holiday. Looking at the numbers involved, though, it’s little wonder I find myself swimming against that particular tide.

In 1860, the US armed forces comprised 27,958 soldiers, sailors, and Marines. That figure jumped by six figures each year throughout the Civil War to a high of 1,000,692 by 1865 — after which it fell to less than 40,000 a decade after that conflagration’s end.

Similarly, after growing to a strength of nearly 3 million for World War One (1917-18), the armed forces found themselves less than a tenth that size by 1928.

The post-World-War-Two establishment didn’t maintain that tradition. While there was indeed shrinkage from the wartime high of 12 million, the number has never since fallen below 1.3 million — a third again as many as put down half a seceded continent in arms, while simultaneously conquering the far west, 80 years before.

US military spending followed the same track. Prior to World War Two, outside of wartime or preparation for obviously impending war, US “defense” spending seldom exceeded 2% of Gross Domestic Product and only once (in 1936) topped 3%. Since World War Two, it’s never gone BELOW 3% — since the second year of this century it’s never gone below 4%.

For some, though, too much is never enough. The Heritage Foundation warns that “[a]s currently postured, the U.S. military continues to be only marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”

What are those “vital national interests?” Heritage defines them in terms of “a return to long-term competition with major powers, explicitly naming China and Russia as primary competitors” and “[s]ufficient military capacity to deter or win against large conventional powers in geographically distant regions.”

That’s a far cry from Thomas Jefferson’s “essential principles of our government”: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations: entangling alliances with none.”

It’s also a repudiation of John Quincy Adams’s 1821 description of an America which “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

As the US Senate considers the latest National “Defense” Authorization Act, Congress clearly intends to bestow more money, not less, on the armed forces. And this despite the end of America’s ruinous 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan.

That’s not just fiscally irresponsible, it’s physically dangerous to the very people “Veterans Day” purports to honor and the peace Armistice Day was intended to celebrate.

As Abraham Maslow wrote, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

The continued maintenance of armed forces many times as large and expensive as any plausible claim of “national defense” could justify results in the use of those armed forces for everything but their supposed purpose.

It’s time to cut the US military budget, deeply. That’s not enough to achieve lasting peace, but it’s the necessary first step.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The Metaverse: Gateway to Unanimous Consent and Panarchy?

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Metaverse Roadmap, by cogdogblog. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Metaverse Roadmap, by cogdogblog. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

It’s official: The company that runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has a new name, Meta Platforms, Inc. The company’s focus, according to its introductory announcement, “will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.”

The metaverse is a decades-old concept. Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, but versions of it appear in much earlier speculative fiction. Think of it as virtual reality on steroids, a computer/Internet environment into which humanity could, and might, effectively move most of its social activities.

To some, this sounds utopian. Others (especially writers of fiction) treat it as at least potentially dystopian. Either way, it’s coming, and the political possibilities are intriguing.

Throughout history, politics has enslaved, and found itself enslaved by, geography. Under feudalism, “borders” shifted with the claims of hereditary lords. These days, state “sovereignty” shifts borders through negotiation or war. Either way, those who don’t dispose of hereditary, electoral, or militarily enforced lordships are considered bound to whichever political paradigm prevails within the geographical borders surrounding their homes.

For example, if one lives in Florida’s 3rd US House District (as I do), one is  “represented” in Congress by US Representative Kat Cammack (R-FL), even though she received votes from only 29.3% of the district’s population, and even though 42.8% of those who bothered to vote preferred her Democratic opponent.

If  our major social and commercial activities can be moved entirely online — and that’s where we’re headed, metaverse or not — there’s no particular reason why our political activities should remain constrained by geography.

It’s time to de-link representation in current institutions from physical location. I may have more in common with two friends who live a thousand miles from me, in opposite directions, than with the neighbors who live on either side of me. Why shouldn’t I share a representative with the former rather than the latter?

Simply set a minimum representation number — for example, one million — and any candidate who gains the endorsement of that minimum goes to Congress, with a vote weighted by number of constituents (e.g. a US representative with two million supporters gets two votes).

One major advantage of electing representatives at large rather than by geographic district in this way is unanimous consent. Instead of the notional support of 29.3% of a district’s population and 57.1% of its voters, each representative would enjoy the express support of 100% of his or her constituents.

It’s also time to reconsider the institutions themselves. Amid much talk of a “national divorce” that lacks any clean geographic component (even the “bluest” states boast significant “red” populations and vice versa), any potential breakup of the United States would necessarily require localization and decentralization of power rather than trying to fit new wine into old borders.

The metaverse may ultimately prove itself a doorway to panarchy — competing governments chosen by, rather than imposed on, each person, without regard to geography. And from such a position, we might find our way to the end of political government entirely.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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When It Comes to Legislation, Reading Should Be Fundamental

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Employees of the United States Government Printing Office, printing the Federal Budget (2009). Public Domain.
Employees of the United States Government Printing Office, printing the Federal Budget (2009). Public Domain.

“Congress is gradually moving toward having only one bill per year,” former congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) tweeted recently. And that bill will have “everything stuffed into it, negotiated by just a few congressional leaders, completely behind closed doors, with no floor amendments permitted.”

Amash presumably has the current “infrastructure” bill in mind. Weighing in at more than 2,700 pages and chock-full of stuff only tenuously (if at all) related to infrastructure, it’s more of a leadership-negotiated door stop than an honestly debated policy proposal.

It’s hardly the first such bill. The Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, also weighed in at about 2,700 pages, but entailed another 20,000 pages of rules and regulations to implement. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) infamously said, Congress had to “pass it to find out what’s in it.”

If there’s anything worse than a law passed by Congress, it’s a law passed by Congress that no one, even Congress, knows the contents of. Many big bills end up on the floor for debate and voting before they’re complete enough to be printed and distributed to the people who are supposed to debate and vote on them.

Short of abolishing the federal government (now there’s an idea worth considering!), there’s probably no cure for bad laws. But there’s a cure, in three parts, for not knowing what’s in those bad laws.

The first part of the cure is called the Read The Bills Act. The RTBA was proposed by Downsize DC in 2006. It’s been introduced in the US Senate by Rand Paul (R-KY) six times, dying in committee each time.

The RTBA would require bills to be publicly posted at least 72 hours prior to Congress formally taking up those bills for consideration. The leadership log-rolling  production of “Infrastructure Week” has been dragging on for months now, so 72 hours of having the final product available/visible doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

Part two, also courtesy of Downsize DC, is the One Subject at a Time Act, which is exactly what it sounds like. Every bill would have to be about one thing. No more grab-bags full of unrelated party favors for every constituency under the sun in the name of “infrastructure” or “defense” or whatever.

Part three is a steroid shot for the Read The Bills Act. In my opinion, the bills should not just be “posted.” They should be read aloud on the floors of the House and Senate before they can be voted on.

Yes, every word.

Yes, every bill.

And if a member of Congress doesn’t sit through it, he or she doesn’t get to vote on it.

We’d quickly start getting  brochure-size legislation instead of encyclopedia-size legislation. And we’d be better off as a result.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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