Pull the Plug

That's Charley Reese's advice on the "war state and empire" that's replaced the Old Republic of the Founders. Instead of armed neutrality, we have endless war. Instead of a beacon of liberty, we have the world's greatest cause of instability and chaos. DC's endless intervention has rippled into the lives of millions, spreading disorder and misery everywhere. Including the Middle East:

Sixty years after its founding, Israel is still at war with most of its neighbors precisely because it has no incentive to make a sensible peace. Why should it? It has its American attack dog.

And we know what attack dogs are going to do, no matter how you try to reform them. They will continue to behave the way this one did in Christopher Durang's wacky play "Baby With the Bathwater." After a ravenous dog noisily gulps down a slab of red meat, its owner observes:

It really loves meat. I'm a vegetarian myself. I tried to make the dog eat bean sprouts and broccoli once for a while, but it didn't work out.

Of course it didn't work out -- he wants his red meat, period.

So how do we "pull the plug" on the war state and empire? Well, here's the first step: we first have to grasp that as long as we have an empire, we will have a war state.

Attack dogs will attack. And they'll wolf down all the red meat they can catch. As Robert Higgs wrote recently:

How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 different foreign countries be anything other than an imperial power? The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct operations from them, not to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and Marines aboard the U.S. warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; intimidation is the game.

Thinking we can simply reform a political entity as overgrown as the United States is of the same mindset as those wimpy NC legislators who imagine we can stop the growth of illegal immigrant gangs without stopping the flow of illegal immigrants.

In both cases, we have to go for the source of the problem. As long as so much unchecked power and treasure is allowed to centralize in DC, it will tempt and beckon those who crave that kind of power. And they will use it.