The World's Policeman

[Brant Gaede]

The softie, Brant wrote:

While I'm frequently humorous I'm basically deadly serious and at this time and in the circumstances of my life I've no time for or interest in flame wars or attacking people.

From Rand, Ayn:

PLAYBOY: What about force in foreign policy? You have said that any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany during World War II . . .

RAND: Certainly.

PLAYBOY: . . . And that any free nation today has the moral right -- though not the duty -- to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other "slave pen." Correct?

RAND: Correct. A dictatorship -- a country that violates the rights of its own citizens -- is an outlaw and can claim no rights.

end quote

I will stop with the quotes there. Shoulda, Coulda, Oughta. What if Israel had satellite weaponry unknown to the rest of the world? Well, just one more quote.

From the AP and UPI:

Today, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and several other dictatorships were hit by small, mysterious asteroids that seem to have destroyed all their nuclear material without harming civilians.

The President, in a news conference, said it seems to be a strange coincidence. The Israeli ambassador declined comment except to say with a smile, “We decline comment.”

The ambassador would have expressed befuddlement and he wouldn't have smiled.

--Brant

[Mikee]

Many things are not purchased because one does not have the means. But I agree with Dennis Prager, I believe the United States has been a force for good in the world, perhaps not with the present administration. However, I don't think he, nor I, characterize this force for good as a "World Police". Simply by honoring our treaties with other democratic countries and looking out for our interest does not mean we are trying to force a set of laws on the rest of the world. Continuing to use the "World Police" is a straw man. Also, your pretense that a small number of people are receiving a benefit at the expense of many, in my previous post I indicated in my free capitalist society the opposite case would be true. The costs would be paid by the people who were willing to pay for it and benefit directly or indirectly. Like I said before, I don't care about free riders.

Whenever I think about it I am deeply offended that a regime like the present one in North Korea can exist. If it can exist there and no one is willing to do anything about it it can exist anywhere. Generations of people living as slaves to an insane dictator. This fact alone, the unwillingness to act to correct a monstrosity, damns the human race.

You are aware you are advocating altruism ("unwillingness to act") and collectivism ("damns the human race")?

--Brant

I'm sure you regard yourself as the cream of the crop regarding evolved humans. Would you contribute $100 to the overthrow of the regime in NK, if it would be replaced with a government at least as good as SK? No risk to yourself personally, just a hundred bucks?

There are several things I could say to this--and I've already deleted two--but I'll just let it pass.

--Brant

You are a disappointment.

[Darrell Hougen]

I'm not sure what a country that does not collect taxes would do to "encourage people in this country to have more children." Give them a gold-plated "Hero" badge?

Nothing. The idea you don't need children to take care of you in your old age because the government will do that job for them--the government provides the insurance--means you don't have children or as many. Such is the progeny of the welfare state in all the advanced economies I can think of.

Now, greater wealth from the free economy would also mean less need for children so the natural course of things--children not being needed on the farm any more--is fewer children. Over-population has a lot to do with poverty--and ignorance or religious nonsense. Go away and come back in a thousand years and there will likely be considerably fewer humans than today. People will still have children for the natural biological impulses and reasons and because, like horses, they like to have them around.

--Brant

great changes they are a-coming; history is accelerating

Francisco,

Brant is right. Eliminate the welfare state and you encourage children. Giving people a medal is not such a bad idea either. I jest not. Various movements have convinced many people that people in general are a burden on the environment and on society. I've read of women deciding not to have children in order to reduce or avoid increasing their carbon footprint. That's right, they are foregoing their own, personal happiness for the sake of the environment and to decrease global warming. They apparently don't feel like they or their children have a right to exist. And, while that may be extreme, there are certainly people who look askance at people that have had more than two children. It's just not socially acceptable any more.

One may question whether it is the province of the government to encourage population growth, but certainly we, as intellectual leaders, could be getting out the message that people, living in peace and freedom, are valuable to each other, that more people would help our economy and our military defense, that the environment can sustain many times the current population,and that new life is something to be celebrated rather than scorned.

Darrell

[Brant Gaede]

Many things are not purchased because one does not have the means. But I agree with Dennis Prager, I believe the United States has been a force for good in the world, perhaps not with the present administration. However, I don't think he, nor I, characterize this force for good as a "World Police". Simply by honoring our treaties with other democratic countries and looking out for our interest does not mean we are trying to force a set of laws on the rest of the world. Continuing to use the "World Police" is a straw man. Also, your pretense that a small number of people are receiving a benefit at the expense of many, in my previous post I indicated in my free capitalist society the opposite case would be true. The costs would be paid by the people who were willing to pay for it and benefit directly or indirectly. Like I said before, I don't care about free riders.

Whenever I think about it I am deeply offended that a regime like the present one in North Korea can exist. If it can exist there and no one is willing to do anything about it it can exist anywhere. Generations of people living as slaves to an insane dictator. This fact alone, the unwillingness to act to correct a monstrosity, damns the human race.

You are aware you are advocating altruism ("unwillingness to act") and collectivism ("damns the human race")?

--Brant

I'm sure you regard yourself as the cream of the crop regarding evolved humans. Would you contribute $100 to the overthrow of the regime in NK, if it would be replaced with a government at least as good as SK? No risk to yourself personally, just a hundred bucks?

There are several things I could say to this--and I've already deleted two--but I'll just let it pass.

--Brant

You are a disappointment.

All I have to do is fork over a hundred bucks at "no risk" "personally"?

Why are you imputing cowardice to me?

--Brant

[Darrell Hougen]

I'm glad the mere threat of war usually does the trick. This, I am sure, explains why the U.S. very seldom sends its troops abroad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations

I never said the U.S. rarely sends its troops abroad. I said that war was rarely necessary. But, sometimes you have to give tin horn dictators a kick in the shins to remind them that thuggery will not be tolerated. Also, when freedom movements blossom in other countries, it is usually in our interest to see that they are successful.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Many things are not purchased because one does not have the means. But I agree with Dennis Prager, I believe the United States has been a force for good in the world, perhaps not with the present administration. However, I don't think he, nor I, characterize this force for good as a "World Police". Simply by honoring our treaties with other democratic countries and looking out for our interest does not mean we are trying to force a set of laws on the rest of the world. Continuing to use the "World Police" is a straw man. Also, your pretense that a small number of people are receiving a benefit at the expense of many, in my previous post I indicated in my free capitalist society the opposite case would be true. The costs would be paid by the people who were willing to pay for it and benefit directly or indirectly. Like I said before, I don't care about free riders.

Whenever I think about it I am deeply offended that a regime like the present one in North Korea can exist. If it can exist there and no one is willing to do anything about it it can exist anywhere. Generations of people living as slaves to an insane dictator. This fact alone, the unwillingness to act to correct a monstrosity, damns the human race.

You are aware you are advocating altruism ("unwillingness to act") and collectivism ("damns the human race")?

--Brant

I'm sure you regard yourself as the cream of the crop regarding evolved humans. Would you contribute $100 to the overthrow of the regime in NK, if it would be replaced with a government at least as good as SK? No risk to yourself personally, just a hundred bucks?

There are several things I could say to this--and I've already deleted two--but I'll just let it pass.

--Brant

You are a disappointment.

All I have to do is fork over a hundred bucks at "no risk" "personally"?

Why are you imputing cowardice to me?

--Brant

Wow! I think you guys are just talking past each other. Mike, quit picking on Brant and Brant, quit being so sensitive. Sheesh.

Darrell

[Brant Gaede]

Mom was going to call me "Brant Sensitive Gaede" but the initials didn't work right.

--Brant

so she founded a sensitive nursery school for me to go to (Tucson Community School) still in business

[Mikee]

Many things are not purchased because one does not have the means. But I agree with Dennis Prager, I believe the United States has been a force for good in the world, perhaps not with the present administration. However, I don't think he, nor I, characterize this force for good as a "World Police". Simply by honoring our treaties with other democratic countries and looking out for our interest does not mean we are trying to force a set of laws on the rest of the world. Continuing to use the "World Police" is a straw man. Also, your pretense that a small number of people are receiving a benefit at the expense of many, in my previous post I indicated in my free capitalist society the opposite case would be true. The costs would be paid by the people who were willing to pay for it and benefit directly or indirectly. Like I said before, I don't care about free riders.

Whenever I think about it I am deeply offended that a regime like the present one in North Korea can exist. If it can exist there and no one is willing to do anything about it it can exist anywhere. Generations of people living as slaves to an insane dictator. This fact alone, the unwillingness to act to correct a monstrosity, damns the human race.

You are aware you are advocating altruism ("unwillingness to act") and collectivism ("damns the human race")?

--Brant

I'm sure you regard yourself as the cream of the crop regarding evolved humans. Would you contribute $100 to the overthrow of the regime in NK, if it would be replaced with a government at least as good as SK? No risk to yourself personally, just a hundred bucks?

There are several things I could say to this--and I've already deleted two--but I'll just let it pass.

--Brant

You are a disappointment.

All I have to do is fork over a hundred bucks at "no risk" "personally"?

Why are you imputing cowardice to me?

--Brant

The context is the "altruism" and "collectivism" you were imputing to me. Is it altruism and collectivism to want to right a wrong? Or to be distressed about great wrongs? My intention was to put it in perspective. If enough people were willing to do something, it need not be a sacrifice. I was not imputing cowardice to you, I was addressing "altruism", what is the minimum cost to avoid the evil appellation "altruism". These are the kind arguments libertarians have. No personal wrong is too slight to not offend a libertarian and no wrong is so great to get a libertarian off of his coach.

[Brant Gaede]

I was imputing it to your statement. I thought you had made a mistake, not that you were either of those things. You replied with a couple of insults. I admit that if you've never read my profile you would not likely know I spent a year fighting communists in Vietnam. I put it there because someone on OL kept babbling on about the glories of war to which I took exception.

--Brant

[Peter]

Brant wrote about my hypothetical Israeli ambassador:

The ambassador would have expressed befuddlement and he wouldn't have smiled.

Ah, you saw through my fake story. I think you are right, bonosodiumgaede (bsg for short.) Dem Jews be smart.

The Israeli spokesperson might also throw his current enemies off by suggesting that the asteroids are obviously a sign from Allah for the Iranians to mend their ways, or it could be, “Oy vey bubbies – duck! It’s alien, enemy action.”

Of course the obvious next alien step would be to destroy other nuclear stockpiles. Would the world be a better place without nuclear weapons? I think so – but not America’s – yet even then I don’t trust America’s flow towards statism, going back to the 1950’s. Still, we are the most moral country on earth along with all the other countries that protect individual liberties, so let’s rethink and upgrade our arsenal but never use it again unless attacked by an entity (not just a country) with nukes.

How many times have we attacked anyone without being attacked first? And look at Benghazi. We were attacked and we did squat. That was not right.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Your assumption appears to be the human behavior evident in a society where individuals are subjected to unprincipled coercion in every aspect of their lives will still be displayed when the coercive element is removed. You believe that basic human nature is mean spirited, self serving, grab whatever you can grab. How are you different than the liberal academics that believe human beings need to be forced to be good? You don't like the force applied to you personally, but you can't see anything good happening when the force is removed from everyone else. I believe differently, people in general will behave rationally unless coerced. Coercion in human relations is toxic, produces cynicism and uncooperative behavior. I think humans naturally cooperate for mutual gain given free choices. If you don't think trying to create a government where only honest people can govern or administrate is an answer, what do you propose? Otherwise I don't see a purpose in this discussion. The creation of the United States in the first place created an environment of astonishing human progress and wealth creation for quite a long time.

If I follow correctly, you argue that the abolition of bad laws in a society will remove any tendency towards coercive behavior in that society's members. Such an outcome would be not only wonderful but miraculous!

But should we really suppose that with the end of state coercion, there will no longer be a need for padlocks, security fences, burglar alarms and bank account passwords?

You put me in the same company as liberals who hold that people "need to be forced to be good." On the contrary, much of the left’s ideology derives from Rousseau who argued that man in his natural state is uncorrupted. Your own suggestion that a radical change in government would yield radical change in human nature resembles nothing so much as the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the Marxists. It was, after all, Friedrich Engels who promised that following the dictatorship of the proletariat, “The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away.”

To test that your theory that the minimal state will make people less predatory, we only have to look at the early history of the American republic. In the wake of the Revolution the federal and state governments were at their smallest size. If minimal government makes the citizens more moral, where did the people who pushed for the expansion of the government come from?

Where did the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion come from? Or the Alien and Sedition Acts? Or the Tariff of Abominations? Or national conscription? Or government counterfeiting?

How could a minimal state give us such “mean spirited, self-serving” Americans who sought power over the lives of others?

[Francisco Ferrer]

Francisco,

Brant is right. Eliminate the welfare state and you encourage children. Giving people a medal is not such a bad idea either. I jest not. Various movements have convinced many people that people in general are a burden on the environment and on society. I've read of women deciding not to have children in order to reduce or avoid increasing their carbon footprint. That's right, they are foregoing their own, personal happiness for the sake of the environment and to decrease global warming. They apparently don't feel like they or their children have a right to exist. And, while that may be extreme, there are certainly people who look askance at people that have had more than two children. It's just not socially acceptable any more.

One may question whether it is the province of the government to encourage population growth, but certainly we, as intellectual leaders, could be getting out the message that people, living in peace and freedom, are valuable to each other, that more people would help our economy and our military defense, that the environment can sustain many times the current population,and that new life is something to be celebrated rather than scorned.

Darrell

I asked how a country that does not collect taxes would encourage people to have kids. Your answer: stop welfare payments. Great.

And I suppose if that didn't work, the non-tax-collecting country could stop government-financed education.

And if that still didn't work, maybe the non-tax-collecting country could remove the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans that offer dependent coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26.

And perhaps if even this failed to produce a bumper crop of infants, the U.S. Department of Defense could institute future soldier breeding farms, "with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male," of course.

[Brant Gaede]

Francisco,

Brant is right. Eliminate the welfare state and you encourage children. Giving people a medal is not such a bad idea either. I jest not. Various movements have convinced many people that people in general are a burden on the environment and on society. I've read of women deciding not to have children in order to reduce or avoid increasing their carbon footprint. That's right, they are foregoing their own, personal happiness for the sake of the environment and to decrease global warming. They apparently don't feel like they or their children have a right to exist. And, while that may be extreme, there are certainly people who look askance at people that have had more than two children. It's just not socially acceptable any more.

One may question whether it is the province of the government to encourage population growth, but certainly we, as intellectual leaders, could be getting out the message that people, living in peace and freedom, are valuable to each other, that more people would help our economy and our military defense, that the environment can sustain many times the current population,and that new life is something to be celebrated rather than scorned.

Darrell

I asked how a country that does not collect taxes would encourage people to have kids. Your answer: stop welfare payments. Great.

And I suppose if that didn't work, the non-tax-collecting country could stop government-financed education.

And if that still didn't work, maybe the non-tax-collecting country could remove the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans that offer dependent coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26.

And perhaps if even this failed to produce a bumper crop of infants, the U.S. Department of Defense could institute future soldier breeding farms, "with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male," of course.

Yes, yes, yes and no, though I've never heard of a non-tax collecting country. What simply needs to be done is to stop paying prospective parents NOT to have kids.

--Brant

are we all talking about the same thing?

[Francisco Ferrer]

I'm glad the mere threat of war usually does the trick. This, I am sure, explains why the U.S. very seldom sends its troops abroad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations

I never said the U.S. rarely sends its troops abroad. I said that war was rarely necessary. But, sometimes you have to give tin horn dictators a kick in the shins to remind them that thuggery will not be tolerated. Also, when freedom movements blossom in other countries, it is usually in our interest to see that they are successful.

Darrell

Yes, now that I look at a list of U.S. conflicts called "wars," I see the number is quite small. You could count them on the fingers of your children's hands, provided that you have at least six children and none of them are missing any digits. Ah, but perhaps not all of those conflicts should be called "wars," a term some purists would reserve for big messy things like the conflagrations of the second and fifth decades of the 20th century. By that measure, the U.S. military has been asleep for nearly all of its existence.

I guess that in between the long naps, no one would mind a little tin horn kick ass just to keep our boys (and girls) in fine fettle. And if the toppling of the dictator happens to make it easier for an American fruit company or telecommunications company to turn a profit there, who's going to complain? Certainly not anyone who believes in laissez-faire capitalism, which requires a strict separation between state and business--but only in essays for popular consumption.

The world is flat, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells us. Or if it's not now, it will be as soon as the Pentagon does its worst. In this brave, new, shrinking world, every nation is just over our backyard fence. No country is too far flung to put U.S. Marines on the ground to unmuddy the waters, make folks stand in straight lines, and provide contraception or fertility clinics, depending on the goal of the moment.

Fortunately, those who hunger from their armchairs for new lands to be conquered by the DoD are in luck. A new champion of the American Soldier as World Policeman is on the stump, and he's telling it like it is:

I always start by reminding people that what happens all over the world is our business. Every aspect of lives is directly impacted by global events. The security of our cities is connected to the security of small hamlets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Our cost of living, the safety of our food, and the value of the things we invent, make, and sell are just a few examples of everyday aspects of our lives that are directly related to events abroad and make it impossible for us to focus only on our issues here at home.

[Mikee]

I was imputing it to your statement. I thought you had made a mistake, not that you were either of those things. You replied with a couple of insults. I admit that if you've never read my profile you would not likely know I spent a year fighting communists in Vietnam. I put it there because someone on OL kept babbling on about the glories of war to which I took exception.

--Brant

I was not insulting you and I did not intend to insult you. Again, I was responding to your "altruism" comment which implies sacrificing a higher value to a lower one which is recognized in objectivist circles as an evil, at least the proponents of such are evil. I provided an example of an action which could not be construed as such a sacrifice and carefully worded it so you would understand it. I know your history perfectly well as I've been on the board for many years and I have read your history. Thank you for your service. Do you still think I have advocated for altruism and collectivism?

[Selene]

I asked how a country that does not collect taxes would encourage people to have kids. Your answer: stop welfare payments. Great.

Not sure he actually heard/saw that...

[Brant Gaede]

I was imputing it to your statement. I thought you had made a mistake, not that you were either of those things. You replied with a couple of insults. I admit that if you've never read my profile you would not likely know I spent a year fighting communists in Vietnam. I put it there because someone on OL kept babbling on about the glories of war to which I took exception.

--Brant

I was not insulting you and I did not intend to insult you. Again, I was responding to your "altruism" comment which implies sacrificing a higher value to a lower one which is recognized in objectivist circles as an evil, at least the proponents of such are evil. I provided an example of an action which could not be construed as such a sacrifice and carefully worded it so you would understand it. I know your history perfectly well as I've been on the board for many years and I have read your history. Thank you for your service. Do you still think I have advocated for altruism and collectivism?

Your first reply to me was to ask me if I was drunk. As for your question, I'll try to answer it tomorrow. I am very tired right now.

--Brant

[Mikee]

I was imputing it to your statement. I thought you had made a mistake, not that you were either of those things. You replied with a couple of insults. I admit that if you've never read my profile you would not likely know I spent a year fighting communists in Vietnam. I put it there because someone on OL kept babbling on about the glories of war to which I took exception.

--Brant

I was not insulting you and I did not intend to insult you. Again, I was responding to your "altruism" comment which implies sacrificing a higher value to a lower one which is recognized in objectivist circles as an evil, at least the proponents of such are evil. I provided an example of an action which could not be construed as such a sacrifice and carefully worded it so you would understand it. I know your history perfectly well as I've been on the board for many years and I have read your history. Thank you for your service. Do you still think I have advocated for altruism and collectivism?

Your first reply to me was to ask me if I was drunk. As for your question, I'll try to answer it tomorrow. I am very tired right now.

--Brant

If my memory serves you have admitted in the past to drinking while posting on OL. I was simply trying to ascertain if that was the case. An inebriated question does not deserve a sober reply. I apologize for not knowing about your present habits of not drinking. But I did ask. Have a good nights sleep.

[Brant Gaede]

Whenever I think about it I am deeply offended that a regime like the present one in North Korea can exist. If it can exist there and no one is willing to do anything about it it can exist anywhere. Generations of people living as slaves to an insane dictator. This fact alone, the unwillingness to act to correct a monstrosity, damns the human race.

You are aware you are advocating altruism ("unwillingness to act") and collectivism ("damns the human race")?

--Brant

"Damns the human race" is a secular version of original sin. Morality is an individual human being thing. Collective action or its lack has nothing to with any "human race." The human race cannot be rationally praised or damned; it simply is. Morality is an individual human thing apropos only human beings qua conceptual thinking and free will--the ability to choose a course of action. We do not say a killer whale is immoral in any respect or a bacterium. If morality is not purely an individual thing it can only be assigned, logically, to a collective. That "damns the human race."

"The unwillingness to act" is linked here to the damnation. Morality is basically altruistic or selfish (in the Randian sense). Altruism is the morality of collectivism. You can damn someone for failure of right action, not the collective race, not if your orientation is Objectivist.

All that needs be done here is drop this damning of the "human race" and rewrite the proposition without it, for I suspect this is a semantic problem, not substantive.

--Brant

many of my posts are an invitation to think, not for me to tell you the thinking behind my conclusions--I'll have to rethink that think

[Mikee]

The question is "what is human nature?" If the evidence of the behavior of the majority of humans on this planet indicates that human nature is not what AR said it was then the human race is damned. If a rational minority will always be doomed to be no more than prey or servants for the irrational majority then the rational minority is damned. Perhaps a select few can get the hell off this planet.

"The human race cannot be rationally praised or damned; it simply is."

"It [simply] is"... and therefore can be judged.

[Brant Gaede]

Since we are talking by each other the conversation is finished--or, I'm giving it up unless someone else joins in.

--Brant

[Darrell Hougen]

Francisco,

Brant is right. Eliminate the welfare state and you encourage children. Giving people a medal is not such a bad idea either. I jest not. Various movements have convinced many people that people in general are a burden on the environment and on society. I've read of women deciding not to have children in order to reduce or avoid increasing their carbon footprint. That's right, they are foregoing their own, personal happiness for the sake of the environment and to decrease global warming. They apparently don't feel like they or their children have a right to exist. And, while that may be extreme, there are certainly people who look askance at people that have had more than two children. It's just not socially acceptable any more.

One may question whether it is the province of the government to encourage population growth, but certainly we, as intellectual leaders, could be getting out the message that people, living in peace and freedom, are valuable to each other, that more people would help our economy and our military defense, that the environment can sustain many times the current population,and that new life is something to be celebrated rather than scorned.

Darrell

I asked how a country that does not collect taxes would encourage people to have kids. Your answer: stop welfare payments. Great.

And I suppose if that didn't work, the non-tax-collecting country could stop government-financed education.

And if that still didn't work, maybe the non-tax-collecting country could remove the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans that offer dependent coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26.

And perhaps if even this failed to produce a bumper crop of infants, the U.S. Department of Defense could institute future soldier breeding farms, "with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male," of course.

In this context, the term "welfare state" refers primarily to the old age pension provided by the government, which in this country comes in the form of Social Security. If a person knows that his retirement will be paid for by someone else's children, why bother having his own? If a person knows that his children will end up paying for someone else's retirement, why bother going to all the trouble?

Luckily, people in this country still feel there is enough value in having children that they continue to have about 2 on average, or at least they did up until Obama became President. We haven't quite reached the demographic death spiral of some of our allies in Europe. Isn't Japan's birthrate about 1.4 children per adult woman? If economic output is proportional to population, Japan will be fighting a 30% decline before they even get started. One also wonders where the soldiers, sailors, scientists and engineers of the next generation will come from.

The demographic death spiral is widely attributed to the modern, over-regulated welfare state. Get rid of that and you eliminate a big cause of demographic decline. Don't believe me? That's your choice, but a bunch of "what if's" aren't shedding any light on the matter.

Darrell

[Francisco Ferrer]

In this context, the term "welfare state" refers primarily to the old age pension provided by the government, which in this country comes in the form of Social Security. If a person knows that his retirement will be paid for by someone else's children, why bother having his own? If a person knows that his children will end up paying for someone else's retirement, why bother going to all the trouble?

Luckily, people in this country still feel there is enough value in having children that they continue to have about 2 on average, or at least they did up until Obama became President. We haven't quite reached the demographic death spiral of some of our allies in Europe. Isn't Japan's birthrate about 1.4 children per adult woman? If economic output is proportional to population, Japan will be fighting a 30% decline before they even get started. One also wonders where the soldiers, sailors, scientists and engineers of the next generation will come from.

The demographic death spiral is widely attributed to the modern, over-regulated welfare state. Get rid of that and you eliminate a big cause of demographic decline. Don't believe me? That's your choice, but a bunch of "what if's" aren't shedding any light on the matter.

Darrell

Why make the mistake of having children if you will have to look after them and teach them yourself or pay money out of pocket for someone else to do it? Government subsidies run throughout the warp and woof of society. A population slump resulting from closing government schools may be just as likely as a baby boom from ending government-subsidized pensions.

In any case, even if the government is left out of the picture, an organized national campaign to boost the population for defense purposes is nothing short of preposterous and has the whiff of one of Himmler's bouts of madness. Large populations are no guarantors of military strength, of economic growth or of much else. Can anyone claim with a straight face that having four times the population of the U.S. gives India four times its military strength?

Furthermore, the assertion that “economic output is proportional to population” is unfiltered nonsense. By that calculus, Bangladesh would be rolling in money and Australia would be impoverished.

Yes, in the West the 20th century gave us the rise of welfare states and the decline of birthrates. But the most pertinent datum of the era is the change in women's roles. Post WWII, women stayed in school longer, entered the work place in larger numbers, postponed marriage, and postponed motherhood. All this was made possible in large part by more effective contraception and the disappearance of the taboo against unattached women.

Organized campaigns to make babies in order to fill army uniforms (or pay war contributions) makes no more sense than the left's loony crusade to cull the human herd.

Smart people leave these matters to the market. If a country is free, the standard of living will rise and people will naturally want to live there. But if all property is private, the newcomers will have a skill to offer-- they will be quality people.

“More people would help our economy and our military defense”?

Not if they’re the equivalent of the dumb slobs of the past decade who thought they were joining the Army to “fight for our freedom” in Iraq.

[Darrell Hougen]

I'm glad the mere threat of war usually does the trick. This, I am sure, explains why the U.S. very seldom sends its troops abroad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations

I never said the U.S. rarely sends its troops abroad. I said that war was rarely necessary. But, sometimes you have to give tin horn dictators a kick in the shins to remind them that thuggery will not be tolerated. Also, when freedom movements blossom in other countries, it is usually in our interest to see that they are successful.

Darrell

Yes, now that I look at a list of U.S. conflicts called "wars," I see the number is quite small. You could count them on the fingers of your children's hands, provided that you have at least six children and none of them are missing any digits. Ah, but perhaps not all of those conflicts should be called "wars," a term some purists would reserve for big messy things like the conflagrations of the second and fifth decades of the 20th century. By that measure, the U.S. military has been asleep for nearly all of its existence.

I guess that in between the long naps, no one would mind a little tin horn kick ass just to keep our boys (and girls) in fine fettle. And if the toppling of the dictator happens to make it easier for an American fruit company or telecommunications company to turn a profit there, who's going to complain? Certainly not anyone who believes in laissez-faire capitalism, which requires a strict separation between state and business--but only in essays for popular consumption.

The world is flat, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells us. Or if it's not now, it will be as soon as the Pentagon does its worst. In this brave, new, shrinking world, every nation is just over our backyard fence. No country is too far flung to put U.S. Marines on the ground to unmuddy the waters, make folks stand in straight lines, and provide contraception or fertility clinics, depending on the goal of the moment.

Fortunately, those who hunger from their armchairs for new lands to be conquered by the DoD are in luck. A new champion of the American Soldier as World Policeman is on the stump, and he's telling it like it is:

I always start by reminding people that what happens all over the world is our business. Every aspect of lives is directly impacted by global events. The security of our cities is connected to the security of small hamlets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Our cost of living, the safety of our food, and the value of the things we invent, make, and sell are just a few examples of everyday aspects of our lives that are directly related to events abroad and make it impossible for us to focus only on our issues here at home.

I've always had a fondness for Rubio. He sounds very prudent and reasonable on foreign policy. Thanks for the link.

Darrell

[Francisco Ferrer]

I've always had a fondness for Rubio. He sounds very prudent and reasonable on foreign policy. Thanks for the link.

Darrell

Since Rubio has four children, he's clearly doing his part for provide sufficient fodder for future World Police wars.

To keep things strictly moral, couldn't we use the $15 million in voluntary contributions the U.S. Treasury has received over the past five years to invade, occupy and nation-build in "Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia"? Don't "our cost of living" and "the safety of our food" depend on it?