Dawn of the Pseudo-Conservatives, Part 2

In my preceding post I made a point I think is important and want to elaborate upon:

"This is only one example of the glaring contradictions at the heart of pseudo-conservative ideology; while they constantly make a public fuss about their opposition to "Big Government" and demand that Republicans "starve the beast", they merrily and aggressively support virtually every increase in the defense budget ever introduced. Pseudo-conservatives have never met a defense increase they didn't like. And yet it seems likely that the largest increases in the federal government are contributed in expansions for "defense" and "national security"."

It is not just likely but virtually certain that it is precisely the expansion of government for war, "defense" and "national security" that most inflates our central government and yet it is precisely these expansions that pseudo-conservatives religiously support. For an example look at Eric Foner's Reconstruction p.23: "The federal budget, amounting to $63 million in 1860, rose to well over $1 billion by 1865. At war's end the federal bureaucracy, with 53,000 employees including Custom House officials, internal revenue agents, clerks, and inspectors, was the largest employer in the nation. And the generous system of pensions for Union veterans... inaugurated in 1865 (and amounting by the turn of the century to one third of the government's entire budget) created both a vast new patronage machine for the Republican party and a broad constituency commited to maintaining the integrity of the national state...."

Don't fool yourself by thinking that because this was a war, and not merely peacetime "defense" spending, that my point is not supported. It is certainly wars that most expand the federal government, but peacetime spending for "defense" and "national security" also hugely expand the central government. Moreover, with pseudo-conservatives like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams in office you can count on more wars as well as huge peacetime "defense" spending.

It is quite notable that pseudo-conservative Buckley vowed to "read Dwight Eisenhower out of the conservative movement." Very revealing when you consider that Eisenhower really was conservative as well as significantly worried about the military-industrial complex.

James Madison, the "father" of our revered Constitution wrote:

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other."

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."

So folks, please stop believing and repeating that pseudo-conservatives are against Big Government; the truth is precisely the opposite. Stop letting these radicals of the right get away with bamboozling America.