We Need More War - BFEE Business Plan is now the modern American Economic Worldview.

[Savannahmann]

4. But even in peace we're funding huge increases.

Only we're not buying more tanks, guns, and that sort of thing. We're buying high tech items from a smaller group of manufacturers.

Remember this. In the 1970's, we had to have new Submarines to prevent a technological gap from developing between us and the Russians. These were approved despite an economic recession, and during the Carter Administration no less. The Los Angeles Class submarine was approved and construction started, and continued.

We designed the F-15 fighter to be able to defeat the probable capabilities of a Russian jet. That the jet in question couldn't do anything that we thought it could, or should, didn't matter a short while later, because this would put us ahead for years to come.

Apollo grew out of the fear of being second. The only advantage was that we decided it would be for science not militarism.

Carriers, Ballistic Missile Submarines, and all that came from the innate need to protect ourselves today from a threat that could be here shortly.

Today we do the same thing. Fusion Centers, NSA data centers, spy satellites, hackers working for the Government, email screenings. All of it is so we can protect ourselves from the perceived threats. After World War I we were warned that Propaganda had helped to get us into a war. We didn't learn, and instead adopted Propaganda for the next war. After World War II, we were warned about the Military Industrial Complex. We listened, and then quaked in fear at the idea that the Soviets might get to the moon before us.

The MX missile, the B-2 bomber. The F-117, the F-22. All of these programs were to help us keep an advantage, so we could protect ourselves from something that didn't exist, but would someday.

Now look at us. We see that sixty percent of the people think that the Bill of Rights should take a hike if it means we would be safe. We fought against the Soviets and spent trillions in the Cold War, and we won, and now we've lost. We've lost because we have created the same authoritarian secret police with the same powers as we denounced in the KGB. We've lost because we threw our own freedoms onto the pyre and burned them willingly so we could find and fight the shadowy threat that is the enemy for now.

We're still spending billions on defense projects, but they are not going to enough companies to keep the military industrial economy moving. They're going to a few companies that specialize in defeating the computer security and sorting the data to find terrorists. All of this despite the fact that they haven't prevented one single attack ever.