Former Illinois Sen. Paul Simon objects to President Bush obeying the constitutional imperative to provide for the common defense, complaining that “our nation spends more than the next eight nations on defense,” including some who probably owe their freedom to our sacrifice, preferring that we increase foreign aid and continue to subsidize failure around the world.
He uses the Marshall Plan as an example, ignoring the fact that it was our military might, and not our checkbook, that saved the democracies of Europe from the naivete of politicians seeking peace in our time.
Simon ignores the reason the Marshall Plan worked–it was a bridge loan that bought time for free-market economies operating under the umbrella of democratic institutions to work the miracles of capitalism.
What he advocates is continuing to funnel money to socialist dictatorships around the world that are poor, not because we don’t give them enough money, but because they reject the political and economic institutions that foster economic growth.
What he proposes is the international equivalent of the welfare state, ended here via welfare reform, where we provide the fish instead of showing them how to fish or giving them the economic incentive to learn how.
He says we are “dead last” among the 21 wealthiest nations “in the percentage of our income that helps the poor beyond our borders,” but he provides no evidence that such assistance helps poor nations get off the dole. Name one nation, just one, other than the democracies of the West and Japan, that has ever been weaned off foreign aid.
Like our domestic war on poverty, such assistance does not fight poverty but merely subsidizes it.
The money we spend on defense is what liberated Europe, first from the threat of a Nazi dark age and then from the yoke of communism. The greatest social service any government can perform for any people is to keep them alive and free.
