Everything Looks Like a Nail When You Own a Trillion-Dollar Hammer
Eisenhower didn’t warn America about a foreign army. He warned us about ourselves. A five-star general looked into the future and cautioned that a permanent military, a permanent defense industry, and a permanent government bureaucracy could become so intertwined that only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” could keep them in check. Sixty-five years later, we spend roughly a trillion dollars a year on national defense, the Pentagon still can’t earn a clean financial audit, and many Americans know more about celebrity gossip than federal spending. The question isn’t whether Eisenhower was right. The question is whether we’re still the alert and knowledgeable citizens he believed liberty required.
