Military and Science Funding

I think one of the reasons I'm so liberal--besides having parents who are liberal and having gone to an undergraduate college that was very liberal (Oberlin)--is that I identify a lot with science, which has employed me for a long time by mostly public funds. It would seem inconsistent for me not to appreciate public funds and the set-up of a government that taxes to invest in the public good.

But then it's pretty strange that many "conservatives" are Ok with huge military expenditures--the Iraq war is supposed to come out to $1 trillion or so--and at the same time these people are going around saying that governments taxing and spending are always doing the wrong thing by principle.

Some conservatives are distancing themselves from the Bush government. They say that this war and huge deficit spending are not consistent with their principles at all.

I'm not an economist, and so my views on deficit spending are not very strong--it's not a "hot button" issue of principles for me. What I care about is that the government advances the public good by funding research (and education). If that spending comes out of the deficit, and that really isn't a big deal, I'm ok with it. Although I suspect it can be a big deal down the road--when you have to start paying interest on the national debt...

So I align myself with other nobly intended uses of public funds: helping those who are temporarily or permanently in trouble to get a foothold or to learn new skills. Protecting the environment. Etc.

But I guess there were other directions I could have gone in: in some ways basic science research can be thought of as aligned with national security or with the advance of the economy.

One X-ray telescope, for example, the Unconventional Stellar Aspect experiment, was launched in cooperation with the military, and the name was given as USA to placate the uber-patriotic in the military establishment. Gamma ray bursts, a significant frontier for astrophysics, were first discovered in the '70s by military detectors looking for evidence that the Soviets were testing nuclear bombs.

So of course there's some advancement for both military and science that goes together. I like to think of myself as being involved with something life-affirming--not just that, but something pure, something motivated mostly by curiosity.

I think if the Bush administration had left off with the Afghanistan war I wouldn't be feeling the way I do now though. I'd have felt that the military had done me a great service, had protected all of us from those terrorist training camps set up in Afghanistan. Most people were for that war, and it didn't seem to have transparently self-important motivations that the Iraq war had (Bush revenging his father, etc.)

But now I kind of feel that this entire sector is a big waste of money--that there's a limited pie (limited by the deficit) and that it's unfair that the same standards are not applied to military spending and to spending which helps the unfortunate, or helps to develop humanistic skills that the private sector would not.

There's a Republican senator who's going around saying the Iraq war is worth it not only in lives but also in financial cost--but I think the war in almost every way has been a negative cost.

And I think we need to raise more of a stink about that--what if $1 trillion had been spent, say, on some feminist performance artist to go on stage and slather her naked body with melted chocolate? Of course people would be upset. And in my opinion that's nothing compared with what we're actually doing--we're throwing away money for something that is on sum negative--no doubt the welfare of Iraqis is important, but I think in the scheme of things, less involvement of the U.S. in other people's problems will be good for them.