Noteworthy Book Excerpts

The founders intended the new nation to be a light unto the world, a beacon of hope to show others the way. But they strongly resisted the urge to force their views on others. In the earliest days of the Republic, they lacked the power to do so, but that was not entirely by accident. Rather, the Framers of the Constitution deliberately constrained the new government's power, especially the power to go to war, because they believed that such power would alter what they saw as the proper balance between the different branches of government, and, even more important, between the government and the people. George Washington -- the founder who could legitimately claim the title of military hero -- saw military power as purely an instrument of politics, and he feared, as he said in his Farewell Address, "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty."

Another general-turned-president, Dwight David Eisenhower, similarly feared the effect that massive military spending and a permanent sense of crisis and warfare would have on the nation's character.

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Oftentimes . . . foreign interventions are not intended to advance U.S. interests: the interventions are, as their advocates suggest, "gifts" intended for the benefit of others. But because our government's enumerated powers do not include the right to give such gifts -- paid for by U.S. taxpayers -- Washington often attempts to justify such acts on the grounds that U.S. interests are at stake, even when they are not.

The above are excerpts from an excellent recent book

entitled The Power Problem -- How American
Military Dominance Makes Us less Safe,

Less Prosperous and Less Free

By Christopher A. Preble

European people were seen by the founders of our nation as having been kept in perpetual poverty by having to bear the costs of their rulers' unending wars, and John Quincy Adams was reflecting the founders' thinking when he stated that America does not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy. In those days it was recognized to be the better part of wisdom for America to be a friend to freedom everywhere but to fight only for its own.