David McElroy

When a five-star general warns you about the dangers of a growing military, it’s probably a good idea to listen. In President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation more than 50 years ago, he gave a stark warning. After all these years, it’s clear that few people paid attention.

We have a military that’s far too big for what’s needed to defend the United States. We have  military personnel spread all over the world. We make commitments to defend other countries and base our military in them. All of this comes at a tremendous cost to the American taxpayer. What’s just as bad is that having a powerful military creates the urge to use it, so it leads us into wars that are costly in dollars and in the lives of people around the world.

If Democrats and Republicans don’t come to a budget deal, the military is going to face $600 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. (It’s important to remember that it’s not all at once. Frankly, those cuts will almost certainly never happen.)

But the leaders of the military are in a panic. For instance, on Wednesday, the Army’s chief of staff said those threatened cuts “would cause a hollowness — a significant hollowness in the force.” Military leaders have been lobbying Congress to do pretty much anything to stop those cuts. They’re united in telling us that they don’t have enough money and that they can’t spare a nickel.

At the same time the military is saying it can’t afford to cut its spending, I observed something that suggests otherwise. It’s just a small example, but it’s indicative of a culture in which spending money isn’t a big deal — because there’s always more where that came from.

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Are you a subject, a citizen or a sovereign? Your answer to that question says a lot about who you think owns you, at least in the earthly sense.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Eduardo Saverin giving up U.S. citizenship as Facebook goes public. He’s one of the founders of Facebook, so he’s becoming incredibly wealthy because of Facebook’s initial public offering. By living in Singapore and giving up his U.S. citizenship, Saverin is going to save millions of dollars now and save his heirs possibly billions of dollars by avoiding U.S. estate taxes later.

Saverin told the New York Times, though, that his move isn’t about saving money.

“This had nothing to do with taxes,” Saverin told the Times. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.”

In 1215, King John of England signed what came to be called the Magna Carta. (The full name in English was “The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest.”) The English lords accepted that they were subject to the king, but they tried — sometimes unsuccessfully — to get kings to limit their absolute power over them.

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After slaves were freed in the United States in the 19th century, how much really changed for them? For the most part, they worked on the same land, did the same labor and worked for the same plantation owners. How exactly did their lives change when they were told they were free?

The slaves in the United States had worked hard and had nothing to show for their work. When we look at the sharecropping contracts they signed after they were allegedly free, it’s clear that their lives were just as controlled as they had been before. The only difference was that they now had a piece of paper that said they were free.

If you look at the typical sharecropping contract they signed, it’s clear that they didn’t have a chance to change their lives. They were leasing small tracts of land from the plantation owner. They went into debt — to the plantation owner — for the tools and animals they needed to work the land. They were required to mill the cotton at his cotton gin at a specified price. They were required to pay back the money for the tools out of the first cotton of the season. If there was anything left over, they could buy their own food, of course. But the plantation owner had the right to end the contract and kick them off any time he wanted.

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