The Heritage Foundation reminds us that in a time of war politicians will try to link their pet spending programs to national security. Of course, LRC readers know that a lot of what Heritage claims is legitimate spending for national security are just power grabs by the government (e.g. the Iraq war, the creation of huge new “Homeland Security” bureaucracies).

But legislators can be quite creative in their use of war to expand the welfare state. For example, supporters of the monsterous farm bill claimed that if the government does not give farmers welfare our only source of food will be potentially hostile foreigners. In other words, if we don’t spend billions paying millionaires and multinational corporations not to grow crops then the terrorists have already won!This is a very old game. In fact, the legislation creating the first national education program was called the National Defense Education Act. The American people where told that the federal government needed to nationalize science education in order to achieve victory over the Soviet menace.

Of course, the neocons who today make national security arguments for federal education programs never admit that this argument justifies federal control over ever aspect of child rearing in order to ensure that our young people are adequately prepared to fight the state’s wars.

Note to “liberventionists,” you can only pretend to be both a libertarian and a war-monger for so long before the state’s use of war to justify its’ continued growth will force you to choose between war and liberty.