Strange Bedfellows

It's the damndest thing: finding yourself agreeing with those who hold views totally contrary to your own. Take Bill Bonner, editor of The Daily Reckoning (online financial newsletter), and author of two bestselling books on the economy.

Mr. Bonner is a libertarian. He believes that people should be left to fend for themselves, without government interference. "Let them get what they deserve," is his mantra. State involvement, he believes, only ruins economies and civilisations.

Bill is what you may call an old-school conservative, with a small c. How, then, does yours truly, a leftist, self-described "Old World Socialist", champion of universal health care and mandated redistribution of wealth, find himself admiring some of Bonner's views?

Perhaps because Mr. Bonner is so simple-spoken, more eager to write the truth, as he sees it, than to try to please his fearmongering conservative allies.

Let's take his look at "global terrorism", as explained in his column of last Friday (6/20/08):

The United States is an imperial power with one major leading industry: defense. But with no enemies capable of inflicting real damage to the country, the defense industry had to invent one: terrorism…and the people had to believe it.

Readers typically want to argue this point. "What about 9/11?" they ask.

Of course, terrorists always pose a danger to individuals. And if they are daring and determined enough, they pose a danger to many individuals. But they pose no real danger to the state…and none to the Pentagon. You could put all the world's terrorists together in a single army…they would still stand no chance whatsoever of defeating the United States of America.

Normally, it is the police who are charged with protecting citizens. The fuzz fight crime and criminals…even gangs of criminals. Terrorists in the U.S.A., as near as we can tell, are practically non-existent. They don't seem capable of breaking into a parking meter, let alone challenging the U.S. Army. There must be 10,000 paid cops for every one of them. Why bring the Pentagon onto the case?

As mentioned in these reckonings, the feds are adding to the official national debt at the rate of $1.5 billion per day. Still, neither Democrats nor Republicans dared challenge the Pentagon's latest $600 billion spendfest. No one wants to audit the Pentagon. No one wants to oppose it. The Pentagon is in a bubble of its own.

Like Ron Paul, I suppose, you gotta hand it to Mr. Bonner when he exposes problems like "international terror" to be little more than government-created bogeymen created to control a terrified populace. Like Mr. Paul, Mr. Bonner is against useless government spending. He just happens to see all government spending as useless. He may be wrong about that (as is Mr. Paul), but he is right about our military spending's justification being propped up by dubious threats.

Not so fast: Mr. Bonner is actually for the government spending when he thinks it will truly benefit the American public. Check this nugget out from the same column last Friday, regarding what our government should have done in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union:

The sensible thing for the United States to do, following the fall of its one and only major enemy, would have been to cut the defense budget down to a nub…and invest the money in infrastructure and capital improvements, so Americans would be able to compete on better terms with the rising economies of their former enemies.

Is Bill Bonner a genius? Is he secretly a liberal, vehemently opposed to spending money on military adventurism while secretly praying the government will pump billions into creating jobs for Americans?

Or have I become a libertarian?