Is this the same Jesus that threw a tantrum in the temple? Make a cord whip to chase out the merchants that had set up business inside it? Also the same one prophesied to return some day leading a huge army to fight what is to be the final ‘good vs evil’ battle?
Or, he could mean this Jesus.
Heh. That’s actually kind of hilarious: the idea that Jesus said (a) hey, if somebody hits you, you absolutely shouldn’t hit back – but if you say, okay, but can I ask others to hit back for me, he would’ve said (b) oh, it’s fine to ask people to rough folks up for you; they can even put folks in the grave, if they’re retaliating on your behalf; the key is that you, personally, stand back and turn the other cheek while trained killers earn their pay by ending the lives of your assailants.
(I mean, for all I know, that is what he would’ve said, word-for-word.)
Holy crap, I just noticed that I wrote “might of”. Excuse me while I go cry.
The Inquisition, we are assured, never killed anyone. The condemned were “released to the secular arm” who did the burning. Why, the inquisitors actually begged the secular authorities not to harm the condemned, out of true Christian love.
(Of course, the Pope had decreed that if the secular authorities didn’t kill the condemned, they were to be excommunicated…)
So, alas, historically, exactly this kind of double-think was employed by Christians, to grisly effect.
eschereal: I still get “its” and “it’s” wrong now and then. I’ll join you in a good cry.
…
**“The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.”
― George Orwell **
“As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I’ve never questioned the justification for resorting to force. That’s why I supported Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which ended Pol Pot’s regime, and Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda in 1979, to oust Idi Amin. In both cases, those countries acted without U.N. or international approval—and in both cases they were right to do so.”
― José Ramos-Horta,
(bolding mine) Googling shows that 16% of the federal budget is for the military, making it the third largest category of expenditures, behind only Health & Human Services and Social Security. 16%, for those that enjoy fractions, is nearly 1/6 of all federal money spent.
I don’t think your characterization of this as “a relatively small percentage of the budget” is in any way accurate.
Like I said, it’s nothing but a WAG. I think that carriers would play very little, if any role, in a war against Russia or China; carriers might be used only for lower-intensity conflicts against the likes of small countries, or countries having little to no antiship capability (such as North Korea.) Against Russia or China, I think wars would depend heavily on 1) Stealth bombers (the B-2 and B-21 will be immensely important to a downsized American military,) 2) Submarines, 3) Nuclear deterrence and 4) US allies greatly bulking up their own defenses.
If the F-35 and F-22 are really as good as their 50-to-1 or 100-to-1 kill ratios or whatever advertise (assuming a certain critical mass of fleet size deployed to a region hotspot,) then they might be able to get a lot more air superiority work done with less.
I agree that the U.S. military is good for America and for the world. But it still suffers from extreme bloat — unnecessary bases and unnecessary expensive weapons programs.
And your figures are way off. The U.S. has over 1.4 million uniformed personnel (NOT including National Guard etc.), 800,000 civilian employees, and 776,000 contract employees. (That’s THREE million total, not “one million plus.”) Equivalent salary for the three groups are respectively $150 billion, $108 billion and a whopping $254 billion. That’s Billion with a B.
“Relativity small percentage” of the budget? Assuming that’s a typo, it’s very misleading. The military budget comprises over half of the the entire “discretionary” portion of the federal budget. That doesn’t even include veteran’s budgets, paramilitary operations, etc.
Yes, we see how well that worked for the Jews in Nazi germany, or the Poles, or the Roma, etc…
I have a feeling Jesus was not saying it was ok and to just go along with it, and i dont think he would just sit there while someone feeds children into an oven
Isn’t that exactly what the Jesus mythology claims? He watches everything, everywhere, all the time, while possessing the power to remedy it?
And forgives, IIRC.
Leg Of Lamb, Takes Away the Sins and GRANTS PEACE! Er, paraphrased of course.
I’d argue if you have to artificially subdivide the budget to prove your point, it probably isn’t all that valid.
Who care what percentage DoD is of the discretionary budget? That says more about runaway entitlements than it says about the DoD budget.
Since you brought it up, what is the huge percentage of that "paramilitary operations of yours? 5%? 10%?
In almost any other discussion, 16% of something would be relatively small. Unless you have an ax to grind.
Social Security and Medicare are not “entitlements”, they are things we pay for and thus receive something in return. SS, in particular, was not in the Federal Budget at all until saint Ronnie pull his little shuck-and-jive routine so that he could borrow against it for his ill-conceived missile defense toyshop.
There is so much wrong here I don’t know where to start.
Sure they’re entitlements! Not sure why this sticks up your ass, but they’re called mandatory spending and entitlements.
By your (I presume you just made this up) definition things we pay for and thus receive something in return, how is that different from the national parks or DoD? You pay for the parks and can go. You pay to get defense, and for the world to be shaped a certain way and you receive security and a steady flow of resources.
You might want to check what president and party added social security into the unified budget calculations. Hint: Its probably not the party that you want it to be.
It bothers me because I hear “entitlement” used in a sort of derogatory way. Yes, we are entitled to those things, because we paid for them. But rarely is “entitlement” used these days but by someone who is trying to imply that we do not deserve them. Like they are some kind of freebie.
I can understand that.
Artificially? :smack: You do understand Congress doesn’t vote on how much the Treasury will pay as interest on its debt, right? It’s almost $200 Billion annually now.
And it happens that the Federal Government operates a big pension scheme presently making payments to over 60 million Americans. That this is included as part of the federal budget can be considered happenstance. Anyway, what exactly do you mean when you call this “runaway”? Death squads are needed to shorten retirees’ lives??