We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Comparing Military Spending

from the Cato Institute. See the data that this libertarian think tank furnishes regarding military expenditures of the US compared with other countries in NATO. Well, after all, it is The US Empire. The Cato Institute, critical of this discrepancy, naively believes that "today’s U.S. military chiefly fights other people’s wars, and builds other people’s nations."