Corrosive nature of making secondary impulses top priority

And another (from America Alone) by Mark Steyn:

To understand why the West seems so weak in the face of a laughably primitive enemy it’s necessary to examine the wholesale transformation undergone by almost every advanced nation since World War Two.  Today, in your typical election campaign, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much every party in the rest of the West are exclusively about those secondary impulses: government healthcare (which America is slouching toward, incrementally but remorselessly), government day care (which was supposedly the most important issue in the 2006 Canadian election), government paternity leave (which Britain has introduced).  We’ve elevated the secondary impulses over the primary ones: national defense, self-reliance, family, and, most basic of all, reproductive activity. 

 A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have, starting with your sense of self-reliance.

Military Welfare

Here’s another gem from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone:

The United States has the most powerful armed forces on the planet.  The fact that Washington’s responsible for 40 percent of the planet’s military spending pales in comparison to the really critical statistic: it’s responsible for almost 80 percent of military research-and-development spending, which means the capability gap between it and everyone else widens every day.

As for America’s “friends,” there’s another paradox of the non-imperial hyperpower: the United States garrisons…its wealthiest allies, thereby freeing them to spend their tax revenues on luxuriant welfare programs rather than on tanks and aircraft carriers…  Like any other welfare, defense welfare is a hard habit to break and damaging to the recipient.  The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europe is a logical consequence of America’s willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its own security.