Is there any reason why liberals have decided to stockpile guns, food and emergency supplies similar to what conservatives have done over the past eight years?
United States President-Elect Donald Trump issued a tweet on Thursday, noting that the U.S. needs to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. Here’s the tweet:
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
When asked to clarify by MSNBC‘s Mika Brzezinski, the president-elect responded with something rather troubling:
“Let it be an arms race,” Trump said. “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
Who knows if Brzezinski is telling the truth – we all know the mainstream media peddles fake news. If it is true then it is quite terrifying, but not really all that surprising. Trump never pledged to embrace a non-interventionist, humble foreign policy a la Ron Paul during the campaign trail. Also, with the people he is surrounding himself with, it can’t be a shock to see how or why he would utter such a statement.
Meanwhile, Target Liberty posted a sublime quote about nuclear weapons from the legendary free market economist Murray Rothbard:
“It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one. But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even “conventional” aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.
“This is why the old cliché no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake. And if we will indeed use our strategic intelligence, we will see that such disarmament is not only a good, but the highest political good that we can pursue in the modern world.”
Many of Trump’s supporters can no longer use the Hillary Clinton excuse that she would have started a nuclear war with Russia. We’re already beginning to see Trump concede to wanting to establish an arms race.
This reported statement certainly wasn’t a Christmas gift for humanity.
Leave a Comment