The Biggest Earmark Is Empire

In his piece "The Biggest Earmark Is Empire", commentator Jack Hunter points out the incompatibility between being fiscally conservative and supporting America's global empire. Whereas most of the left does not acknowledge the waste and ineffectiveness of the welfare state, much of the right is unaware that this is also true for the warfare state. And by promoting aggressive (but fiscally necessary) cuts on welfare programs, while ignoring defense spending, politicians like Paul Ryan do much to lower conservatives in the eyes of the general public. In another post Mr. Hunter adroitly points out that progressives and neoconservatives are both aggressive statists, the only difference being that progressives tend to promote domestic intervention whereas neoconservatives focus on international intervention. And by involving the United States in Libya's Civil War, Obama has achieved the dubious distinction of doing both!