Right-wingers passionately proclaim the ideal of “peace through strength,” arguing that a powerful, self-confident America with dominant military resources remains the only guarantee of national security. Progressives, on the other hand, dream of multilateral consensus, comprehensive treaties, disarmament, grand peace deals, and vastly enhanced authority for the United Nations.

I’m a godless liberal who also believes in peace through strength — where I draw the line at is “peace through stupid.”

When I was in the Navy Reserve, about a million years ago, I spent my two weeks of annual training at Newport, Rhode Island.

They didn’t really have anything for me to do there; basically it was just sitting around from 8:00-5:00 waiting for the day to end. One day my entire workday consisted of opening up little wrapped packages that contained one (1) screw each.

One.

Although I never saw the paperwork to confirm it, I was told by a supervisor that each one of those little packages cost $9.

$9 for a fucking screw.

While I’d always swung to the left on social issues, that was probably the single incident most likely responsible for my understanding that “national security” and “bloated military budget” are not a good match.