Sex at Dawn

This rant which aims the blame for cancer rates at America's expenditure on military efforts is naive and ridiculously incorrect. From the dawn of time when man began setting boundaries around his family camp, issues of "protection" came first and foremost...above hunting/gathering, above grinding grain, above tanning animal hides, above teaching children skills of survival. Above all, man had to protect what was his from what was "out there". It is what it is.

Fast forward to Old Testament Egypt. The beautiful hieroglyphs that remain for us to study depict huge military undertakings in efforts to protect the Egyptian way of life and to acquire neighboring rival territories. It is what it is.

Fast forward to Roman Empire in its hay day...or to the Mongol expansion with Genghis Khan...or to Germany's Hitler...the American Revolutionary War...World War I and II...the American Civil War...the Alamo...etc, etc, etc. All were military efforts to preserve territory, to gain territory, to fight for rights, and an enduring battle to be the victor...the strongest of the strong. It is what it is.

It is ridiculous to blame the American military effort for cancer rates when history dictates that man and their countries will always be flexing their military muscles. Yes, America has a huge issue with health care (so do other countries), cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The answer to most of these problems can be found in each individuals personal life style choices. Inactivity, diet choices, and exposure to cancerous substances(diet soda, pesticides, tobacco, preservatives, etc) all are larger contributors to the cancer epidemic in American than are all the dollars being spent on national security. Do you have any idea how dramatically all those statistics would drop if each American would stop eating potato chips forever and take a walk every day? Dramatically. Why not blame the Department of Education and its lack luster campaign on exercise programs in public schools? Why not blame advertisers and all the money they spend on commercials to entice us to eat their fast food? There are tons of people to blame for our own personal problems. Hmmm....maybe that's the problem.

(Statistics... what a wonderfully manipulative tool to sway anyone to believe anything you want them to...)

You'd have a more legitimate argument if you got your numbers down right.

I.e., $630 Billion not Trillion for Defense.

And a Trillion for health care? In what context? Federal expenditures? Total expenditures? Increased outlays over 10 years? What? Unless you explain what you mean, the figure does not make sense.

There may be story here, but nobody can tell because I'm afraid your apoplexy has made you kind of dopey.

I think $636,292,979,000 is 636 billion, not trillion...so that's 636/95 ~= 6.7 times more. That's not nearly as ridiculous. Personally I think $1 trillion for national health care isn't too much, especially since the benefits include many more people than Bush's Medicare Drug Benefit passed back in 2003, which cost about that much.

But as the above poster has commented, there's something to be said for personal responsibility for one's own health. Also, you're suggesting that all that money would be much better spent on research. Imagine if we spent $0 on the military. You say we spend too much, but there's no way to know how many lives are being saved, only how many are lost when we don't spend that much. Again, I also do not like a big military, but your article's logic isn't right.

Rebecca, your "It is what it is" argument is a pretty terrible one. For example, men have oppressed women as second-class citizens for centuries. That doesn't mean it shouldn't change. And also, many other developed countries have pretty decent healthcare, like Canada. You can't pin America's higher illness rates solely on personal life choices.

You got trillions and billions mixed up. America spends over $630 billion a year, not trillion, on military expenditures. And America spends less than $1 billion a year for medical research. The United States' GDP is around $13 or $14 trillion, so it would be impossible for us to spend 50 times more than that on military means alone each year. These numbers are still incredible though, and I agree that American culture is screwed up. I don't want this to sound extreme (but of course it will), but terrorists hate America for a logical reason. Obviously, resorting to terrorism and the murder of innocent people is completely wrong and shouldn't be condoned (and the mistreatment of women, etc. practiced by these groups of religious extremists is completely wrong as well). But America is hated because people around the world recognize that we have a destructive culture that is simultaneously highly addictive. They know that it's incredibly difficult to avoid capitalism's gravitational pull. Democracy is obviously something worth keeping around, but capitalism in it's purest form causes insane inequalities and has pitted human beings against each other in a death match that could destroy our species altogether. We're all so worried about making money, getting what we want when we want it, living longer, consuming, etc. that we've become an emotionally and socially stupid culture whose people are depressed, full of anxiety, spiritually empty, materialistic, overweight, and/or addicted to work or something else. We're now being driven by this paranoid, frenzied culture of ours at a breakneck speed and we have no control anymore.

... and even the commission came back and said it would be more like 10 trillion.

I don't get where healthcare became the governments problem. Seems like we have someone to protect us from everything, but what is our responsibility to ourselves?

I'll keep my hard earned money, thanks. The cash that is going to the military is fine, since we DON'T have terrorists here suicide bombing and the such.

Narrow-sighted views and opinions to push a mandate that will 'help the masses' while you watch from your Ivory Tower, feeling happy that you've done something.

Ahh, the arrogance of the rich and educated(sic).