Gun Control: Say What you Mean.

[TaraJo]

I totally agree with your first point. The military is the most wasteful thing in the government, and the most useless at the same time. However the post I was replying actually specifically said that no cuts should be made to school budgets or the (always very general) 'social safety net' because we have a bloated military budget.

That statement is a red herring. It's nonsensical, imagine if our school budgets were ten times what they are, does the statement still stand? The military's budget has nothing at all to do with the validity of school budgets or medicare or anything.

I can understand the sentiment behind that statement, though. When it comes time to cut spending, we always look at the social safety net and education and other programs like that. They've been getting cut for years and nobody has seriously thought of cutting military. Why should all those programs continue to feel the sting of spending cuts but the military remains unscathed?

I'll use a metaphor here: Say you have two kids and you're planning on spending $200 each on Christmas presents. Then you have an unexpected bill that comes up and eats into the Christmas present budget. Are you going to take the entirity of the bill out of just one kid's Christmas budget? And if you do take the entire budget cut from one kid's Christmas, how do you think that kid is going to feel about it?