at clause is designed to prevent situations like what recently happened in the Ukraine, where leaders of opposition factions in the government are arrested
Oh, then I guess it's a good thing that the TSA doesn't fall under the executive branch. Oh wait, it does? Well sure, but it's not like the Executive branch is led by a person of the opposite party of Rand Paul. Oh, it is? Well, that's certainly awkward, but I mean he's just another opposition party senator and it's not like he or one of his relatives are trying to directly run against the sitting president in an upcoming elect-....What's that? He's Ron Paul's son?! SHIT.
How does this help our nation? Oops I said the N-word, my apologies to the offended parties.
By recycling it into something useful (weapons into plowshares and all that) instead of it sitting around costing money through expensive guarding, monitoring and maintenance not to mention Russia under the treaty dismantling nuclear warheads that were meant for killing us. Oh, and 0% chance of it accidentally going off once it's dismantled versus the extremely small percentage chance beforehand.
All else being equal, a nation that spends 10% of it's resourced building machines of war will have a lower standard of living then a nation that's able to spend that 10% on things like education, infrastructure, or even private commercial ventures / R&D. Hence war being destructive to the economy in the sense that you're sinking resources into production that doesn't return value to you in the form of making your life better. Sort of like there's money to be made in boarding up houses after a fire but setting a bunch of fires doesn't help stimulate the economy.
Realistically, however; Things are a lot more complex as always and there are other factors involved like the nation that did spend 10% using their machines of war to take what the nation that didn't made or value returned in the ability to exert your will on other nations ect ect. But it's always a net loss for humanity as a whole....until the aliens come
There's this concept call "thinking" that has been catching on. You ought to try it sometime. Contrary to your moronic statement, governments do not spend money on things "for the greater good of humanity". They spend money on things that are good for their nation. How much money do you think that the countries affected by malaria have to spend on developing a vaccine for malaria?
If only there were some sort of organized union of nations that each paid towards operating costs in order to work on world issues of security, health and economic development.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne