Though I did find your response to be a cogent counterpoint in this case (and I very much agree with you on the topic). Please don't ascribe brxdxn's personal views to all Ron Paul supporters. Sure there are people out their that think that the 'Free Market' (whatever they think that happens to be) can solve all problems but there are also plenty of people who think the same is true for government as well. I have no idea what Ron Paul thinks on the topic. Considering he was a practicing doctor for decades my guess would be that he would be very supportive of modern medicine but I have no idea and I honestly don't care. Like any classically liberal candidate, he believes strongly that people should have the freedom to do things that are both genius but outside the norm and that they should be able to things that are incredibly stupid and outside the norm.

My political views match closely to Paul's because I like the idea of states and individuals having the freedom to take wildly different approaches to problems. Please remember that scientific breakthroughs have never come from established top down edicts produced from some governing body like a federal committee, a king's court or a Religious Oligarchy but rather from individuals with the freedom (or courage, where there is no freedom) to express their minority viewpoint. Any inquisitive mind will tell you that you must be able to be wrong a lot more then you are right.

Regardless of his previous affiliations, if you think Greenspan's actions while chairman of the Fed were any where near Objectivist, then you truly did not understand the basic premise of Rand's work.

Just to humor me, please explain to me how you could possibly believe the US economic system has been favoring an Objectivist or Austrian Economic system? We haven't been on a gold or even commodity backed standard in over 70 years and any Keynesian can tell you that the US hasn't been even close to a free market system for quite some time. Don't forget that Ayn Rand's work (written in the 50s) were _reactionary_ works that as of yet, have largely failed to sway political policy. Even the Ayn Rand institute has said on multiple occasions that the US has been trending away from Objectivist policy for decades.

Why do you keep mis-summarizing my point as to having solely to do with the DoD? Your were the first one to even specifically mention it. For some reason, all US military spending == DoD to you. Which is entirely false. It's a big area of our military budget, not the entirety of it. Your obviously not introducing any new ideas but 'proving wrong' complete mis-interpretations of seemingly simple points. Was it because I cited something and expected you to read it? I don't know but this is waste of time. Consider this my last response.

Discretionary spending in my opinion is a more practical topic to discuss then the total budget and if you would have actually read the source I cited right away we wouldn't even have this problem. My source clearly states that the data it refers to is discretionary spending. By your logic, I would have to paste the full body of my citation into my post less I be 'artificially narrowing' the information.

200B or 26% of your own numbers. Umm.. yeah.. sure thats a small percent, not even outside of the margin of error really.

Nope, there is a lot more to it then just the DoD buying weapons. Including but not limited to how heavily we are deployed all of the world for our War on Terror, War on Drugs and interventionism by our Intelligence agencies.

Read up on what most lobbying actual entails, it's budget appropriation as well as the securing of no-bid contracts and either way, who gets the contract has nothing to do with whether or not we are spending too much.

Well now you know what half I was referring too so to get back on track; If you are making the point that we have far too much domestic spending I completely agree. I just didn't mention it because it didn't really relate to what I was responding to. So do you agree or not that we spend too much on military? Not in relation to domestic spending, I just mean period. If so, do you think it would help keep weapons out of the wrong hands if we were producing so much less of them? That's the crux of my original point.

You must be including non-discretionary spending, which is very odd. When most people talk about the budget they just talk about discretionary spending. Since it doesn't include present obligations, its really the only thing the white house has much control over. For a better explanation of discretionary spending use google. Also I have no idea how your not seeing the original link I posted. Just google 'death and taxes poster'. It's not an uncommon item, I got mine through think geek.

I actually have the same poster on my wall so I got 'about half' by a cursory glance. If you want a more accurate up to date estimate, just go to the link I sent you and look at the center. The poster is continually updated with budget data and he has already calculated the percentages you are looking for. Military/National Security: 799 billion or 68% Non Military/National Security: 383 billion or 33% Your numbers are likely off because you weren't figuring in National Security expenses which are also part of our Military Industrial Complex. All "The War on X"'s are heavily influenced by lobbyists who get their bread and butter from military contracts.

Want a free market solution to keep tyrants from getting high tech weapons? How about we stop using half our entire government budget to subsidize the military industrial complex. If there is anything that is decidedly not free market, its using Tax dollars to purchase products from select companies, decided almost entirely by lobbying efforts. http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/