Penenberg: How Much Longer Can We Afford To Be So Pathologically Paranoid?

NYU Professor Adam Penenberg says we have, in effect, a fourth branch of government: the one that spies on us.

It’s powerful, skirts our laws, and composed of three core entities: the military; the Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses airport security, and 15 intelligence services (National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, etc.). All exist to protect America and its citizens from enemies — both real and imagined. We might call it the paranoid branch.

Our post-9/11 paranoia doesn’t come cheaply, though. We Americans spend nearly a quarter of every dollar we generate as a nation on the military ($682 billion), Homeland Security (about $60 billion), and 15 intelligence agencies (combined perhaps $75 billion). While our government raced through some $3.67 trillion in 2013 it took in only $2.77 trillion in revenue, which means it has to borrow about $900 billion just to stay afloat.

Of the money the United States raises from its citizens, more than $1.7 trillion is spent on salving our collective paranoia or borrowed from banks and nations. That’s 40+ percent of the total.

This teeming conglomeration of paranoid government agencies is out of control. We spend more on defense than the next 10 nations (including China, Russia, the UK, Japan) combined. The NSA’s budget is — you guessed it! — classified, but in the past made up about 14 percent of total intelligence agency outlays…

Joseph McCarthy pointed to the amorphous and constant threat of godless communism to ruin lives. He had his list of communist sympathizers, which he kept secret, and we have our ‘no fly’ list, barring people from flying or attracting extra attention from security at airports. McCarthy enlisted the assistance of the FBI go after alleged “communist sympathizers” and we have the powerful NSA snooping on foreign leaders and Americans alike.

“Today,” McCarthy said in his famous “Enemies from Within” speech, “we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.”

Substitute “terrorism” for “communistic atheism” and “America” for “Christianity” you end up with the current approach of the US government.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.