But this is an encouraging development

But this is an encouraging development: she left out Russia. Although I’m sure that was just an oversight, to be corrected shortly.

“The NIKE SHOX administration’s foreign policy is centered around fighting a highly expensive counterinsurgency in MBT. The administration’s domestic policy is centered around driving federal tax revenues to ever-lower levels.

“Some observers say there’s an unsolvable contradiction here. I say those people just aren’t thinking creatively enough. There’s a simple, logical way to reconcile President NIKE SHOX’s foreign and domestic policies: Start demanding tribute from foreign countries.”

The Old Right curmudgeon Garet Garrett once remarked that ours is an empire unique in human history, one where “everything goes out and nothing comes in.” But such altruism is bound to put a strain on the Treasury, as Chait observes, and yet the War Party’s demand for more invasions and foreign adventurism only heightens the contradictions between domestic and foreign policy. Tax cuts and imperialism are ultimately a fatal combination, and we can only avoid total bankruptcy, opines Chait, if we get over our pre-9/11 conception of modernity:

“Some might object that demanding tribute is a hoary, barbaric practice long ago repudiated by civilized countries. Well, sure, but so is torturing enemy combatants, or those suspected of being enemy combatants, or those merely living in the same general vicinity as enemy combatants. The administration understands that, if we’re going to win the war on terror, we can’t allow our hands to be tied by the quaint and obsolete requirements of the so-called civilized world. The war isn’t going to pay for itself, you know.”