Over on the homepage, the editors have their say on President Obama’s new defense strategy (hint: the strategy is to have less defense). Leave aside the geo-strategic consequences–and there are mondo geo-strategic consequences–of the Pentagon’s publicly shifting from a “two-war capability” to a “one-war-and-change” capability, and consider the bogus justification the administration has on offer: that since the debt is a national security threat, we should lower the debt by weakening national security.

The usual conservative caveat applies here: Even though I haven’t wonked through the defense budget, I’m sure there is plenty of room for cuts, both in terms of bureaucracy and real-live programs and acquisitions. (As awesome as I think the F-22 is, I can’t hate on Congress’s decision to save billions by capping their number at a mere 187, considering its use in the kinds of conflicts we’re engaged in is limited, and there isn’t another fighter aircraft in the world fit to lick its landing gear). But the idea that you can simply say — as the administration said yesterday and its defenders have echoed across the Internet — “But, look, we’re still spending more on defense than the next ten countries combined, so how can you say we’re hurting national security!” is foolish. I’ve never understood the tendency, among many liberals and too many conservatives, to set some arbitrary dollar figure or percentage of GDP as “enough” for national defense. The United States’ national interests are many and varied. Protecting them is expensive. If doing it costs 3 percent of GDP, then that’s what it costs. If it costs 8 percent, then 8 percent it is. You can have a debate about what America’s national interests are, and about whether we’re protecting them efficiently, but it’s empty to say we must be spending too much because look at all the zeros! This isn’t government loans for green cars, or ethanol subsidies, or even Medicaid, where part of the cost-benefit analysis is asking whether the government should be in this line of work at all. No, the idea that national defense is a legitimate use of government dollars is something on which Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, Jim DeMint, F.A. Hayek, and Mao Zedong agree.