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The future of American support for Ukraine is uncertain. The Senate recently passed an aid package that included money for the war-torn European nation, but the House has not proven eager to take it up. The cause of the uncertainty is the state of public opinion, from which House members can never afford to stray very far. The American public is just not solidly convinced that support for Ukraine is a vital national interest, and, as a result, public approval for providing more money and arms has waned.
Recognizing this change in public opinion, supporters of further aid have moved to a new set of arguments. These arguments are illuminating, though not in the way that those making them intend. The arguments suggest the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current case for continuing the war—and of the people in charge of our country.
Advocates for the Senate bill have pointed out that it creates and supports jobs in America. Military equipment destined for Ukranian hands will be built here in America by American workers; thus, our representatives should pass the aid package in order to prop up employment in America.
This argument, which is economically illiterate, has been made even by conservative defenders of the aid package, who, as proponents of limited government and a free economy in other contexts, ought to know better. Government spending programs do not create jobs that would not have existed otherwise. The money for such spending has to come from somewhere. If it is raised through taxation, it is taken out of the private economy, where it would have supported employment. If it is raised through borrowing, the effect is the same. The government will have borrowed money that might have been lent to private business to provide work for other workers in some productive and viable enterprise.
Moreover, even if this argument were economically sound, it would still be more than a little alarming and depressing to hear our leaders making an economic argument in support of war spending. Defending military aid on the basis of the jobs it will create seems depraved when the goods to be produced will be used to kill people.
Some leading Americans talk as if it is a manifest good to kill as many Russians as possible. Probably most Americans don’t feel that way, or support for continued Ukraine aid would be greater than it now is. In any event, even (for the sake of argument) treating the destruction of Russian lives as a proper objective overlooks the obvious fact that arming Ukrainians to kill Russians inevitably leads the Russians to kill more Ukrainians.
DGM
Article URL : https://americanmind.org/salvo/morally-empty/