Dope, I've got a question.

When people ask why I engage in long discussions with conservatives on this board, one reason I often give is that it helps me get a better understanding of conservative beliefs. I don't expect to change minds, but it helps me get visibility into what people who disagree with me are thinking.

You mentioned in the other thread your belief that the EU couldn't change their military expenditures in a way that provided for their own defense and still maintain their social welfare programs.

Is that an idea that's percolating among conservatives? That forcing the EU to have more military expenditures and be more independent of the US won't just have the effect of potentially reducing our defense burden, but might achieve the conservative goal of forcing them to retreat from their domestic spending policies?

That honestly hadn't occurred to me before. I had assumed that efforts to force the EU to spend more were just coming from a desire to possibly reduce (or repurpose) our military expenditures....or perhaps just coming from a general sense of "unfairness" that they're free-riding. I hadn't thought that one motive that conservatives might have for pushing Europeans to spend more on defense is that it might undermine their domestic economic model in favor of one conservatives more approve of.

Is that something that's out there? Or was that just something that just flowed out of our discussion?

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