An American solider in combat in Afghanistan
Credit: Businessinsider

In all of America’s 239 years of existence, only roughly 20 of them have been without warfare of some kind.  (emphasis added) And no, those are not in a row. We’ve had one or two years, here and there, where we haven’t spent our time bombing foreign countries, bayoneting our brothers in hopes of keeping our slaves or invading Canada (that really happened and more than once). We are a warring people. In the 219 years we’ve been raging and waging, we’ve managed to amass the largest military in the history of gatherings where people dressed alike.

(In fairness to us battle-binging Americans, historian Will Durant surmised, in the entire written history of the world, only 29 of them have been without some war somewhere. So we’re still a young country and relatively doing peace longer and more on average than the entire world. USA! USA!)

We throw more cash into defense spending than China, Russia, U.K., France, India and Germany combined. There are only 20 countries on this […]