Leftist thinking is so pervasive that it often slips into conservative thought without anybody being aware of it. (No? How about “capitalism,” or “HUAC”?) One such case involves U.S. defense policy, specifically U.S. vs. Soviet, Russian, or Chinese weapons systems. We’ve already covered the tendency to credit the Russians (and the Chinese, and who knows, the Inuit) with world-beating weapons they couldn’t possibly have. Another such axiom exists governing American defense: that all U.S. weapons are junk, won’t work, can’t compete, are overpriced, will lead to disaster, and must be cancelled immediately. This is a thesis that has achieved the status of a meme: all communist weapons are the technological equivalent of Excalibur or Mjölnir, while all American weapons are Acme fireworks that will inevitably send us over the cliff. As with most such notions, there exists a grain of truth in this. A small one, and misleading one, in...(Read Full Article)