Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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overwhelming support. Similarly, the public backs military spending to
defend ourselves from the threat to our existence posed by the Evil
Empire and its outposts in Grenada and South Yemen—though not
when the choice is between this and social programs. Still more
strikingly, Gary Hart’s pollsters found in 1975 that the overwhelming
majority believe that workers and the community should control
business enterprises, though “socialism” is advocated by virtually no
one.
Like Mondale, Hart opposed the public on all these issues, under the
slogan: “To get the government off your back, [you have to] get your
hands out of the government’s pocket.” Only high technology industry is
to keep its hands in this rapidly filling pocket. After the 1980 election,
Hart joined in a unanimous Senate Budget Committee vote to undermine
social legislation that is overwhelmingly supported by the public,
undoing “thirty years of social legislation in three days,” in Senator
Moynihan’s words. 43 The fact that Congress overwhelmingly voted
against the policies supported by the public is informative, with regard
to the factors that determine public policy.
Again, the shift began under Carter. Navarro observes that Carter was
elected in 1976 on a platform that included expansion of New Deal
programs, but enacted none of these proposals. The growth rate in
social spending dropped from about 8% under Nixon and Ford to 4%
under Carter, and was then reversed by Congress under Reagan while
government spending radically increased—for the military system of
subsidy to advanced industry. As noted earlier, the plans to reduce
social spending in favor of the military system were advanced by Carter
in late 1978, then implemented under the pretext offered by the Iranian
hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then the “window
of vulnerability” and other fantasies. The choice of military over social
programs ran exactly counter to the public will, but the public was never