Why do democracies build armies?

Why is it that there are democratic nations who continue to build up their armies, such as the United States, continuing to create more and more sophisticated weapons even though there truly is no enemy for which they need these weapons? They are not needed for the national defense, and the Constitution specifically says that the Federal Government is to provide for the national defense. It does not say that the Federal Government has the obligation to create an armed force that can strike anywhere around the globe at any time and overturn governments or start a war here or there or anywhere that someone desires. National defense does not require nuclear-driven aircraft carriers that can send a strike force anywhere around the world.

As long as a nation is in this state of consciousness, what is it projecting into the cosmic mirror? What the cosmic mirror will project back is not necessarily an enemy who can threaten the United States but certainly the appearance of such an enemy, and thus seemingly the justification for continuing this completely unnecessary arms race.

Imagine if not only the money that is put into arms but also the research into more arms could be freed up. Imagine that the minds of the scientists who are right now focusing on weapons research could be freed up to do other things, such as alternative forms of energy, eradicating disease, eradicating poverty and hunger. For this to happen, you have to question: “Why has it not already happened?”

Creating an enemy for the arms race

The only answer is that the members of the elite do not want it to happen. They want to maintain their power and their privileges. They want to maintain, first of all, the sense that they are special, that they belong to an elite that has more than the people. They do not want equality, they do not want equal opportunity; they want privileged positions that no one can challenge.

This is what they always wanted. They loved the feudal societies of Europe for they were born into a position and stayed in it for a lifetime. They have been trying to recreate this kind of a society under the disguise of democracy and a so-called free-market economy. Of course, hardly any country has had a free economy for the last century where capitalism has managed to spread its tentacles to all of the nations that were not under communism.

It even spread its tentacles into communism for who financed Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution? Who continued to extend credit to the Soviet Union so that they could continue to build the arms that necessitated the ongoing arms race between East and West? If you don’t have a real enemy, you have to create one. Then, you have the dualistic battle between the two sides which is the hallmark of the dualistic consciousness.

How many people on earth can even ask such questions? When you see tens of thousands of people attain a higher degree of awareness, then they will begin to ask these questions. Some have already started.

The need for transparency in government

Look at the United States and how they have persecuted one person who dared to leak confidential files to Wikileaks. You may say that he was unpatriotic and endangered the nation, but what truly endangers the nation is when a government does not have transparency. Who is it that does not want transparency: the power elite. What is it that they have done? They are not stupid. When they saw the emergence of the United States as a democratic nation that had attempted to root out elitism, they became very concerned. They became even more concerned when they saw other nations follow the example of the United States and institute democracies.

What is the essence of a democracy? It is that each person in that society has one vote and that all votes count the same. What many do not realize is that each person must cast his or her vote based on what they know. They cannot vote based on what they do not know. What does this mean? It means that a democracy can function at its highest potential only when there is complete transparency in the government, in businesses and in all aspects of society.

Do you think the power elite liked this development? They saw – decades earlier – what was coming and that democracies would have to become more and more transparent and therefore the power elite could hide less and less. Do you really think it was beyond their capacity to say: “We need to stop this and how can we do it? Ah, we will create an enemy of democracy, namely the Soviet Union.”

The Soviet Union would be hostile and it would have spies that go into the West, and it itself would be secretive and try to prevent people in the West from knowing what was going on there. Now, with the creation of this one state apparatus, you suddenly had the justification that made democratic leaders say: “But we cannot allow ourselves to be transparent for then the Soviet Union will know all our secrets and they will be able to destroy us. We need to keep certain things secret for the Soviet Union.” Of course, the real issue was that the power elite wanted to keep things secret from the people in democratic nations.

Freedom of will and democracy

Many of the more mature democracies are facing a special kind of initiation. They have had a long phase where they attempted to manifest specific outer circumstances because they thought that this was important, this was a goal in itself or this would make people happy. And now they are realizing that it does not actually make people happy to have these specific material circumstances, so what do we do? Well, the shift is focused on psychology, the resolution of psychology. The purpose is not for a democracy to manifest specific outer circumstances, but to help people resolve their psychology and grow in awareness. It is, in a sense, the purpose to free people’s will and therefore, a society must free itself from whatever baggage it carries with it from the past, via traditions, via these subtle beliefs about what can or cannot be done.

You take a person who lived 100 years ago and they would not be able to accept or believe that the life you have today could be manifest. So, if you carry with you the vision of your grandfathers, well they will limit what progress you can make. You need to be willing as a democracy, to free yourself from this baggage, these limitations of what can or cannot happen, because as long as you think something cannot happen, then it cannot happen. It is the old saying: “Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you cannot, you are right,” because you can only co-create what you can see, and what you can choose, what you have chosen.