The idea behind a democracy is that the government
is us, darx. I know we're a republic, but even so, we spout out these ideals to the world about a government of the people for the people, but then go about saying we don't trust it? There's something inherently wrong with that. Perhaps instead of spending so much time telling other nations what government system is the correct choice for them, we should spend a little time becoming happy with our choice. If you can't trust a government which is supposed to represent you, that's not a system that needs to be spread.
I don't think our nuclear weapons program counts as "defense" at this point, or has for decades. And I don't understand why you think we are "stuck with it" for a while still. We have had more than enough nuclear weapons to act as a deterrent for decades. If we take the same amount of money (it would take less) that we spend on nuclear upkeep and used it for
some nuclear disarmament, it would create American jobs where it destroys them, help our international standing, give us some power of negotiation in nuclear disarmament treaties, and encourage other nations to do the same. In addition, it would make our national nuclear arsenal bleed less money from us in the future, which opens up some of the federal budget to create national improvement jobs not only providing a temporary relief to unemployment levels, but also creating national infrastructure--nice roads, buildings, parks, etc.--which help reduce crime, gang activity, and drug use if done correctly. If you took half of the money used just on nuclear upkeep and applied it to in-nation jobs, you could create over 100,000 jobs at $20,000 a year--over the poverty level for a family of four with a single provider. That's not including taking money from nuclear weapon research, construction and transportation.
While I agree that a sales tax could be a useful tool in cutting the deficit, it isn't really a quick fix. To my understanding, a majority of less-than-legal tax scams are performed by large national and international corporations for whom sales tax is more or less irrelevant. This means that working with a different type of taxation wont circumnavigate this tax problem. For example, Wal-Mart skipped out on over $2.3 Billion in taxes in a single year (I believe it was 2006). That's $2.3 Billion taxpayers must make up. And lets be clear--republican or democrat is irrelevant to tax fraud. And it's hard to enforce taxes on items bought overseas, which simply encourages those with enough money to buy elsewhere and transport in while forcing the poor to buy items with an even higher sales tax.
We spend 44.4% of our budget on the military. If we really do protect 48% of the world (which we don't, we leave a large portion of the world to handle itself until it directly becomes an issue for our investments), perhaps we would spend more than 1.5% of our budget on diplomacy and needs abroad. You complain about the IRS' cost to run? Government Operations
in their entirety only count for 6.9% of the budget--this includes paying every government position. Hell, education--in an era when Americans are flabbergasted as to why they are ninth among industrialized nations in high school graduates--only warrants 2.2% of our budget. We spend the same amount of money on the interest for our non-military debt than we do on all three of these aspects of our budget combined.
I got the figure from here:
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm. It cites the figure from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Obviously not an unbiased source, but at least the figure is cited. A comparable figure is found at
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending, which states, "The USA is responsible for 45 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by the UK, China, France, and Japan each with 4 to 5 per cent of the world share [in 2007]." In a later section a chart shows that in 2008 the US was 48% of world military spending.