I think a simple explanation of keynesianism is using easy money to spur the economy. Whether it's through artificially low interest or printing currency you don't have doesn't much matter. Regardless of how you define it this is not the purpose of the military.
Furthermore I have very strong feelings about those who would take advantage of patriotic young men by sending them to some third world shit hole to sacrifice themselves for undeserving animals because it is good for the economy and/or the defense contractor.
I agaree that a national security goal is essential.
I remember reading some campaign material put out by Richard Nixon in his 1972 campaign in which he said, when targeting college students in his appeals, that he had managed to bring the defense budget under 50 percent of the total federal budget.
Defense spending isn't anywhere close to that level today. Social welfare spending and entitlements have become a steadily increasing percentage of the budget, along with payments on the national debt and the ticking time bomb of Social Security.
That is wrong.
Most of what the federal government does today either should be done by the states and cities, or should be done by private individuals and organizations, or shouldn't be done at all.
By contrast, providing for the common defense is virtually the only big-dollar item on which the federal government has the primary role under our Constitution. The federal government has other constitutionally prescribed functions, of course, but most of them do not cost anywhere close to what defense costs.
Obviously there is waste in the defense department. I live outside a major Army installation and I could tell horror stories. I think putting together a committee of angry first sergeants could generate billions of dollars in defense cuts due to waste, fraud and abuse, and creating a committee like that is a program I could get behind.
What the Democrats want is something entirely different, not fixing defense but gutting defense.