Daniel Foster, in a wonderfully amusing piece of satire, notes the David Brooks school of conservatism case for building a death star.
[I]t’s not as if there’s nothing here for Republicans to like. After years of NASA atrophy, “National Greatness” conservatives like David Brooks should be among the first to champion the Death Star as helping to reestablish America’s reputation for doing Big Things. Certain neoconservatives will display similar enthusiasm, and not just because they will rightly view the Death Star as a powerful deterrent to the likes of China (which by most accounts is still 20 years away from superlaser capability) and Iran (which may or may not be pursuing superlasers for other than peaceful purposes) but also because they are well-known students and admirers of the Galactic Empire. Jonathan V. Last, in the pages of The Weekly Standard, offers the most compelling and concise apologia for the Empire. He views Palpatine as a largely benevolent dictator, Darth Vader as concerned primarily with reestablishing order in a galaxy wracked by strife, and the Old Republic, which together they overthrew, as a sclerotic and ineffectual bureaucracy that had grown ungovernable. Whether they say it publicly or not, many on the right agree with him.
That Jonathan V. Last essay is epic. Go read it as well.