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The first salon of the New Year features the prolific and charismatic David Stockman. David possesses a nearly unparalleled knowledge of Washington and high finance. Before going on to a career on Wall Street at Salomon Brothers and Blackstone, he served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration and was the youngest Cabinet member of the twentieth century. From 1976 to 1981, he represented Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District in the House of Representatives. How—David asks, “did the notion that the planet is teeming with incipient monsters that can only be tamed by the global presence and continuous vigilance of a Washington-led and -kitted planetary gendarme ever take such deep roots and persevere for so long?” The United States faces no existential threats and is more secure from foreign danger than any other nation in history. Yet the taxpayer foots an enormous bill -- $1.5 trillion year and counting -- to create enemies by smashing hornets’ nests abroad. David maintains the United States does not require treaties to be safe. Adhering to the wisdom of President George Washington's Farewell Address admonition against entangling alliances, Congress repealed an inherited defense treaty with France in 1798 and we got along just fine for 151 years until Senate ratification of the NATO treaty in 1949. NATO has weakened the United States against foreign aggression. Did we need Western Europe -- financially and militarily depleted 76 years ago -- to protect our independence? The post-Cold War decision to expand NATO more than doubled its size to include 32 nations. How does our security require defending midget nations like Montenegro or North Macedonia from endemic Balkan convulsions? NATO is a poster boy for going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.