"The Cost of Progress"

A new aquaintence of mine, who happens to be a conservative, used the term "the cost of progress" today when we were chatting with a neighbor about a possible intersection improvement in our neighborhood. I was wondering if this was simply a Republican catch-phrase, or if there actually were "costs of progress" in a negative sense.

We also got on the topic of the military. He couldn't believe that, because I am a member of the Green Party, that I was in the Air Force. I learned a lot in the Air Force as a heavy equipment operator. One thing is that it is not nice to dump potentially harmful waste into the desert, as I had to. And that compared to how much money the military budget takes up on our federal budget (hovers around 50%), military personel get paid quite shitty. My conservative friend said that the military is important because " it is the one thing we do right." Of course my comeback was thought of later, but what came to mind was that just because we "do it right" (meaning we spend a hell of a lot of money on it) does not mean that it is the right way to spend our money, or even that it is right at all. Might does not make right...we should've learned that lesson by now.