LEWISTON – The soul of America is drunk with military spending.

The addiction to military jobs – building planes, guns or the Navy’s newest destroyers – makes warfare vital and starves the rest of the economy, says peace activist Bruce Gagnon.

“We’ll be like an alcoholic sitting at a bar, always needing the next drink,” said Gagnon, Thursday’s speaker at the Great Falls Forum.

To Gagnon, a Vietnam-era veteran who entered politics as a volunteer on Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, citizens need to come to terms with the failings of their government.

“It’s all about money in the end,” he said.

It’s a message that Gagnon has been spreading for decades.

The son of an Air Force serviceman, Gagnon says he became a peace activist while following his father in the Air Force. After spending time with anti-war airmen, he began reading and learning.

A few years later, after the military and college, he joined the United Farmworkers Union in Florida as an organizer.

“I’ve been organizing ever since,” he said. The work that followed, as a writer and activist, has been focused on the environment and the military.

In 1987, he led 5,000 people to march on Cape Canaveral to protest the first test flight of the Trident II missile.

Much of his expertise since has been focused on space, from Reagan’s “Star Wars” program to modern satellite weapons.

“Missile defense is a Trojan horse,” said Gagnon, who lives in Brunswick. “It’s all about offense.”

It’s a message Gagnon delivered with zeal.

Standing in front of 100 or so people at the Lewiston Public Library, Gagnon clasped his hands to either side of a lectern and spoke in an almost evangelistic tone.

“The U.S. today is a military empire,” he said.

It has caused people around the world to treat Americans with a mix of fear and contempt. On a recent trip to India, Gagnon heard the same questions over and over.

“Who do you people think you are?” people asked.

Addicts, he said.

Gagnon believes the entire U.S. economy needs to be changed.

“Why can’t we convert a place like a Bath Iron Works?” he asked. He suggested revamping the shipyard to build a rail system that might link Maine’s more populous cities and towns.

Military giant General Dynamics, which owns the shipyard, would never do such a thing, he said.

First, like an addict in a 12-step program, the country needs to begin with acknowledgment.

“Sort of, ‘Hello. My name is America and I am addicted to war and violence,'” Gagnon said.