Standing Armies Stand in the Way of Freedom

No, I'm not complaining about little "aberrations" like Waco, where the standing army assisted the extra-constitutional National Police Force(s) in the murder of American citizens. That was unspeakable but only recently has it even been thinkable. Nor will I make any disagreeable comments about the warrior ethic – I myself subscribe to it. Then why would old soldiers like George Washington and me speak against standing armies?

Hint – it's not because the soldiers are bad guys. It's much simpler even than that. It is the simple fact that in the world that we are living in, freedom requires that very warrior ethic we seem to assume is the exclusive province of national military forces. To assume that someone else will protect your rights is sadly incorrect and we are seeing the evidence of it as our freedoms erode. There is only person you can depend upon to vouchsafe your freedom and that is you. Once you hire that job out to somebody else, you're finished.

Could this be why American men have become such a bunch of lightweights? Let's explore that some more. The men who fought the War Between the States were arguably the best American soldiers to ever pick up a gun. Both sides drew many of their initial officer cadres from the same tiny national army of between thirteen and sixteen thousand men. That is less than the size of a modern day army division. Yet our fighting men in that war, even on the Northern side, were first rate and utilizing modern weapons and technologies, changed the face of warfare forever.

These were state troops, "milishy" as they used call them. They'd fall in for drill one Sunday a month usually followed by a social affair and perhaps some horse racing or target shooting. They seemed like amateurs to some folks but they were quite sufficient to fight a war of such scope that we have still not recovered as a nation. It should be noted also that they were quite capable of handling foreign threats as well – both Brits and the French found that out. One of my least favorite Yankee war criminals took fifty thousand troops down to the Mexican border and Mr. Maximilian decided that messing with combat hardened veterans in such numbers just might not be a good idea. Britain was a little leery of those boats with the iron turrets – designed as they were by amateurs.

World War I began the slide toward militarism – it was too big we were told, for the old ways. We had to centralize. The threat, although never really defined, was too menacing to worry about the niceties. Once again the state troops filled the gap but they were soon nationalized and lost their identity in the mass. There was a short period of common sense after that horror when people had sort of got the message that mechanized slaughter served interests other than theirs. The US Army was once again reduced in strength to a cadre along with a small Marine Corps and Navy.

Then along came Franklin Roosevelt and socialism. "Projecting power" became important to the political masters and the Navy was heavily built up as well as a long-range strategic air force that would shortly bring fire and death to many. World War Two and the draft put literally millions of Americans in uniform and they were taught to obey the national leadership without qualm. Whatever moral high ground America ever laid claim to burned up in Dresden and Nagasaki.

Our choice of allies had been made for us by leaders of small attainment so it wasn't long before we were propping up the British in peace as well as war, and facing off against our communist former ally, the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that Russia was almost destroyed in the Second World War, they did have a lot of tanks and they were utterly ruthless so American politicians made the decision to stand up to the perceived threat (to Europe!) and the Cold War was on. The standing army was here to stay and with it the officer class which made careerism a raison d'etre.

Freedom however, was lost. Because at the point where we surrendered our national defense to "professionals" we thrust our remaining freedoms into the willing hands of those State functionaries we all purport to despise so much. It also put our fighting men behind the eightball. How many times have you heard someone say of our troops in Kosovo, at risk as they are and fighting in the cause of dishonor, "That's what they signed on for?" Americans view their forces as mercenaries plain and simple, and have surrendered control of them to the State, washing their hands of it.

Most modern Americans depend upon the police and by extension, the military, for his own personal safety. Well folks, here is the bad news, you'll never get to keep your lunch money that way! In the case of the police – you pay through the nose for people who can't or won't defend you – but they will send someone out to write a nice report over your body. The military does indeed fight "our" wars, but are they truly our wars? How interested are you in the Balkans wars? Interested enough to have your child die fighting there? I didn't think so.

There are other dynamics at work here that we must consider. A peacetime military is a bureaucracy of the worst sort. The generals who command in peacetime are rarely the ones that matter when wars occur. Taking our modern forces as an example, the military leaders are cowards and careerists of the worst sort and have condemned thousands of their youthful charges to death with their lickspittle acceptance of the feminization of the fighting forces. They train for situations like what to do in case of sexual harassment or "hurtful" language. These officers are expert at producing PowerPoint slide shows with which they may at least bore a potential enemy to death. Perpetuating careerism at the Pentagon does exactly what towards making my family safe? As opposed say, to having the men of my neighborhood armed and trained with military style firearms and equipment?

While American men leave such worthies to defend their freedom, they may consider that freedom to be a mirage. Besides, what does any government agency care for your freedom? They care, by their very nature, for their power and their ability to increase that power. We put too much trust in these men who learn the motto of "Duty, Honor, Country" at West Point yet produce no men who will refuse an illegal order. Was not the bombing of Serbian schools and market places without even a declaration of war, a war crime? How many of our men have refused to wear the blue beret of the UN? I can think of one! It's well known that soldiers with lots of physical courage in combat where their bodies are on the line still wilt when a superior threatens their career prospects. If I'm incorrect please send me the names of every American pilot who refused to participate in the horrific assault against the Serbs. I won't hold my breath waiting for a reply. I've been corrected on occasion by military men who tell me it's not up to them to make policy, only to execute it. That philosophy got a lot of Germans hung not so very long ago.

What is sad is that the warrior ethic I spoke off barely exists even in the military now. It might offend the media types and the politicians, like the female senator who spoke disparagingly of the Marines when she found out they trained their men for fighting and killing and weren't paying enough attention to "real" issues like gender equity. This is the government upon whom we depend for our security as a nation. If you are sleeping soundly at night with this bunch at the helm you must be taking a lot more on faith than I am.

Foreign policy? Give the central government a military to play with and you see what kind of foreign policy we get. It's whimsical, murderous, it benefits us not one bit as a people, and it's laughable in its way because our government bozos are essentially fumblers. They are greedy fumblers, which is the worst kind – they rent out this high priced military of "ours" for security work such as they are doing in the Balkans and Columbia. Both of those operations are immoral, illegal, and they have in common that they are killing innocents in the interests of those who have sponsored the careers of our "civil servants." But they couldn't get away with that if we didn't have a standing military. But what if we had a national defense based upon the citizenry? Do you really think Michael and the boys are going to drop everything, grab the ole assault rifle and hop over to Kosovo? We don't care about no stinkin' Caspian Pipeline. Some of us have even read history and have a fair idea of what happens to people and nations that push Russia too hard. Besides, we are working for our living and couldn't be bothered. Which of course is why the government insists that we absolutely must have a large standing army – that way they don't have to ask our permission to kill people.

There is another aspect to this that I suspect is not obvious to most – our foreign policy and our perceived need for a huge standing army is responsible for most of the wars that are now in progress. Here is how it works: the army does some figuring and decides it's armoured forces will need a new main battle tank and it will have to meet certain requirements such as having a 100mm gun, chobham armour and it must go 60kph. During the life of this tank it is determined that we will need a total of twelve thousand of them rolling off the assembly lines to meet our requirement. Each tank costs a certain amount per unit. Now guess what, the price per unit goes down as the production numbers go up – and the government wants cheaper tanks to hide the cost from you and me. The "defense" contractors want more sales. So we export them to Israel, Egypt, and anyone else with a pulse and a dollar. This applies to every weapon we make from rifles to Patriot Missiles. In some very rare cases we refuse to export some weapon until we have a new and improved version for ourselves.

The result of this process is that we as a country have become the arms merchants our grandparents hated so much that after the First World War they called them "merchants of death." When you wonder why the mythical "peace process" does not work in the Middle East just think about what kinds of weapons the various armies are using. The Russians can no longer keep up and their weapons showed up poorly in the Persian Gulf War so now it's time for guns, tanks and planes stamped "Made in USA." We are sponsoring the very wars about which our political leaders and diplomats claim to be so "concerned." We are responsible in fact, for murder on a global scale.

We as individuals give up our own claims to morality by sanctioning such state sponsored murder.

There is that alternative we might call a true national defense; one where the citizens themselves are responsible for the defense of the nation. Most of us are quite willing to take up arms to protect our country from invasion. Until very recently, most of us owned and at least occasionally handled firearms. The individual American was considered so important to national defense by the founders of this country that our constitution mentioned it specifically. Despite a very recent claim that our militia forces in the First Revolution were painfully inept and that the real fighting was done by the professionals history shows this to be a lie. Where were the continentals (the professionals of their day) when Nolichucky Jack Sevier and the "over the mountain boys" destroyed the British and Tories at Kings mountain? Can the claim be made that they didn't know how to fight? The British or at least the ones who survived, could have told you different. Nolichucky Jack and the boys didn't consider themselves beholden to any central government but they were armed and ready to fight, and Kings Mountain was the last time the British stuck their hand into that hornets nest!

This includes a very nice concomitant – namely, when you get the guns back into the hands of the citizenry, you put the political power back there too. If you were wondering why politicians routinely betray their oaths and steal everything in sight – it's because they have the backing of the men with the guns. We could take that power away from them, it would require only that thing which Americans lack so profoundly: moral courage.

Shouldn't we be questioning the motives of a government / media conglomerate that has made it seem like an awful thing to teach young boys and men how to shoot? Those idiots running the government indoctrination centers (schools) are concerned that dodge ball is too rough for American boys – let's not even consider shooting or boxing. Feminized boys are a sick joke to anyone but a government flunky who is apt to admire qualities like servility and docility much more than combativeness and a commitment to freedom. This is not an accident folks; it is very much by design.

What we must consider, and we must consider it now, is how seriously do we take our freedoms? To me, it appears that we as a nation do not take freedom seriously at all. That we are a nation of pansies who exist to support the war machine and our masters, in exchange for a few crumbs from a table stocked with delicacies provided for our masters by our labor. Colonel Hackworth reported recently the US Army has more credit cards on issue than it does rifles. Guess whose account those bills are charged to? The answer will be in your mail next year at tax time.

Why are armed citizens not defending our southern borders? Is it because Americans overwhelmingly support having their culture subsumed by migrants in their millions? Hardly. Recent polls show only ten per cent of us support that insanity. No, it is happening because we are a nation of whipped puppies and here we stand, big dumb smiles on our faces, waiting for our wonderful government saviors to do something about the very situation that they are promoting!

Why do we tolerate the drug war and the illegal forfeiture of property by the very police who are supposed to defend us? Here is why, because we are a nation of limp wrested men who hire others to do their dirty work. If you don't want a crack house in your neighborhood – get rid of it. But don't hire those bozos and bullies in the swat costumes to come around beating on everyone's door with machine gun in hand and visions of sugar plums dancing in their greedy heads! Can we call ourselves free when we allow that to happen?

How do you believers feel, when your despotic government slaughters Serbian Christians from thirty thousand feet to protect criminal Marxist terrorists? I figure you must not mind it too much – nobody much has complained about it. How about now, as Clinton, or is it Bush, who can tell the difference, is destabilizing Macedonia in a clear case of militaristic aggression? Feel pretty good about that too, eh?

It is obvious that the militarization of the police and the feminization of the military are both blows against our freedom. The former destroys our freedoms at home and the latter destroys our ability as a country to defend ourselves from attack. A military that is so constructed that it cannot fight a serious enemy but is perfect for "pacification" duties ("fight light" anyone?) is a military I don't wish to fund. It is an incubation center for ludicrous schemes of the pc crowd who can't even run a college let alone a military force. No matter though, even when our military was at its peak, say at the time of Desert Storm – we must ask ourselves what was such a military used for?

The answer is, to fight for Israel and the oil interests. The former is no consequence to us since we should be avoiding foreign entanglements and they have their own military. The latter need armed force because they have forsaken capitalism for this National Socialist "third way" we have now, where major companies buy government favors and call it "the national interest." The sad thing about it is that there is an alternative. Picture America as a power house of trade, with a huge citizen army, and a small central government. Such a country is in no danger of running short of anything and that includes oil. Nor is such a country in danger of invasion – who wants to deal with an armed citizenry? If you question my logic on that consider why Hitler kept his hands off Switzerland. It wasn't because they weren't close by and full of interesting resources he craved. It was because he didn't crave a last ditch fight with an armed citizenry. It should be noted that the various resistance movements in Europe only began to flourish when we sent them weapons. Up until then, they had to choke some Nazi to death to get a rifle and that was risky business. Their governments hadn't trusted them with weapons and so they were defenseless.

We must face some harsh facts: whether you believe in a standing military or not, this one we have has got to go. Clinton's generals are not my generals. Coed barracks and feminized, sissified training standards are not something I want anything to do with. I don't believe such a force can defend me, nor do I want it to. However, I do long for a military system that can be utilized for national defense, as opposed to extending the Empire. I want a military that will defend the borders of the United States. I want a military that will not obey un-constitutional or illegal orders, that will not attack foreign countries and that will laugh disdainfully at government murder squads the next time they wish to fry some children at a compound near you.

There is only one way to get what I want. The states must take the gun out of the hand of government. But will that happen? It could. It would of course require a near extinct breed of American man to bring it about. The one called a real man, the one called a patriot. A man who will fight, who declare himself free by his own actions and enforce that freedom regardless of what the faceless drones in New York and Washington have to say about it.

Many readers have asked me how I can be in favor of secession when the State has the big guns. Consider who it is that gave them those guns! It was us! The power to give and the power to take away belong to us, the people. That we choose not to use that power is whose fault?

They say that spiritually and philosophically, a man can be free where ever he is – even a concentration camp. And I say that the kind of men who can do that, would not let them build such horrors in the first place. The people of Poland and Russia and numerous other countries found themselves in the hands of the kind of men who do indeed build concentration camps, and they were helpless to do anything about it. You see, they had put their faith in government and standing armies.

August 20, 2001