America’s Standing Army, Our Freedom & The Welfare World

Our Founding Fathers stated over and over again, that America was not to have any “Standing Armies”. Why? A Standing Army would be too easily used against the Rights and Freedoms of a Free People. If you have to wait on the Militia from each state to decide that this is a war that needs to be fought, then for these Militia to form up, you can not just declare war and run out and fight it just because you want to.
That was the whole point. To the Founding Fathers, the wars forever being fought across the world were one of the greatest dangers to a society.
Not only in deaths, but in distruction of property and wealth. They did not want the U. S. to be involved with foreign adventures. They intended that the power of wars would be vested in the Representatives in Congress, who were appointed by the States, with the States and local Militia, where the control and power of warfare would be with the people, for the protection of America and American citizenry, not in the Federal Government and it’s wars in foreign lands.
And the fact that historically, Federal Armies have been used against the citizens, in control of or outright war against the people. Remember the Constitution puts bars on a cage to keep the beast of the Federal Government in check.
The Declaration of Independence listed the colonists’ grievances, including the presence of standing armies, subordination of civil to military power……. and the use of the royal prerogative to suspend laws and charters. All of these legal actions resulted from reliance on standing armies in place of the militia. Sound familiar?

In the Colonial Declaration of Rights of October 19, 1765 it was complained that Kings had disarmed the people. Of course the colonists were by force of early circumstances bearers of arms. This prohibition upon the Nation means that it can never interfere with the people who make the militia of the States; and that therefore the States will always have the means to check by physical force any usurpation of authority not given to the Nation by the Constitution.
“What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . .Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”

~Rep. Elbridge Gerry~ of Massachusetts, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, VP of the United States 1813-1814,
spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789

Also, standing armies cost the American Taxpayer dearly. The official military budget takes up 51% of our National Budget. For 1999, the military portion of the national debt was estimated to be 51.4%. This does not cover the Nuclear Weapons Budget, nor the many Black Opts Budgets, which are hidden in other Budgets. (Think $250.00 toilet seats, $300.00 screwdrivers).

The US military budget is that portion of the United States discretionary federal budget that is allocated for the funding of the Department of Defense. This military budget finances employee salaries and training costs, the maintenance of equipment and facilities, support of new or ongoing operations, and development and procurement of new equipment. The budget includes funding for all branches of the military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (which is in the Department of Energy budget), or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements).
The current (2005) United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next twenty biggest spenders combined, and six times larger than China’s, which places second. The United States and its close allies are responsible for approximately two-thirds of all military spending on Earth…. and spend 57 times more than the seven so-called “rogue” nations combined (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria). Military spending accounts for more than half of the United States’ federal discretionary spending, which is all of the U.S. government’s money not spoken for by preexisting obligations.
Finally, it must be stressed that the recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are funded outside the Federal Budget (i.e. are paid for through supplementary spending bills) and are therefore external to the military budget figures listed above. In addition, the United States has long had a history of black budget military spending which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures. Thus, the true amount spent by the United States on military spending is much higher than the figures maintained in the Federal Budget. {Source}

I wonder what portion of the Federal Budget is really being spent on the Military. If we know that around 51% is being spent, then you add in the cost of the “War on Terror” and the Black Opts., could we be up into the 70% bracket? No wonder we have no money for the important things in America. This is why Congress has authorized raising the debt ceiling to $9 Trillion.

Governments had misused standing armies in two ways, both of which ultimately subjected the citizenry to tyranny. One was to engage in faraway wars, which inevitably entailed enormous expenditures, enabling the government to place ever-increasing tax burdens on the people. Such wars also inevitably entailed “patriotic” calls for blind allegiance to the government so long as the war was being waged. The second way to use a standing army to impose tyranny was the direct one — the use of troops to establish order and obedience among the citizenry.
In their minds, the military bedrock of a free society lay not in an enormous standing army but rather in the concept of the citizen-soldier — the person in ordinary life in civil society who is well-armed and well-trained in the use of weapons and who is always ready in times of deepest peril to come to the aid of his country — but only to defend against invasion and not to go overseas to wage wars of aggression or wars of “liberation.” {MustRead}

Some one needs to inform this Administration, according to John Quincy Adams, that America “does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Not only are we destroying the monsters of this world, well some of them, but we are told that this will go on for at least a hundred years. That because of this war on terror, the President has expanded powers and we are not under the Constitution while we are at war.

The experience of the early Middle Ages had instilled in the English people a deep aversion to the professional army, which they came to associate with oppressive taxes, and physical abuses of their persons and property (and corresponding fondness for their traditional institution the militia). This development was to have a profound effect on the development of civil rights in both England and the American colonies….

~William S. Fields and David T. Hardy~
The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History. {Source}

We are the police force of the world. We can not afford to do this anymore, if we ever could. American’s have other needs. Health care, infrastructure of our cities, roads and schools to name a few. Let the other countries pay their fair share of the world security. If all the other nations paid for the security for their part of the world, not only would we have money to spend here at home, but the world would be safer. I am tired of paying for this. Seems to me we have a welfare world and the American workers are paying for it.

Some thoughts from our Founding Fathers on Standing Armies:

“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

~George Washington~
Commanding General of the Continental Army, Father of Our Country and First President of the United States.
In a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government.”

~Thomas Jefferson~

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

~Thomas Jefferson~

“The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Besides the advantage of being armed, it forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would surely shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors.

~James Madison~

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Roman’s it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people”.
Did the antipathy against standing armies mean that our ancestors were pacifists? On the contrary! After all, don’t forget that they had only recently won a violent war against their own government and its enormous and powerful standing army.

~James Madison~

“….. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended………. and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and … degeneracy of manners and of morals…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare”.

~James Madison~