AND REPUBLICAN WARMONGERS
by Michael Gaddy, ©2017
(Apr. 20, 2017) — Many, many, years ago our founders warned us of the dangers of maintaining a “standing army” and how that would hinder our pursuit of Liberty.
“In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, 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.”
Madison pretty well described where we are today in a nutshell; we certainly have the “constant apprehension of war” promoted by the media and most government employees. To believe we do not have an overgrown Executive is to border on insanity for has the Congress not relinquished their power to declare war to the executive branch and most “conservatives” defend their right to do so much more than they defend their own rights. Madison warned a standing army and an overgrown executive are not “safe companions to Liberty.” Need I say more than the Patriot Act or The National Defense Authorization Act?
Are we not pelted daily with claims of foreign dangers by those same forces: government employees and the media, and have they not become the instruments of tyranny here at home? Republicans finally got an “in your face” dose of this in the 2016 election cycle.
What about the Roman maxim of exciting a war anytime there exists a threat of a revolution among the people? Would one be out of line to mention the Oklahoma City bombing or 9/11? Did they both not excite war among the people and justify the existence of both a standing army and a more powerful executive branch?
Prior to WWII, America indeed did not have an organized armament industry as was stated by President Eisenhower in 1960. We also did not have the National Security Act and all of its attendant federal bureaucracies prior to 1947. In what could be considered President Eisenhower’s farewell address, he warned us of just such a combination of powers. He referred to them as the military/industrial complex. In all candor, he should have called them the military/industrial/banking complex.
Eisenhower said,
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Unfortunately, another warning that has been ignored to the detriment of freedom and Liberty.
Were we warned even earlier than the warning from Eisenhower and after the warning from Madison? We certainly were. Writing in the early 20th Century, even before the winds of war in Europe that became WWI, a man by the name of Randolph Bourne admonished the people that war was indeed “The Health of the State.” What Bourne outlined so well was how the government (state) derives powers taken from the people and how government grows beyond its constitutional boundaries, with the people’s blessings, all the while little realizing they are endorsing their own slavery to the forces of government. Read for yourself if anything Bourne wrote has relevance in our world today, all these 99 years later?
Read the rest here.