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Why Decentralized Militias Matter
Why Decentralized Militias Matter
In 1852, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Springfield, Illinois in which he talked about the attempts at required militia training. He described how much of a joke the citizens made of any attempt at mandatory militia training. “No man,” Lincoln said, citing the rules, “is to wear more than five pounds of cod-fish for epaulets, or more than thirty yards of bologna sausages for a sash; and no two men are to dress alike, and if any two should dress alike the one that dresses most alike is to be fined.” He also described the militia figure of “our friend Gordon Abrams” at a militia training, “on horse-back . . . with a pine wood sword, about nine feet long, and a paste-board cocked hat, from front to rear about the length of an ox yoke, and very much the shape of one turned bottom upwards.”1
Lincoln was attempting to ridicule the dismissive attitudes of his fellow Illinoisans toward compulsory militia training. The conventional wisdom in military theory is that, for effective defense, the military must be centralized and continually maintained in the form of a compulsory standing army. Even from supposed “small government” advocates, this notion is never contested. However, the evidence from the time suggests that had it not been for the decentralized and voluntary militia system, Lincoln himself may have had significantly more trouble at the beginning of the Civil War.
During the Jacksonian era, the militia system in the states shifted largely from a compulsory to a voluntary system. Because of this, the Mexican War was first war fought by the United States that did not require a draft (the Civil War drafts are often cited as the first cases of conscription in the United States, but this ignores conscription administered by the states that took place during the Revolutionary War and War of 1812). During the Mexican War, roughly 50,000 troops were raised, all of whom enlisted without any compulsory measures.
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Turning America into a Battlefield: A Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation
Turning America into a Battlefield: A Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation
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.—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead?
It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.
Unfortunately, with the Constitution under constant attack, the military’s power, influence and authority have grown dramatically. Even the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities normally handled by a civilian police force, has been weakened by both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who ushered in exemptions allowing troops to deploy domestically and arrest civilians in the wake of alleged terrorist acts.
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