[Old Teufel Hunden]

"They didn’t even want a standing army, deferring to a militia and a strong Navy."

While your first statement is true, one of the biggest proponnents of no standing army was James Madison as documented in his federalist papers. However, he quickly changed his mind after the war of 1812 when he saw why you can't protect your country with a bunch of militia against a professional army. We're lucky that the Brits were just plain tired of war (and Napolean had escaped Elba) because they could have killed our republican experiment in it's infancy. Most of the founders that were alive at the time of the War of 1812 also saw how a standing army is certainly needed and they were in error on this point.

We did not have a strong Navy at our founding. It was all Washington and Adams could do not to get into a war they kenw they would lose because our ships were being boarded, confiscated and impressment was going on by both Britian and France. Our weak navy was also one of the causes of the War of 1812 (impressment). We had six frigates to start our Navy off with. It was not a strong Navy. In fact, only when Teddy Roosevelt (a proponent of Mahanian theory) got into office did we actually start getting a strong Navy.

[DesertRhino]

Thats a complete fantasy, your idea that the standing Army was expanded after the war of 1812.

We started with one regiment in the 1790s. That was soon expanded to a total of 13. (interesting number,,,isn’t it?)
In the war of 1812 we expanded to 50 regiments.
In 1815 it was reduced to a 8, lower than the prewar total. In 1821 it was reduced even further to 7.

And the importance of a Navy was well understood, and it was commissioned and steadily grew. It was only limited by finances early on. By the civil war the navy was very powerful. That’s simply unsupportable that we had no effective navy before T. Roosevelt.

And in any case, despite the thread hijack, the argument was that America was not built upon the idea of worldwide intervention on a continuous basis like the Romans, or Brits had to. They were in almost constant military action and were intervening in nations far from home, and dictating their governments.

As fun as that is, it destroys freedom at home, bankrupts the treasury, and creates enmity worldwide. It is doing so with us, and the neocons love every minute of it. Some conservatives do too because they confuse supporting our military, with needing to champion its near constant use worldwide.