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Mixing it up with that goofball are we, HL? I read his ramblings earlier, the meds seem not to have kicked in today either. Nice to have something you can count on, isn't it?

John Gault once told me that we shouldn't have a military and that citizens could do a much better job with their own loosely organized militias.

I asked him how that was workin' out in Liberia. To his credit, he did have a response, but I really couldn't understand it.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

Mixing it up with that goofball are we, HL? I read his ramblings earlier, the meds seem not to have kicked in today either. Nice to have something you can count on, isn't it? John Gault once told me that we shouldn't have a military and that citizens could do a much better job with their own loosely organized militias. I asked him how that was workin' out in Liberia. To his credit, he did have a response, but I really couldn't understand it.

Call me crazy, but the inner-workings of the "touched" fascinate me. Hey, by the way, when we dissolve the military, can I have control of the ICBMs, or does someone else already have dibs. I'd like to store them in hollow-out volcanoes and have a crew of henchmen wearing orange blast-protection suits, while employing alluring female assassins to thwart my enemies while I sit in my command chair with my pet cat.

Please pardon my butting into your conversation here but regarding your criticism of johngalt's take on the militia I would like to make an observation. The founders knew that a navy was essential to our defense and to protect our shipping. They also understood that standing armies are a temptation to rulers. If they have them they want to use them and that was a threat to liberty. In fact Madlene Albright once asked "what's the point of have the world's most powerful military if you don't use it?" thus proving the founders point.

The fact is in the late 19th century our leaders were not content to be a large, powerful but peaceful, prosperous and free nation. No, that was not good enough for them. They wanted to be a great power in the European sense. We grabbed Hawaii, started a war with Spain expressly in order to grab her territories so we could have far flung posts from which to project power. We have been meddling in others affairs and involved in great wars ever since all at the cost of several million American casualties and tens of millions of foreigners lives not to mention the vast amounts of tax dollars squandered in the process with only escalation in sight. The draft, high taxation, tightened policing, the surveillance state all come at the expense of freedom and all come from an aggressive, meddling foreign policy devised by those who live to use the great power they have their hands on.

Please see this article which nicely summarizes the beginnings of the military indutrial complex showing how the pursuit of money and power drives our foreign policy and has costs us dearly in blood and treasure.

Finally if we were only concerned with our states' borders and didn't have far flung holdings and entangling alliances our nation could be secured by a small or even temporary army.