We don’t need to conquer the world. We don’t need to kill people in other countries.
We can learn from history. The Swiss didn’t have a standing army–they had an armed citizenry. Every man was issued an assault rifle which he used to shoot as many bullseyes on paper targets as quickly as possible at sporting competitions. They managed to not get conquered during both world wars because they had this brilliant idea to stay neutral. Plus they were known to be excellent marksmen, resilient, and numerous (every man had a gun). Despite the fantastic resources the Swiss controlled, Hitler wasn’t about to mess with an armed citizenry.
Know this: the day you let others protect you is the day you lose your freedom. Now they control you, and you have no means to defend yourself from them.
Besides, what does any government agency care for your freedom? They care, by their very nature, for their power and their ability to increase that power. We put too much trust in these men who learn the motto of “Duty, Honor, Country” at West Point yet produce no men who will refuse an illegal order.
Foreign policy? Give the central government a military to play with and you see what kind of foreign policy we get. It’s whimsical, murderous, it benefits us not one bit as a people, and it’s laughable in its way because our government bozos are essentially fumblers. They are greedy fumblers, which is the worst kind – they rent out this high priced military of “ours” for security work such as they are doing in the Balkans and Columbia. Both of those operations are immoral, illegal, and they have in common that they are killing innocents in the interests of those who have sponsored the careers of our “civil servants.” But they couldn’t get away with that if we didn’t have a standing military. But what if we had a national defense based upon the citizenry? Do you really think Michael and the boys are going to drop everything, grab the ole assault rifle and hop over to Kosovo? We don’t care about no stinkin’ Caspian Pipeline. Some of us have even read history and have a fair idea of what happens to people and nations that push Russia too hard. Besides, we are working for our living and couldn’t be bothered. Which of course is why the government insists that we absolutely must have a large standing army – that way they don’t have to ask our permission to kill people.
There is another aspect to this that I suspect is not obvious to most – our foreign policy and our perceived need for a huge standing army is responsible for most of the wars that are now in progress. Here is how it works: the army does some figuring and decides it’s armoured forces will need a new main battle tank and it will have to meet certain requirements such as having a 100mm gun, chobham armour and it must go 60kph. During the life of this tank it is determined that we will need a total of twelve thousand of them rolling off the assembly lines to meet our requirement. Each tank costs a certain amount per unit. Now guess what, the price per unit goes down as the production numbers go up – and the government wants cheaper tanks to hide the cost from you and me. The “defense” contractors want more sales. So we export them to Israel, Egypt, and anyone else with a pulse and a dollar. This applies to every weapon we make from rifles to Patriot Missiles. In some very rare cases we refuse to export some weapon until we have a new and improved version for ourselves.
The result of this process is that we as a country have become the arms merchants our grandparents hated so much that after the First World War they called them “merchants of death.” When you wonder why the mythical “peace process” does not work in the Middle East just think about what kinds of weapons the various armies are using. The Russians can no longer keep up and their weapons showed up poorly in the Persian Gulf War so now it’s time for guns, tanks and planes stamped “Made in USA.” We are sponsoring the very wars about which our political leaders and diplomats claim to be so “concerned.” We are responsible in fact, for murder on a global scale.
Source. He gets a little carried away in the end, but nevertheless I stand by his words as truth. The articles I linked to said what I wanted to, so read them. Here’s more info on the Swiss and their citizenry.
Our forefathers knew that every nation that disarmed its citizens, and who ceased to depend upon militias for its defense, relying instead upon standing armies, inevitably embarked upon an imperialistic policy abroad and authoritarian rule at home, and eventually destroyed itself. [Another good read.]
If you like quotes from our founding fathers, check out what Jefferson thought: There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.
credit: hvhe1
