Timeline for How are states supposed to protect themselves when the National Guard is under the federal government?
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| Jul 1, 2019 at 16:45 | comment | added | Perkins | @Mehrdad You're not crazy, you're just talking to Hamiltonians and/or Linconians. Both of those men were of the opinion that America should be an empire ruled by one, all-powerful central authority. It took about a hundred years for that school of thought to get enough power in the hands of the feds to be able to declare itself openly (and slaughter well over 600,000 Americans in the process) but the seeds were there from the beginning. Hamilton wanted a king and an empire, Jefferson wanted liberty for all. We ended up with a mix and a grand example of how power corrupts. | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 21:55 | comment | added | user1530 | @Mehrdad well, I think it's fair to say it was one of the ideas. But note we have a long history of using the term 'militia' in rather non-specific ways. It's also important to point out that in the context of the National Guard, they can be considered a militia informally, but formally, they are a branch of the federal military. | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 21:13 | comment | added | user541686 | @blip: What confuses me is why everybody here seems to think I'm completely crazy when I say the point of the militias was to prevent federal oppression. I thought that was such a basic/well-known/obvious fact that it didn't even need justification, but everyone here seems to think I pulled the entire idea out of nowhere. Am I just reading outright lies when it comes to history or does everyone have their own idea of what the reasoning behind the constitution was?! | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 20:58 | comment | added | user1530 | @Mehrdad yea, you're right. Actually, the more I read that, the more I think Madison might be contradicting himself. I'm suddenly thinking Madison didn't fully think through things there. (I'm also curious as to where he figured the 50:3 ratio was the key...it actually seems excessive...). But, now I'm digressing... | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 20:29 | comment | added | user541686 | @blip: Wait, what? Are you reading the same thing I'm writing? It literally says: "The people themselves... in order to protect themselves from the federal government overpowering them... were encouraged to constitute a total militia of at least 500,000 people." And read the introduction in this article: "In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by state militias." And yeah obviously the world is different today but that's beside the point. | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 20:13 | comment | added | user1530 | @Mehrdad there's no contradiction there. Madison is saying that 'not having a large federal army' is what protects the states...not the states themselves having militia. (in either case, the world is much different today so his numbers don't make much sense anymore) | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 19:23 | comment | added | user541686 | +1 but Wikipedia literally says "Madison calculated while writing Federalist Paper 46 that the standing military, controlled by the federal government, should be kept under a maximum of 30,000 troops, enough to defend America against other nations but not enough to oppress the states. The people themselves... in order to protect themselves from the federal government overpowering them.. were encouraged to constitute a total militia of at least 500,000 people." which seems to contradict the point that the point of the militias wasn't to defend against oppression by the federal government... | |
| Apr 11, 2018 at 19:12 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 11, 2018 at 19:33 | |||||
| Apr 11, 2018 at 19:10 | history | answered | M.A. Golding | CC BY-SA 3.0 |