The ‘Thank You for Your Service’ Red Pill

Subject: The ‘Thank You for Your Service’ Red Pill Wed Aug 18, 2021 6:28 pm

Citizen armies don’t fight endless wars with literally nothing to show for it; professional armies do.

Americans have been given an ultra red pill with the events in Afghanistan. As the incompetence and corruption of America’s military apparatus are laid bare before our eyes, as America’s military leaders are hiding in shame (as they ought to be), and as America’s credibility abroad is being shredded, there is much demanding our reflection. The American people deserve better than the military apparatchiks and crony politicians we have now, but we must learn from our experiences and adjust course. This is the requirement of all free people.

One thing we need to examine is our dogmatic praise of the military and its members. For the last 80 years, since the great shift to the post-World War II order, the military has become a hallmark of the American regime. But this was not always the case. Praising a professional military, especially a massive, standing army in times of peace, would have been antithetical to American virtue to most Americans living during the first 150 years of our history.

During the founding, for instance, professional soldiers were seen for what they are: mercenaries. We debated some after establishing our regime about if and how much we needed some small portion of a professional cadre of soldiers, but I have never come across a founder who did not see professional soldiers essentially as scum. Ours was to be a republic, and republics cannot use mercenary armies. The hallmark of the American military was the citizen-soldier—the direct opposite of the professional.

The logic is simple. There is something less than admirable about someone who would fight and kill for a living. Mercenaries profit from war and death, and as such mercenary armies have a professional interest contrary to republicanism. Republics, after all, are not supposed to be empires. The American Republic is founded in the natural law, and is supposed to be dedicated to two main principles:

One is the familiar formulation that government must ‘secure these rights.’ The second is the nonintervention principle: all nations have the right to ‘the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.’ Taking these two principles together, the Declaration is saying that government’s main job in foriegn policy is to defend the nation while refraining from interference in other nations.

A regime that follows those principles well and avoids empire has no need for a large standing army, and there is much less opportunity for power, influence, profit, and promotion for the professional soldier in such a regime.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/17/the-thank-you-for-your-service-red-pill/

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The ‘Thank You for Your Service’ Red Pill

The ‘Thank You for Your Service’ Red Pill

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