Quotes About Standing army

Namely, the very values that the American patriots claimed to be fighting for were incompatible with the disciplined culture required in a professional army. Republics were committed to a core principle of consent, while armies were the institutional embodiments of unthinking obedience and routinized coercion. The very idea of a "standing army" struck most members of the Continental Congress and the state legislatures as a highly dangerous threat to republican principles.

If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it's an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army.

A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.

but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.

Soviet power is a new type of state in which there is no bureacracy, no police, no standing army.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.

citizen armies would be relied on, rather than a standing army, to the extent possible, for defense against foreign enemies.

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

Those who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. Thus, there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

When Elbridge Gerry proposed in the Convention that no standing army exceed three thousand men, Washington is supposed to have made a countermotion that "no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.

Far from the near sanctification of military service common in today´s United States, the Americans of 1790 regarded a standing army virtually by definition as the coercive arm of oppressive government, owing loyalty not to the public but to kings and dictators.--

The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

This argument—"We are all of us carried along by a fiery zeal to recover our liberty; our arms cannot be wrested from our hands,"97—was a politico-military ideal but an inaccurate prediction, for both Cicero and the Roman republic, in part due to the inferiority of their arms, were killed within the year by Caesar's standing army.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army," Jefferson wrote in 1803. "To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

A tyrannical government supported by a standing army had sought to disarm a people through various artifices. It took these repressive measures against both citizens organized as militia and against citizens as individuals. The patriots then exercised their right to keep and bear arms to protect both this right and their many other rights.

The above were key events that led the Founders to adopt the Second Amendment. A tyrannical government supported by a standing army had sought to disarm a people through various artifices. It took these repressive measures against both citizens organized as militia and against citizens as individuals. The patriots then exercised their right to keep and bear arms to protect both this right and their many other rights.

A general militia composed of all citizens capable of bearing arms was seen as superior to a select militia consisting of a selective group, which bordered on a standing army, the bane of liberty.

A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.

the great advantage the South possessed over the North at the beginning of the rebellion. They had from thirty to forty per cent. of the educated soldiers of the Nation. They had no standing army and, consequently, these trained soldiers had to find employment with the troops from their own States. In this way what there was of military education and training was distributed throughout their whole army. The whole loaf was leavened.

Now Mexico has a standing army larger than that of the United States. They have a military school modelled after West Point. Their officers are educated and, no doubt, generally brave. The Mexican war of 1846-8 would be an impossibility in this generation.

The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible and the same remedy will make us so.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.