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A well-regulated militia: the National Guard, not the military, should protect the homeland.

Article Excerpt
Few Americans know that we have two armies and that both are acknowledged by the United States Constitution. One is the military that we know best, the regulars: the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, joined later in history by the Marines and the Air Force. The other, originally known as the militia, is now called the National Guard.

Why would our Founding Fathers invite confusion and duplication by creating two separate military establishments? The answer dates to the earliest city-state republics in Greece. Throughout 2,800 years of republican theory and practice, a standing army has always been considered a threat to republican liberty and a potential instrument of tyranny. A standing army composed, necessarily, of professional soldiers rather than citizen-soldiers represented too convenient an instrument of power for a putative dictator, tyrant or "man on a white horse."

Educated in the classics, familiar with both Greek and Roman republican history and culture, and animated by the language and values of the republic, the founders were keenly aware of this danger. And it led to one of the most bitter struggles in the establishment of the new American Republic. Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists saw the future of the United States as a commercial republic, with expanding trade frontiers and intricate alliances between political and business establishments. These alliances would be threatened by circumstance from time to time, whether by local political unrest or foreign commercial rivals. American commercial interest would have to be protected by land and by sea, and, therefore, in Patrick Henry's memorable and sarcastic formulation, "a standing army we shall also have ... to execute the execrable commands of tyranny." As glorious as such an army might be, Henry's anti-Federalist allies believed, it would also be expensive and politically dangerous. They were only partially satisfied by the constitutional provision limiting military appropriations to two years, and by civilian command and oversight of the military.

Though neither Federalist nor anti-Federalist, and largely absent as ambassador to France during the constitutional debates, the ardent republican Thomas Jefferson urged his ally James Madison and others to, at the very least, isolate domestic politics from...