In the United States, there are many protected classes of people. One of the largest protected classes is the military. If one says anything negative about the military, there are a dozen people lined up to defend them. We are told that they are the "defenders of freedom" and that our rights would not exist without the military. But, is that really the case?
What is the military?
The military is the violent arm of the government. In the same way that police enforce the will of the government at home, the military enforces the will of the government abroad. The government would have no power without its armed agents, both at home and abroad.
Where do our rights come from?
Samuel Adams addressed this in his essay, the Rights of the Colonists, when he wrote:
Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can--Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.
Frederick Bastiat echoed these same sentiments in his booklet, the Law, when he wrote:
Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
Our rights come from the fact that we own ourselves. No human is born a slave. We are each born with a life, a body, and a brain to decide how we use that body over the course of our life. The only logical conclusion is that since we own our own bodies, we have the right to decide what is done with them. We have a natural right to our own life (our living body), our liberty (what we do with our body), and our property (what we trade pieces of our life and liberty in order to attain).
Our rights do not come from the government. Our rights are natural rights which both precede and supersede the authority of human government.
Who protects our rights?
If our rights are natural and do not come to us because of government, then whose job is it to defend our liberty? The natural answer is you and me. Because we own our bodies, how we defend our natural rights are our decisions to make.
Some people believe that the armed forces of the government are the ones who protect our rights. But, if they were the ones defending our rights, then they would have been hired by us. As it is, they are not hired by us, they are hired by the government. The armed forces do not work for us, they work for the government.
That being the case, it is only logical to conclude that our rights do not exist BECAUSE of the military. On the contrary, our rights exist AT THE MERCY of the armed forces of the state.
If the armed forces ceased to exist (both at home and abroad), the state would have no power. It is because the state has armed forces that they are able to force their will on the rest of us.
Conclusion
You and I are the defenders of our own freedom, not the armed forces of the state. If those forces were defending our rights, then they would be defending us from the violent government who steals our money and forces its will on us every day.
"The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people." - James Madison, 1787
Additional Resources:
- James Madison Regarding Standing Armies
- The Anti-Federalists Regarding Standing Armies
- U.S. Military Interventions from 1890-2014. How many of these actually had anything to do with protecting individual freedom?