In A Way, Is the United States Becoming Like the Country It Rebelled Against?

In a time of peace, when a country has a large diverse military paired with it is a drive to use it in various non-defense reasons, from threatening other countries to bow to your intent and to directly interfere in the affairs of other countries. This is particularly true for superpowers such as the United States.

I am not opposed to a nation having a solid military system to protect itself from undue aggression. As evidenced in times of disasters the military with its command and rapid response infrastructure to rapidly move and deploy aid as well as provide a framework of civil order.

What concerns me is when a peacetime military is unduly large. As evidenced by Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Granada and the current Iraq war, politicians have a way of using the military in unjustified ways. We have too many who have not served in the military (or worse who during the Vietnam era used connections to have deferments or homeland service) being too quick to spill the blood of our youth.

I am also concerned with its size not only is a major expense in the national budget but it dominates the budget, and that education, roads, care of seniors, etc suffer significantly in order to pour more money into arms. I am concerned when it is so large that the defense industry is a major factor in the political process.

Since Gorbachev brought a unilateral conclusion to the Cold War, the United States military budget as a percent of the national budget and GDP has continued to grow. And if a large number on Capitol Hill have their way, even more of the national GDP will go into defense.

Draconian cuts are being proposed by Congressmen Paul Ryan and his colleagues across the board except for the military. This is an atrocity. The military needs to be cut even more so than civilian expenses. The current justifications for a strong military, for all other expenses to be slashed to the bone to keep the military strong while the industrial military complex that Eisenhower warned us about (and we have conveniently forgotten) become wealthy is not new. The current arguments and dynamics at play in the United States are the same rationale, arrogance and dynamics that existed in England in the mid 1700s against which this country rebelled. It is unfortunate that in so many ways that as a nation the United States is coming full circle and doing what its founding fathers rebelled against.

NRA Distorts History

In the United States, 4 out of 5 support background checks to be conducted in order to purchase a gun. The same number support limiting the sale of assault weapons. About 4 out of 5 Americans agree that gun registration is a reasonable law…and more surprisingly 3 out of 5 NRA members also agree. Amazingly, 7 out of 10 gun owners who are also NRA members agree with a) background checks should be required, and b) there should be at least a two day wait period between purchase and receiving the gun. Yet, politicians are not only slow to support such laws, but most are against such laws.


Watch this video Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice-Present of the NRA to understand one of the root causes why the United States lacks sensible gun control laws ranging from background checks to wait periods, from the size of clips to the type of guns, from secure storage to carrying guns.









Mr. LaPierre’s claim that he who has the gun has the power is a fundamental principle that existed from the beginning of the country is blatantly false. Over the last year, I have been reading works by the founding fathers and the Continental Congress that brought forth the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Revolutionary War was not what the founding fathers sought. Their letters to each other speak passionately against king, taxation and English abuses, but they sought a positive non-violent founding. Even after the war started they were looking for a non-violent separation. The war became inevitable. They were willing to fight for the freedom and progressively increased the size of the Continental Army only because the King kept increasing the size of his military.


If he who has the gun has the power was such driving concept, they why was it not included in the original constitution and found as a significant thread in the writings of the founding fathers. It is lacking as the founding fathers did not believe that he who has the gun should have control of either national, state or local governments. Their reluctance to maintain an army of any size was that exact fear, that he who will have the gun will have the control.


Instead the founders had the confidence the power of ideas, not the gun. They modeled and wrote at length about civil discourse. They worked for and wrote at length about the value of listening and compromising for the corporate good. Recognizing that the frontier and an agrarian society expanding into wilderness were fraught with various dangers, the second amendment was added. The amendment affirms the formation of local militias to protect their communities and counties, and affirms that militia (today’s National Guard) could keep their own guns at home. The militia was the means by which the country could maintain a limited sized military.


As long as men like LaPierre in their well practiced righteous anger misrepresent the nation’s history, distort gun control proposals and violent crime statistics, civil discourse with the NRA will be an uphill battle. In modern American politics, control does not rest with he who has the gun but with he who has the deepest pockets and is willing to directly and indirectly contribute to friendly politicians and use attack ads (including funding front groups) to insensately malign unfriendly politicians. The gun lobby and its NRA face are powerful because they have deep pockets and while sounding righteous, are happy to distort history and facts to misinform and defeat efforts at any controls, even laws that help prevent violence and keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

The Crucible of War - A Worthwhile Read

I recently finished The Crucible of War: The Seven Years War by Fred Anderson. This history textbook is not a quick read, but moving through it at a steady pace is well worth the effort. Anderson draws out the social and political dynamics of the age that triggered the first global war as England and France fought it out for world dominance.

The book fleshes out what transpired in the pre-revolutionary war period in the colonies, the stirring of unresolved issues, the self-centered actions of a host of people who were seeking more money for themselves and the stumbling of cultural misunderstandings that sowed the seeds for the American Revolution. The book helps the reader to understand that the colonists did seek to revolt but progressively did so because they could not resolve how they viewed themselves and their social standing within British Empire. Anderson nicely shows that the colonists sought to be left alone but the moment they ran into trouble, quickly sought the help of the Crown but were reluctant to pay that help.

One little tidbit I found of interest is that young George Washington and a force of men he lead against the French and Indians in Ohio triggered the war the consumed the two empires and the ultimate defeat of France.

The book not only is of interest in helping the reader to understand the nature and characters that make up modern America but it also shows how America has not learned from its own national experience. Throughout the book I could not help see similarities between the dynamics at play in Afghanistan and Iraq. All too often one is seeing in contemporary American policy and national attitudes the viewpoints of the Crown and the British nobility of the 18th Century. Further all too often the viewpoints and attitudes Americans are seeing in the Afghani and Iraqi leadership and populous today are similar to the attitudes, language and actions held by the colonists in the ten to fifteen years before the American Revolution. In other words, America today is acting in a very similar fashion that Britain did in the 1750-1776.

Fort Ticonderoga

While we were in New York, Evie and I visited Fort Ticonderoga. The fort was built by the French and as with the French forts at Quebec City and Louisburg, the fort was built out of stone. The French were making a bold statement and to be as secure doorway to protect Canada from the British to the south. The fort is positioned at the midpoint of Lake Champlain at a narrows and where Lake George to Lake Champlain’s west empties via a short river into Lake Champlain.

Though she was of stone, and though the British were defeated on their first attempt to attack the fort, as with Ticonderoga’s two sister forts, she too fell to the British.

The British lost the fort to the Americans during the early days of the Revolutionary War who then lost it later to the British. By the time it was retaken by the British the battle field was much further to the south leaving Ticonderoga without any strategic importance. If you are in the area, visiting this piece of history that dates back 250 years is well worth it.

The last picture is of Lake Champlain looking south from the fort with the narrows off picture to the left and the mouth of the river from Lake George on the west (right) of the picture.