Over three or four days last week, America’s general officer corps again disgraced itself to the bottom of its never dirty or bloody combat boots. Two Marine generals, James Mattis and John Allen, the Navy’s Admiral Mike Mullen, and, most recently, Army General Colin Powell have damned with “contemptuous words” the President of the United States for trying to suppress multiple coup attempts and a broad domestic insurrection now nearing the start of its fourth year.
These four oily cretins bring the total of America’s anti-Trump, never-won-a-war general officers and admirals to a total of several dozen. For anyone who doubts the reality of serial coup attempts during the Trump administration, they need look no further than these treacherous flag officers. As a group, they are emitting a stench that can only remind Americans of the stink from the many Latin American and African countries that regularly have been ruined and bloodied by disloyal, power-loving, and money-grubbing senior military officers.
Americans has been lucky. For most of the republic’s history, the U.S. military has performed loyally and silently. America has had a good-long run of success at keeping the always latent threat of a military-wrecked nation at bay. There have been generals – George McClelland and Douglas MacArthur – who straddled the line that separates loyalty and coup-making, but now there are dozens.
The republic’s Founders – to a man – recognized and feared the dangers to liberty, republicanism, and equality before the law posed by what was called, in their era, a “Standing Army”. During the Constitutional Convention, and then the subsequent ratification debates over the Constitution (1787-1788), the Anti-Federalists were vigorous, consistent, and eloquent in their warnings about the threat to liberty inherently posed by a Standing Army. The pro-Constitution Federalists were less outspoken on this issue but they recognized that threat as clearly as did their political foes. One of the reasons for this near-unanimity was that the Founders’ generation read and studied Cato’s Letters – 138 in total – that were published In London between 5 November 1720 and 7 December 1723. The letters were written by two Englishmen, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. (1) To this day, no other publication has laid out so clearly the dangers to liberty and republican government are always posed by a standing army
Both Anti-Federalists and Federalists, however, were realists dealing with reality. Although they clearly believed, from their knowledge of history and their own recent experience with the presence of a British standing army, that a standing army was a timeless threat to liberty. Most of these men also knew – or accepted — that the territory of the new republic was enormous and surrounded by enemies — British, Spanish, and Indian tribes – and that it also was faced with the tasks of protecting Americans moving into unsettled lands, as well as protecting harbors and maritime trade, manning forts, and providing a response force in case of a foreign attack. They created an exceedingly small standing army and, eventually, a navy of the same limited size was created.
That said, some of the Anti-Federalists manfully stood by their opposition, particularly a man who used the pseudonym “Brutus”. In the 10th of his public letters – dated 24 January 1788 – Brutus wrote,
I firmly believe, no country in the world had ever a more patriotic army, than the one which so ably served this country, in the late war [against Britain].
But had the General who commanded them [George Washington], been possessed of the spirit of a Julius Cesar or a Cromwell, the liberties of this country, had in all probability, terminated with the war; or had they been maintained, might have cost more blood and treasure, than was expended in the conflict with Great-Britain. When an anonimous writer addressed the officers of the army at the close of the war, advising them not to part with their arms, until justice was done them — the effect it had is well known. It affected them like an electric shock. He wrote like Cesar; and had the commander in chief, and a few more officers of rank, countenanced the measure, the desperate resolution had been taken, to refuse to disband. What the consequences of such a determination would have been, heaven only knows.
Fortunately indeed for this country, it had at the head of the army, a patriot as well as a general; and many of our principal officers, had not abandoned the characters of citizens, by assuming that of soldiers, and therefore, the scheme proved abortive. But are we to expect, that this will always be the case? Are we so much better than the people of other ages and of other countries, that the same allurements of power and greatness, which led them aside from their duty, will have no influence upon men in our country? Such an idea, is wild and extravagant. …
From these remarks, it appears, that the evil to be feared from a large standing army in time of peace, does not arise solely from the apprehension, that the rulers may employ them for the purpose of promoting their own ambitious views, but that equal, and perhaps greater danger, is to be apprehended from their overturning the constitutional powers of the government, and assuming the power to dictate any form they please. (2)
Brutus nailed the problem on its head. What we are seeing today, in the retired U.S. flag officers seeking to aid the overthrow of a legitimately elected president and administration, proves the correctness of Brutus’s judgement that “perhaps a greater danger” from a standing army was that it would work at “overturning the constitutional powers of the government, and assuming the power to dictate any form they please.” Not being men of character, manliness, and moral courage such as those who predominated at our founding, these generals and admirals have aligned themselves with a Democratic Party that has pledged itself to the destruction of the Constitution and so republican government. If the Democrats succeed, they will reward the Trump-hating generals and award them with the highly-paid honor of trying to bloodily cow the citizenry into their new status as slaves to madmen.
The time has come to see these generals and admirals for what they are: time-serving, uniformed bureaucrats, men and women who live like kings while serving, and strut into corporation-provided fortunes after they retire. Americans have been propagandized into believing that these flag officers are nearly gods, and so applaud them for their service to the country and treat their words as if they were the product of savants.
In doing so, Americans seem to forget that these generals and admirals have not won a war since 1945, and that they are monumental hypocrites. When these officers attend the funeral of a young Marine or soldier killed in war, they turn, at the service’s end, to the parents of the deceased and assure them that their son or daughter had died to protect liberty in the United States. In this action, they lie like the bastards they are. No war since September, 1945, has threatened American liberty at home, though the government’s involvement in such unnecessary wars always did so, and also increased the taxpayers’ burden to extortionate levels.
Alongside the flag officers’ lies, stands their abject lack of personal moral courage. None of them, that I am aware of, have ever told a grieving parent that, while serving, he or she had been a willing gutless wonder, a man or woman ready and eager to lead their sons and daughters to their deaths in wars that they knew the commander-in-chief had no intention of winning.
Those deaths paid the price of unmerited glory for the generals and admirals who are now helping the Democrats to destroy the republic.
–Endnotes:
–1.) My favorite source for Cato’s Letters is: Ronald Hamowy (Ed.), Cato’s Letters, 2 Volumes; Indianapolis, IN; Liberty Fund, 1995. The Liberty Fund also has just published a fine work that details the early British lineage (1697-1752) of anti-standing-army writings. See, David Womersley (ed.). Writings on Standing Armies. Indianapolis, IN; Liberty Fund, 2020
–2.) Brutus, Letter No. 10, 24 January 1788, at https://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus10.htm. Brutus’s 16 letters are generally attributed to the pen of the Anti-Federalist New Yorker, Robert Yates. See, https://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus00.htm
