Should We Bring Back the State Militias? – The Right Engle

The institution of the state militia has all but disappeared from the national conversation and from the lives of citizens.

Once a mainstay of America’s national defense, and the identity of the individual states, the military functions of the few state militias that survive have been virtually extinguished.

Today, the US military operates as a centralized operation, with large numbers of standing troops and a vast budget funding all manner of conventional and unconventional operations. Yet, it was not always this way. Once, the role of defense was placed largely in the hands of the state militias.

The state militias, which have largely been subsumed into the National Guard system since the First World War, were once the centerpiece of American defense.

For most of the history of the republic, the federal army was small and concerned with the defense of borders and with providing a solid professional core of soldiers in the event of a major conflict. The majority of soldiers in such a war would be composed of members of the state militias.

The militias were formal, but fluid organizations.

They did not demand the same degree of time, training, or sacrifice that modern military service now requires.

Because the demands were less stringent, every able-bodied citizen could participate without it meaningfully altering their lives or straining their livelihoods. In that sense, the militia could be called a real body of citizen-soldiers made up of men who were doing what they understood to be their duty, but who were not professional soldiers.

The relationship between these militias and the federal government was once very different.

In wartime, the federal government could raise troops and these regiments would be composed of the states’ militiamen. They were organized as fighting units from their states.

That distinction, of regiments representing their states within the federal military, is a vitally important idea to understand.

A soldier understood that he was fighting for not only the federal cause, but for his state.

Because the American military has been federalized and professionalized, American society has lost two important features: the buy-in of the vast majority of able-bodied citizens to the protection of their community, and the voice and identity of the individual states in the conduct of military affairs.

This revered institution ought to be restored to at least some semblance of its former status. Obviously, the realities of modern warfare and the obligations of the United States in the world as they stand would make a sudden and total reversion to the former system both difficult and dangerous.

Yet, it would be worthwhile to help restore, in the American public, the sense of collective duty and sense of buy-in to the ideals and values of the republic they defend.

It would also restore the centrality of the states, and if even some units were once again formed out of the states then they could once again reassert their unique political identities in the conduct of American policy.

Obviously, we have come a long way from frontier militiamen; but the values they represent and their protection not only of the country but also of the prerogatives of the states makes their restoration a worthy priority for supporters of limited federal power.

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John Engle

John Engle is a merchant banker and author living in the Chicago area. His company, Almington Capital, invests in both early-stage venture capital and in public equities. His writing has been featured in a number of academic journals, as well as the blogs of the Heartland Institute, Grassroot Institute, and Tenth Amendment Center. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and the University of Oxford, John’s first book, Trinity Student Pranks: A History of Mischief and Mayhem, was published in September 2013.

Latest posts by John Engle (see all)

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