First amendment watchdogs often complain about lowering the "wall of separation" between church and state as the government bribes and entices more and more "faith based" organizations to accept government money with the inevitable government control to follow. That's bad news, but defenders of the Constitution should be shouting from the rooftops about the rapidly dissolving barrier between the civilian and the military. It seems that the Army, blessed with countless billions of civilian tax dollars, wants to create a national junior ROTC (JROTC) program--for middle schoolers!
Seventh graders won't be students any longer; they'll be cadets. They'll march and wear snappy dress uniforms on special days and learn about weapons and adopt military values that will save them from being "at risk" (so says a JROTC booster in the article below). What would entice a school system to accept such a monstrosity? Money, lots and lots of military money. Everything's for sale nowadays in America, so shouldn't dead-broke school boards auction off their students for bucks?
The generation that fought the Revolutionary War despised standing armies so much that they refused to create one for the new republic and instead insisted that citizen militias defend the country. That's the historical meaning of the 2nd amendment. Until the eve of World War II, America had a minuscule military and an army of not much more than 100,000 men. There was no "military-industrial complex" to speak of. National life was entirely civilian with hardly any military presence in any way, shape, or form.
Now we'll have the military in the nation's public middle schools. They've been in the high schools and colleges for decades. They're funding and training police forces all across America; they're organizing joint law enforcement exercises with city police and country sheriffs. The posse comitatus act of 1878, which prohibited the military from taking part in any form of civilian law enforcement, has been nullified. At the instruction of the president or attorney general, the military can arrest and detain any American citizen and hold that person incommunicado for at least three full years and no civilian court can interfere. The military today is more widely deployed both in America and across the world than at any time in our history. The military has access to more than $1 trillion annually, and every year that sum increases. The division between civilian and military is essentially non-existent; our civilian authorities defer to the military, facilitate it, and support it without question.
How far away is the day when the military dispenses with the civilian nuisance altogether?
Read it here
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