Article 1, Section 8
“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;”
Does that mean what it sounds like it means?
There are some people who argue that the United States Army (and indeed the rest of the military) is unconstitutional because of that phrase, so yes, if that’s what you’re suggesting.
However others interpret it to mean that the military budget needs to be reviewed at least every two years. And of course the greater majority of people simply don’t care whats stated in the constitution and will continue parading air craft carriers around the world’s ocean as they wish. For the first two possible interpretations, the second amendment plays a strong role in it. Are we to take from the second that the constitution intended to use citizen militias during times of war and so not pass any gun control laws?
Yes, it means what it sounds like. Look at the US military before the Cold War - other than National Guard units, the federal military was not very large in peacetime.
I heard a lecture about this once. It means you can have a standing army but you have to disband it every two years.
“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”
–Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789
Most informative so far, although I did enjoy the TJ (as I like to call him) quote. Are there any other views regarding how this should be interpreted?
but this clearly only covers the army not the navy remember the war of 1812 the united states wanted a strong naval force
i believe the army should be limited to extremely small force/disbanded but the national guard should be premier fighting force (currently fighting in iraq and afghanistan)
there shouldnt be limits on navy (marine corps) as clearly doesnt state anything about that
but either way we shouldnt go around the world looking for “monsters” to destroy
Why couldn’t they just state it bluntly in plain English? “Don’t maintain a standing army for more than two years!”
Call it naivety, lack of foresight or just poor wording. The fact was that most of the “founders” didn’t believe the Federal Government had any power to begin with and that it could never become Leviathan because powers were separated and no powers were granted to the federal government that weren’t explicitly stated in the Constitution.
Ultimately, we found out that the constitution was nothing more than a piece of paper and Leviathan emerged anyway.
I always interpreted it as the military budget has to be renewed at least every two years.
I’m not all to well versed on the subject of the Navy. Did the framers intend for there to be, for a lack of better terms, a ‘floating’ Navy; or did they hope for more of a brown/green water coastal guard and a merchant marine?
That was a controversial issue. The Jeffersonians were for the most part against vast naval expenditures. But John Adams would quote Herodotus in calling for America, like Athens, to have her “wooden walls” (In Herodotus, the Oracle of Delphi tells the Athenians that they will survive against the Persians behind their “wooden walls”. Most of the populace interpreted this as meaning city walls. But the statesman Themistocles interpreted “wooden walls” as a navy. So he convinced the Athenians to invest the proceeds of a recently discovered silver mine into outfitting a greatly expanded navy. As Herodotus tells it, this is shown to have been wise, because not only was the navy crucial in defeating the Persians, but they actually had to evacuate practically the entire population of Athens by sea, when the Persians invaded.)
It is the rule of official words. They either have to be sufficiently pompous so that only the high born can appreciate them fully (aristocratic era) or sufficiently technical so that only those trained in the art of bureaucracy can easily understand them (meritocratic era) or they are not valid. They lose their magic properties.