Political Quotes

“Let's not let this happen. Let's not have a standing military. It is expensive, and it is too big a temptation for our Executive to use it against people the way we had seen in so many other places. That second stanza or that second phrase is what Madison said during debate at the Constitutional Convention: "The means of defense against foreign danger"--that is the army--have always been "the instruments of tyranny at home." That is using the army against your own population. So that is why they were so worried. Over time, because of the security demands of the country and a variety of various wars, we did pursue a standing Army and an Air Force, and we expanded and so forth. We got the Marines, got the Navy, and we have the militia, the National Guard. I think they would say: You have been pretty lucky so far that the understanding was so deeply rooted that these could not be used against your own population except in extraordinary situations. And one of those extraordinary situations would be if the civil rights of individuals were being disturbed and you needed the deployment to help restore them because the local forces wouldn't protect those civil rights.”