Privatizing war- Will it be dangerous to liberty

[I recently read that Erik Prince Believes Trump will eventually privatize Afghanistan War. This gave rise to a train of thought that led to this article.]

Every advance in constitutional self-government, of by and for the people, came in the context of events that encouraged ordinary people to join in showing this the self-discipline and care for the common good such government demands. These events often involved episodes in which power was violently abused to thwart the exercise of God-endowed unalienable rights. Reacting against such abuses, people organized and eventually armed themselves in defense of their freedom to do right. People with only ordinary self-discipline, but extraordinary faith in God, were able to overmatch superbly disciplined elite practitioners of war, whose prideful self-confidence had once routinely defeated their superior numbers.

Their success in doing so coincided with the development of arms and military methods (like the Cromwell’s New Model Army, or the advent of the longbow) that made lowly commoners the bane of lordly knights on the battlefield, as long as, in good faith, they firmly stood in solidarity with one another. With this in mind, we can see truth in the observation that the moral and spiritual self-discipline, courage, and capacity for self-sacrifice, inculcated by the Christian ethos, contributed, in a very practical way, to the rushing tide toward democratic self-government in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the United States as the leading wave.

This tide owed much to the fact that, over the centuries, maturing Christianity had gradually eroded the effects of fearful superstition. This included habits of mind that lent arms a forbidding aspect, intended to reinforce the notion that, without the supervision of their betters, it was dangerous for common folk even to touch, much less make use of, certain arms.

In these first decades of the 21^st century, a rising generation of ambitious elitists, steeped in Marxist/Nietzschean hatred for Christianity, are using popular cultural and entertainment networks to revive the superstitious moral, mental and emotional prerequisites of oligarchic rule. Though presently still masked in false protestations of concern for the downtrodden or aspiring masses, these elitist forces are actually doing everything they can to destroy the virtues of faith and the natural family that inform the character needed for the continued success of democratic, constitutional self-government in the United States and elsewhere.

“Privatizing” our military forces would contribute to this attack, especially given the coincidence (if that’s what it is) of violent attacks in our cities and town, whether perpetrated for purposes of terror, or appearing as symptoms of mental and moral disintegration among individuals. They inevitably feed our fears. We can respond with measures intended to arm our courage, or measures that invite us to give in to those fears.

The privatization of our armed forces would encourage people who want to believe that others, paid and trained to face danger, can be left to deal with these threats. The report that inspired this essay is about privatizing military forces, deployed abroad. But who can be oblivious to the fact that it coincides with the militarization of our domestic police forces. Aren’t people retreating from their sense of personal involvement with the security of their nation more likely to let go the sense that they are personally responsible for the fate of their community, their neighborhood, and even their own homes, and persons? Once convinced they can safely leave the defense of their country to paid professionals, why won’t they eagerly embrace the same conclusion when it comes to domestic threats, that seem every day more closely to resemble the ones our troops have been battling overseas? And the use of mercenaries for our deployments overseas would also mean that fewer and fewer everyday Americans will have had any firs hand experience of armed conflict.

So, more and more Americans would treat all arms as alien totems, to be reflexively shunned and feared. Before long, the movement that has, for decades, sought by law to force this mentality upon us, would achieve complete success. People who think that this will have no implications for the future of constitutional liberty should ask themselves why they are so sure that returning to an elitist monopoly of arms will not return us to the condition of enforced servitude to their oligarchic whims and ambitions, which generally prevailed throughout the history of humankind.

Despotic oligarchy kept most of mankind shackled in servitude to their “betters”. Now, when they say, “Give up your guns.” they are also saying “Give up the courage, character and self-discipline that, for an historic moment, opened humanity’s eyes to the rich prospects of human self-government, rooted in the liberty that the Creator, God offers to all who are willing to govern themselves according to His good will.” This is why the elitists are so determined to banish, along with guns, the Christian faith that fitted multitudes to overcome fear of their use—in order responsibly to do right, as only God gives us to see the right, in accordance with the endowment of His good will.