Quote:
Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois
I think the Founders didn't "support" a philosophy of having a militia as the primary means of national defense. The Founders implemented a POLICY of having a militia as the primary means of national defense because that's all they could afford. Saying that the Founders had a philosophy of militia as primary national defense because they implemented such a policy, is like saying that India believes in having extremely unsanitary conditions because they implement policies that do not address the lack of sanitation in their cities. In reality, they have no money for those projects, it's not that they don't believe in sanitation, just as with the Founders, they had no money for a large standing army and that is the main reason they didn't have one.
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But by the time of the Civil War, the US definitely had the money to build a large standing army, yet the majority of those fighting were militia. So even if it wasn't really the founding fathers' intent to have a small standing army,the idea of depending on Militia carried through and is still seen today in the National Guard.