Abstract
The chapter is focused on Jefferson’s proposal to Madison that the US Constitution, as it proceeded toward ratification, should include an amendment “to protect against standing armies.” The historical context of anti-standing army ideology is described along with Jefferson’s own criticisms of this “monarchical” institution and tradition. Jefferson’s concerns about the dangers that standing armies would pose to the new nation are enumerated in the larger context of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address (1961), which similarly outlined the dangers of the so-called military-industrial complex. The moral spirit underlying Jefferson’s amendment proposal is bracketed and theorized as something that might be recovered and deployed as a pedagogical tool to raise awareness of America’s increasingly militarized national identity. The Edward Snowden controversy is interpreted through the lens of Jefferson’s anti-militaristic moral spirit, concluding here that Snowden would qualify as a good citizen despite his “lawless” actions.
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- 1.
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801. In Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings. Washington, DC: The Library of America, 1984, 492–496. Unless otherwise indicated, all of Jefferson’s citations are from this text.
- 2.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, 916.
- 3.
See, for example, Carl T. Bogus, ed., The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Constitutional Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms. New York: The New Press, 2002; Thom Hartmann, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2019.
- 4.
See, for example, Chris Hedges, “The Post-Constitutional Era.” In Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt. New York: Nation Books, 2015, 55.
- 5.
Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., The Civilian and the Military. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.
- 6.
Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010, 243–244.
- 7.
For an excellent contemporary interpretation of the military–industrial complex, see James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. For a gendered and psychological interpretation of “the complex,” see Kerry Burch, “Rereading the “Complex” Psychologically: Toward a Theory of America’s Civic Neurosis.” In Democratic Transformations: Eight Conflicts in the Negotiation of American Identity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012, 126–133.
- 8.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961. As quoted in Ledbetter, 211–220.
- 9.
Ledbetter, 96.
- 10.
Two valuable sources on King’s critique of American militarism, in addition to MLKs own writings, can be found in Cornel West, The Radical King. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015, and more recently, eds. Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.
- 11.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967. As quoted in Cornel West’s The Radical King, 215 (see Footnote 10).
- 12.
An excellent source of information is Brown University’s Costs of War Project, Watson Institute, International & Public Affairs, Brown University. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar.
- 13.
Snowden’s recently published memoir provides much, but not all of the material for my analysis. See, Edward Snowden, Permanent Record. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019.
- 14.
Ibid., 1–8.
- 15.
Although the literature on this theory is vast, this section of the chapter relies on two sources. Nancy L. Rosenblum’s “Constitutional Reason of State: The Fear Factor.” In Dissent in Dangerous Times, ed. Austin Sarat. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008, 146–175. For Jefferson’s rejection of established reason of state arguments, I rely on Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- 16.
See above, Empire of Liberty, 10–17.
- 17.
Jeffrey Toobin, “Edward Snowden Is No Hero.” New Yorker, June 10, 1013.
- 18.
John Cassidy, “Why Edward Snowden Is a Hero.” New Yorker, June 10, 2013.
- 19.
Edward Snowden, “Inside the Assassination Complex: Whistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking—It’s an Act of Political Resistance.” The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2016/05/03/edward-snowwden-whistleblowing-is-not-just-leaking, 12.
- 20.
Tom Engelhardt, A Nation Unmade by War. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.
- 21.
See, for example, the chapter “Whistleblowing,” in his Permanent Record, 227–235.
- 22.
This passage comes from an interview of Snowden by Glenn Greenwald. See, Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State. New York: Henry Holt, 2014, 47–48.
- 23.
As quoted in The Intercept, 11, see Footnote 19.
- 24.
Greenwald, 46.
- 25.
Snowden, The Intercept, 9.
- 26.
Greenwald, 45.
- 27.
Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787.
- 28.
This foundational premise of democratic culture is taken from Dewey’s, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” (1939). Arguably, this article represents the most cogent interpretation of the meaning of democracy in the nation’s democratic canon. It is noted here to underscore its obvious connection to Jefferson’s democratic and ethical conception of political knowledge, whereby “knowledge of conditions as they are” is prerequisite for acting intelligently and ethically. For full citation see Chapter 4, Footnote 32.
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Burch, K.T. (2020). To Protect Against Standing Armies. In: Jefferson’s Revolutionary Theory and the Reconstruction of Educational Purpose. The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45763-1_6
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