Post #4312469

I think one of the few big mistakes in Reconstruction era reforms was the centralization of the US military and the destruction of the state militia system. The founding generation had many flaws but they did hold a pretty sincere antimilitarism that they wrote into the Constitution, which modern liberalism is unfortunately blind to. The decentralized state militia system was a way to prevent a tyrant from taking control of a single massive imperial military, and because of how the fallout of the English Civil War loomed in the minds of the founders, as well as their experiences as English colonies of course, they believed that splitting up the military was a necessary component of their military reforms, alongside things like a reliance on citizen soldiers and strong protections against the military snatching direct formal political power.