Contrary to most of American folklore, the Founding Fathers were not a supernaturally wise monolith. Leading revolutionary figures like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton may have shared certain broad values, such as a commitment to republicanism, but they often passionately disagreed about what, exactly, the new nation’s political systems should look like. The Constitution that they ultimately wrote is more of a compromise between those differences than a perfect resolution to them.
One issue where the Founders were virtually unanimous, however, was their fear of standing armies. From Julius Caesar’s legions at the Rubicon to Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army to the forces mustered by European monarchies, large armed forces in peacetime invariably threatened a free people’s rights. Many of the 13 Colonies’ postindependence constitutions included declarations that standing armies “are dangerous to liberty, [and] they ought not to be kept up.” John Adams warned that they should be “watched with a jealous eye,” while Thomas Jefferson referred to them as an “engine of oppression.”
Those fears deeply influenced the Constitution, which includes multiple tools for Congress and the president to keep the military under civilian control. “A standing military force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” Madison said in a speech to the Constitutional Convention. “The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending have enslaved the people.”
Those fears took on new meaning as civil unrest spread throughout the country over the last several days. Tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was brutally killed by four Minneapolis police officers last week, and the culture of police brutality and militarism that has permitted a long list of similar killings. In response, police officers in cities across the country have largely responded violently, with abusive and authoritarian tactics. Social media networks are flooded with footage and accounts of cops shoving elderly pedestrians and innocent bystanders into pavement, bludgeoning journalists or pelting them with rubber bullets, and dispersing lawful crowds with tear gas and overwhelming force.
Modern American policing—the militarized departments, the heavy-handed enforcement of minor laws, the deep-rooted racial inequities, the resistance to firm civilian control—has existed for so long that it’s easy to assume it’s the natural state of our society. In fact, this form of law enforcement is essentially a policy experiment, and a failed one at that. The American constitutional order is not designed to reform and supervise what are effectively armed paramilitary forces in every major city. Eventually, perhaps already, one will have to bend to the other.