Voltairine de Cleyre Quotes
A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
de Cleyre, Voltairine. "Anarchism and American Traditions." Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, edited by Alexander Berkman, Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1914.
These two states actually prohibited their legislatures from maintaining a standing army. Similar sentiments were in the constitutions or bill of rights of New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts but the option was left with the legislatures. A similar phrase appears in the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776.
In early America, there was great concern about a standing army—a military force that exists and is organized in peacetime. History showed the founding fathers that tyrants who siezed power almost always did so by getting control of the standing army. The logic was if there is no standing army, no one can control it and therefore no tyrant can control the country by force. At the time, however, with oceans protecting us, there was penty of time to mobilize a defensive army should any foreign power invade. However, with modern military technology, and the importantance of retaliation as a protective3 strategy, it is virtually impossible to not have a standing army and stoll be secure.
Commenting on the hostilities between the Baltic states and the Russian government:
Congress and most of the Founding Fathers were very distrustful of standing armies. They were aware that standing armies had taken over societies ever since ancient Rome and Julius Caesar.
Greek invaders were marching on Istanbul
At that time there were extensive meetings and discussions for the creation of what was to be the United Nations. The negative view of the United Nations or other international security organization is now and always has been held by a vocal minority in the United States.
Washington, although the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, said almost nothing for such was the respect for him that he cou;d sway almost any issue. But the absurdity of limiting the size of the American Army was too much for him, and his clever way of phrasing his concern ended discussion of that idea without any ill feelings.
Mao and other Chinese leaders molded the people into an Army to fight the invading Japanese in WWII after which they were attacked by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. In a remarkable trek of escape the Communists moved across China to escape the nationalists while the Red Army provided protection. Without the Red Army, the Communists would easily have been overrun then and after the Nationalists “escaped” to Taiwan they planned and threatened to invade the mainland. It was the Red Army that kept them at bay, and so the “People’s Army” has an emotional, historical and intellectual impact and role even in 21st Century China when there really are no enemies that would attack China.
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist known for being a prolific writer and speaker who opposed capitalism, marriage and the state as well as the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives which she saw as all interconnected. She is often characterized as a major early feminist because of her views.
