by Jacob G. Hornberger

December 15, 2025

A popular belief among statists is that a powerful military equals a powerful nation. Actually, it’s the opposite. A powerful military equals a weak nation, and a weak military equals a powerful nation.

The Americans who founded the United States understood this principle well. They were fiercely opposed to a powerful military, which they referred to as a “standing army.” So did their  successors, for some 150 years. From 1789, when the Constitution went into effect, through most of the 19th century, through the early part of the 20th century, our American ancestors had a system of government that entailed a small and weak military force.

The result was the most powerful nation in history. Without a big, powerful military to support — and, for that matter, without a massive welfare state to support — federal expenditures were minute — so minute that the United States had no taxation on income for more than 100 years. Throughout that time, Americans were free to keep everything they earned.

Thus, massive amounts of savings were converted into productive capital, which brought into existence ever-increasing numbers of businesses, along with constantly rising wage rates, and soaring standards of living. People all over the world, who lived under governments with enormous and enormously expensive military establishments, marveled at what was happening in America.

All that economic prosperity meant a very powerful nation. In fact, while statists sometimes lament that the United States was not militarily “prepared” for war during that time, they don’t realize that that lack of “preparation” was actually a benefit. The reason is that the United States was acquiring an enormous productive capacity in the private sector precisely because the federal government was not sucking a large amount of money out of people’s income and savings to finance an enormous welfare-warfare state. Thus, when the United States entered the two world wars, that gigantic private-sector productive capacity was able to be converted to wartime use. If the United States had had a huge warfare state (and welfare state and income tax) throughout the 19th century, the nation would have been poorer— and weaker — as a consequence.

Everything changed after World War II. The U.S. government became a national-security state, a type of governmental structure in which the federal government — specifically the national-security branch of the government — acquired omnipotent powers, such as assassination, torture, indefinite detention, initiating wars without a congressional declaration of war, sanctions, embargoes, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, foreign aid, and the like.

The rationale for this new governmental structure? The communists, who, Americans were told, were coming to get them. If America failed to adopt the same type of governmental structure as the Reds, Americans were told, their nation would inevitably fall to the communists.

In the process, 20th-century Americans and 21st-century Americans became a frightened and weak people — ready and eager to trade away their freedom for the pretense of being kept safe from not only the Reds but also, later, the terrorists, the drug dealers, the narco-terrorists, foreign gang members, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, North Vietnam, illegal immigrants, China, and whoever else was designated an official scary enemy of the United States who, Americans were told, were coming to get them.

The situation was worsened by the welfare-state way of life, which our ancestors had rejected for more than 100 years. With Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts, FDIC, education grants, and lots of other welfare, a vast number of Americans became frightened, dependent wards of the state — scared to death that the government might terminate their dole. Therefore, they became willing to go along with whatever the government did, including killing, injuring, and harming a vast number of foreigners.

Many American statists continue to hold that the federal government equals the nation and that they are not two separate and distinct entities. Thus, their collective mindset is that a powerful government equals a powerful nation. But they have a difficult time explaining the concept of the Bill of Rights, which expressly protects the nation from the federal government.

Statists say that an all-powerful military is needed to protect the United States from a foreign invasion. They ignore two important points: (1) No nation-state has the resources, logistics, military, money, supply lines, transport vehicles, or even the interest in crossing the oceans, invading, and trying to conquer the United States, especially since the federal government, much like the Swiss government, would be fully prepared to quickly mobilize for defense in the unlikely event a foreign power was preparing to undertake such a gigantic (and foolhardy) mission; and (2) Without a welfare-warfare state, the American people would be strong, self-reliant, independent-minded, well-armed, and free. Invading a country with those kind of people, as compared to the type of people who inhabit America today, would be like swallowing a porcupine. No foreign nation-state would dare to do that, much as Hitler didn’t dare invade Switzerland in World War II.

With their gigantic, ever-growing welfare-warfare state, along with ever-increasing federal spending and debt, statists have weakened our nation and continue to do so. To regain a powerful nation, it is necessary to restore a weak government to our land, which necessarily entails the dismantling, not the reform, of the welfare state and the national-security-state parts of the federal government.