small government isn't important to me, but efficient and responsive government is. .

*People* don't want a giant military, the government does. War is the health of the state.

I beleive in universal conscription personally,

The idea that all citizens should be armed, trained in the use of arms, and have local storehouses for arms

A military cannot turn on it's citizens of the citizens are the military.

Isreal has demonstrated women are just as good in combat as men, outside of certain health issues and religious or consceintious objections where one does alternative work to the good of society all citizens should be the military.

There should be small units of career soldiers for specialized purposes only, but not large standing armies of career soldiers which poses a danger to the citizenry.

Countries where all citizens are the military, where there is universal conscription, seem to be the most hesitant to start wars through the democratic process, seem to have the lowest support for going to war. It's kind of like why the approval ratings for the war in Iraq and Vietnam were equally unpopular with young adults... however the war with the draft where the young adults might actually find themselves there had a generation much more motivated to protest that war however they could. The other generation which had no fear of having to go to war just took pot shots at the leaders no rougher or more effective than John Stewart.

Let all citizens face an equal chance to war.

Let it not just be an avenue to escape poverty for rednecks and inner city people to be the first generation in college getting their legs blown off. let it instead be a lottery for all citizens in fighting age to go to war in whatever numbers are needed... rich or poor. You'll see how fast people become pacifists once they are no longer in the bleachers and cheering other people's sons from their easy chair.

Then we would be totally assured of two things:

1. We will only fight a foreign enemy in response to a clear and direct threat, a war of self defense and nothing more. It would be the end of military adventurism

2. We will never have a military that will turn on it's own citizens, police it's citizens, nor at the command of any political elites would the military willingly participate in having their own basic human rights or rights as free citizens taken away.

I beleive that like with the Romans, small localized military units of citizens can be activated for non-military needs at a moment's notice for socialistic ventures such as building infrastructures, schools, hydroelectric plants, dealing with natural disasters, etc. in peace time... and especially to offset any problems that may exist with not having full employment. Anyone activated should get a living wage, and if in combat should get the kind of GI benefits WWII veterens got, not the crap benefits current troops get.

If the standing career military becomes huge

And the civilian government becomes small and ineffective.

It is a very small step then for the military to take control, and declare a government too small, corrupt, and unable to deal with present day problems in real time. It becomes easier for them to make that argument in times of crisis. In the third world, military will sometimes take over for the government claiming it a temporary measure, even keep the legislatures in place as empty suits to make it still look like democracy. But then remain in control after the crisis is gone.

Government didn't get smaller though during the republican watch, it actually grew very large, but much of it was in the military, homeland security, electronic surveillance. These other entities were then grafted onto the military though the DHS, consolidated. Civilian government did get smaller.

There is really a philosophical argument among the super rich, and the argument is this.

Where is the sweet spot, for driving down the cost of and raising the level of fear and productivity of American labor?

If you drive it so far down people become radicalized, motivated to form unions, vote in third parties, engage in Molly McGuire like acts of class warfare. Then at what percentage? If you have to employ a police state to deal with that reality, you can push harder, but at what point does the cost of paying for the police state to keep control cost more than if you allowed the labor force to be a little less productive and paid a little better (have more benefits)? As long as the rich get loopholes for taxes, and the middle class and poor pay for the police state, it really isn't any skin off their nose if people are paying for the tools of the state to get rich off them and keep them in line. But you can push people too far, the question is always how far will be too far.

We see them as greedy, and blind, but actually they have been pretty incremental and careful about how they have nickled and dimed us, with inflation adjustments salaries rose in the fifties and sixties and they stalled it in the seventies and from the eighties till now real inflation adjusted pay is down from then to now about 20% for white males. That was twenty years, an average of one percent a year, and there were no revolutions or riots because the nickling and diming went so slowly that people were just adjusting their lives and lifestyles to poverty that creeped onto them. Recessions would come and knock them down farther dramatically, and then recoveries would come and restore some of what they once had though not quite as much and they'd be grateful and feeling like they were making progress forward when it is always one step forward and two steps back.

The current recession being a bad one will probably drive wages and benefits down even farther and more dramatically than before, do you really think the recovery won't have people who went down another 10% in wages in the bad times ungrateful when their wages co back up 6% even if they are 4% lower than before the recession. They won't notice the overall creeping trend, and count themselves lucky.

They might not even need much of a police state to keep doing this to people.

However.

There is a phenomenon in the physics of chemistry, about fluids that can be super-cooled, or brought below the freezing temperature without actually freezing. The smallest shock or catalyst could cause it to instantly become a solid.

If wages are driven down below a certain point, if lifestyles are driven down far enough, there may be absolutely no appearance of people becoming radicalized. They may be unhappy, they may have a memory of twenty years before and how they live now, or how their parents once lived, but they'll feel alone and powerless and speak the party line for fear of standing out. It may appear that the police state would be useless, a waste of money, a standing military not-needed. The population a bunch of passive sheep. They could have crossed the natural threshold where people would normally in Europe would have risen up and overthrown their leaders a decade earlier, and yet there would be no appearance of disorder, not even anything beyond normal in the blogosphere.

And then a small thing could happen, and almost overnight the population is screaming for their politicians to be hung in the streets, and the people who fund them and pull their strings.

I don't know if we've passed that supercooled threshold, but that's what the large standing military is for, just in case they pushed people too far.

In which case, I have a feeling they'll merge with the popular sentiment and redirect it, like the military will declare the government incompetent and corrupt, sacrifice the puppet leaders... and actually enact some very popular socialistic style measures to benefit the public almost immediately (because the military does socialism better than any civilian arm of the government ever could or would) but they'd insulate the wealthy and in a police state condition they'd target the radicals who see the real target and eliminate them. People would probably get a fairer deal, a new legislative process would be declared, it would win lots of popular support and a new era of prosperity where they'll say how it's so much better than what the leftists would have done. It would be like how people lived so well in the fifties and sixties in response to the "red threat", and they'd chalk it up as a loss... for a while, a sacrifice to placate that generation who had enough. The rich would still have power though, and they'd have to start on that generation with the slow nickling and diming all over again.

What's happening is mathematically possible,what's important is what your/we're doing.no?
I don't consider politics at this point as a constructive practice.So how i move/mobilize my activities
considering this history is what is possible,the rest will play out.