A Defensive Stance – A Common Purpose

It would be hard to not be familiar with this purpose of our government, well of any government actually. The defense of the nation, the protection of the citizenry, securing the integrity of the country; this function is routinely touted by politicians with regard to how they will do it better than their opponent. This government purpose is one of the central roles around which societies organize to obtain. It’s the role of protection. “Providing a common defense” is a group oriented goal however and not necessarily meant to deal with the protection of an individual at all; that responsibility is covered elsewhere.

The defense function is usually conceived of as being a protection from foreign enemies. In this arena, the Constitution extends to the federal government the obligation to protect the states and territories under federal jurisdiction from outside agents. For this purpose the government is charged in providing the military, security and related organizations necessary to carry out this task. In essence it reflects a judgment that united and national defense forces are more effective and more capable of defending the nation as a whole than the states would be able to do as individual and separate entities. This responsibility to act against foreign threats does not obviate the states from having their own militias nor from their own responsibilities to provide for the defense of their own state. However, the states are strictly subordinate to the federal authority with respect to foreign enemies; and cannot operate in opposition to the federal forces when dealing with those forces are dealing with domestic threats.

This raises the less often understood (and perhaps accepted) function of federal defense organizations, that of protecting the union itself. This role is one of the justifications that the Union had in fighting the U.S. Civil War. The Constitutional contract that the people adopted for themselves and us, their posterity, is not easily revocable; maybe even irrevocable. Certainly it cannot be dissolved on a unilateral basis. Protecting the country is thus ensuring the continuation of the Constitutional system itself. That is why officials are asked to pledge their allegiance to defending the country and the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.

So even in this highly cited role of our government there are areas of disagreement over what it can and should cover, how wide its reach is, and how it is managed and maintained. Politicians will claim that they have particular values and skills that make them the better suited to providing the best protection and defense of America, but considering their abilities in other areas of our society they are most likely as poorly equipped and capable for this responsibility as they are for most. Over the course of our history we have seen every variant and extreme of poor judgment, direction, management and oversight of the country’s defensive organizations. Just because the common defense is a legitimate purpose of government does make politician any good at it.