Marine Major General Butler elaborated this fact some 100 years go, from the perspective of a top-level enforcer, who came to realize (and regret) his "service." I suspect there are many such now but more who cannot deal with the fact and so suppress it by convincing themselves they are "fighting for freedom" and "defending democracy."

But, I ask – and gently: How, exactly, has the federal military fought for our freedom?  Yours and mine?

I mean since the War for Independence?

It did fight – or threaten to – after the war was over, to take away the freedom of rural American farmers who objected to being told they must pay taxes in currency they didn't have, because they lived mostly by barter using the whiskey they distilled from the crops they grew. They did not see that they "owed" taxes to the federal government or anyone else, not having agreed to them.

Washington – the general – sent federal troops to make sure they did pay them.

Jefferson, not the federal military, served the cause of freedom – by repealing the so-called Whiskey Tax.

Post-Jefferson, the federal military was used to reduce the size of Mexico – and the Indian population – which benefitted some Americans, certainly. But was the ideal of freedom – the principle of leaving others be who have not caused others harm – furthered by double-dealing and violence? Or did it merely establish the fact of hypocrisy that – one day (our day) would return in the form of repercussions rooted in our own rueful acknowledgement that what was done wasn't right and thus not defensible?

And that was before the most indefensible act yet performed by the federal military – that ugly business being the laying waste of the South in order to establish the hegemony of the federal government.