Recognizing the right of the people to organize locally for their mutual defense, the Founders therefore devised a system of government in which military power is divided between federal forces and a popular militia, between federal and state governments, with power over the military divided between the legislative and executive branches of government.

Not only does the right of the people to organize locally for their mutual defense still exist today, the exercise of that right is every bit as important today as it was during colonial times.

...Federalizing the Guard

...And as federal funding for the Guard increased, so federal control over the Guard also increased, and the Guard gradually ceased to be a defender of the people’s liberty against domestic tyranny.

A further reorganization took place in 1933, under which certain specially designated National Guard units received special attention and funding from the federal government. Men who enlisted in these Guard units were considered to have simultaneously enlisted in both their state’s Guard Unit and the National Guard of the United States. Members of these units could be ordered to active duty with the United States armed forces, and upon completion of that service, their status would revert to that of members of their state’s Guard. Guard units were better funded than before, but much of their independence and their identity as representatives of their respective states was lost. It is an old story, repeated many times before and many times since: federal aid leads to federal control.

At first, members of these units could be ordered to federal service only in the event of a national emergency. (Article I, § 8 says Congress can call the militia into federal service "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.") In 1952, Congress removed that requirement but provided that, in the absence of a national emergency, a state Guard unit could be federalized only with the governor’s consent. That consent requirement was partially repealed by the Montgomery Amendment of 1986, which provided that a governor may not withhold his consent to federalization of his state’s Guard unit for service outside the United States because of any objection to the location, purpose, type, or schedule of such duty.

In 1987, Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich objected to the deployment of the Minnesota National Guard to Central America, alleging that the Montgomery Amendment unconstitutionally interfered with his authority over the Guard pursuant to Article I of the Constitution. In Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990), the Supreme Court held that, under the dual-enlistment system established in 1933, guardsmen lose their status as militia members when they are ordered to federal service, and therefore the militia clauses of Article I, § 8 afford them and their units with no constitutional protection. The practical effect of this decision is that National Guardsmen are, first and foremost, federal troops; their connection with the state militias is increasingly tenuous.

Over the years from 1903 to 1990, Guard units have increasingly come under the authority of the United States government. They still bear the name of their respective states, i.e. the Idaho National Guard, and they still perform functions for their respective states. But it is now clear that they are federal forces first, state forces only second, and only at the sufferance of the federal government. The Guard continues to perform admirable service in the defense of our nation, and they serve heroically to defend their states and local communities against natural disasters like Tropical Storm Katrina. Any American who serves or has served in the Guard should be proud indeed. But the guardsman’s role as defender of the people of his state against domestic tyranny, as envisioned by Madison and Hamilton, has virtually disappeared.

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

The INF agreement prohibited the U.S. and the Soviet Union from developing “tactical” missiles with a range of between 310 and 3,400 miles...Both Russia and China are increasingly focused on hypersonic weapons, which can travel at five times the speed of sound and which U.S. military officials warn are capable of evading most modern missile defense systems.