This is the Tom Hartman Program.

Welcome back to the Tom Hartman Program.

Broadcasting on Commercial radio stations from coast to coast on Sirius XM all across the North American

continent on Pacifica stations across

America, Europe and Africa, and American Forces Radio, on every U.S. military base in the world in your electronic device via Tune-in, Progressive Voices, Tom Hartman app, and simulcast as television via free speech

TV network on DISH network, direct TV, and cable systems all over the country.

There's a couple of stories here that I think are just absolutely fascinating

the National Defense Authorization Act. There's a history to that that most people

don't know and I just wanted to share it very quickly with you and then talk about why I think that this is a big deal.

And a reflection of our national priorities in the fact that most of the progressive changes that were put into the bill in the House of Representatives, including cutting off

money to Saudi Arabia for their genocidal war in Yemen and things like that, had been taken

out by Republicans in the Senate.

The background of this goes back to the founding of

our republic. There was a big debate in the Constitutional Convention about

whether Congress should authorize or whether the Constitution should authorize the nation to have a single

military, an army basically, a national army.

There was a consensus that we needed a Navy, we needed to protect our shores, we needed to protect shipping shores we needed to protect shipping commerce

things like that but what about an army and the problem was the concern was

that armies during times of peace very often turn their attention to taking over governments, to

corrupting governments or even overthrowing governments. You know the

military coups, the corruption of governments by the military were even in 1787, legendary,

and just built into the woof and warp of, or warp and weave I guess is the,

...