This is the Cato Dilly Podcast for Friday, August 14, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

James Madison warned Americans that of all the enemies to public liberty,

war is perhaps the most to be dreaded.

Today, of course, the war power has clearly shifted in favor of the executive.

At Cato University, Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies,

discussed some of the modern rejoinders to the fears that Madison and his predecessors expressed.

If you just think, just any memory from a recent war or a distant one, it's obvious, right? The state grows during

wartime. But this is the crucial point.

That government grows during wartime

and almost never returns those powers back

to the people when the crisis abates, when the guns fall

asylum. This is what Bob Higgs called the Ratchet Effect. So many other ways this

is expressed. One of my other favorite books is called war in the rise of the state by Bruce Porter

And he talks about this in the context of the founding of the republic

Perhaps most importantly, James Madison,

his views on this point were very well known.

A standing military force with an overgrown

executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. And then he reminded them that the means of defense against foreign danger have been

always the instruments of tyranny at home, foreign danger.

He went on, again reminding his fellows of the history.

Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war whenever a revolt was apprehended.

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