America's Bloated Flag Officer Class

Defense Secretary Hegseth addresses 800 (!) Generals and Admirals

Back in 2020, I was stunned to see a report that “the Army as more four-star generals serving on active duty than the Army and Air Force combined had during World War II.”

Army Col. Christopher Coglianese, the chief of Future Operations at Army Futures Command, tweeted this month about the milestone, which the service has only hit once in the past.

“Last time we had that rank density was April 1945, when we had four five-stars and 13 four-stars,” Coglianese said, adding pointing out that at that time the Air Force was known as the U.S. Army Air Force.

Now comes the news that Secretary of Defense Hegseth called a meeting of 800 (!) Generals and Admirals.

Eight-hundred generals and admirals! What on earth are all these flag officers doing on their bases (750 abroad and about 500 at home)? To think that James Madison—author of the U.S. Constitution—expressed grave concern about the danger posed to a free Republic by maintaining a large “standing army.” His mind would reel upon hearing these numbers. Every American schoolboy and girl should be required to memorize the following exposition of this danger.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

—James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)

America’s bloated flag officer class is one of thousands of examples of how the United States government is the largest parasite in the universe—a battalion of leaches on the body of the U.S. citizenry, taxing us and generating untold liabilities for us and our children and grandchildren.