Brutus, the anti-federalist wrote in 1788 that: " The liberties of a people are in danger from a large standing army… …. that an army will subvert the forms of the government…" Brutus words are absolutely prescient and yet in today's world his warning in fit, form, and actuality, has been eviscerated and ignored, for this isn't a country, that has mere standing armies, it is a country that hasn't declared a congressional war as per its Constitution since World War II, yet has the largest "peacetime" military-industrial complex the world has ever seen, with its footprints, influence, and armaments literally extending throughout the entire world.
While it certainly made sense that conscription was enacted during our civil war, such conscription was also enforced in World War I, when, at that time, the war was seen by many in America as just another European war, of which, Europe has seemingly had legions of such wars. Then, conscription was re-instituted for World War II, and such conscription continued unabated until 1973, so that some men were indeed forcefully drafted into the undeclared wars in Korea as well as Vietnam, resulting in the military-industrial complex becoming permanently ingrained within America, so that, today, the Defense Department of the United States of America, as reported by forbes.com: " .. .boasts a workforce of 3.2 million people, making it the largest global employer." Further, the proposed budget for the Department of Defense for 2018 is an absolutely staggering $ $639.1 billion. This, for a nation that has not had a congressional declared war since World War II, and for all practical purposes is not under attack by any other nation, or any other entity, whatsoever.
The fact that we have massive standing armies in peacetime in America, has meant that the government in conjunction with specific corporations have had to coordinate and assimilate each within the other to such a massive extent so that industry would be consolidated and coordinated in order to efficiently and effectively be able to produce and provide all of the munitions, infrastructure, and armaments that a modern nation must have in order to build their military might. This means, of a necessity, that facilities must be secure from enemies, foreign and domestic; that roadways, materials, and foundries, must be under the aegis of the federal government so that the priority of such things is first and foremost in conformance to the military-industrial complex, superseding and thereby not being interfered by individual State priorities or ordinances, nor to be bother by the citizens of America, that might so object to such.
So too, schools, but not just military schools, specifically universities and the greatest minds of each generation, must be found and utilized for the industries that are part and parcel of such military might, so that the Defense Department can not only stay ahead of the curve, but far ahead of it, utilizing the most advanced and the most state-of-the-art equipment, aided by human ingenuity, for their purposes of military might.
So then, because the military-industrial complex is now so large and so powerful, such a complex must be fed on a continual basis, in order to maintain its status as the preeminent priority of America, so that the American dream of doing what is right and proper for the citizens of this great land, has been subverted to actually mean, doing what is right as defined by the military-industrial complex, for the benefit of such, in which, the point is to ever keep the American populace in a state of heightened anxiety that America is being menaced by some nebulous foreign entity of evil intent that necessitates the permanent state of this military-industrial complex to "defend" us, while all along, it siphons massive amounts of money that would be of a far better usage to Americans for social programs, education, healthcare, generations yet unborn, and the uplift of those that have been downtrodden for so long.