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Does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Really Want His Own Private Army?
Or are his opponents simply overreacting?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a plan yesterday to re-establish a civilian military force that would be under his direct control rather than under the Department of Defense. How this announcement was reported in various news outlets will significantly influence your first reaction to the story; a headline in The Guardian read “Ron DeSantis Plans Florida Paramilitary Force Outside Federal Control,” while a Tampa Bay Fox News affiliate’s headline read “DeSantis Pitches Plan to Re-Establish Florida State Guard.” Not surprisingly, there was a very different reaction depending on whether the site was left-leaning or right-leaning.
There are some key points to notice in the actual story, regardless of the politics of the site reporting it. DeSantis wants to restart a program that has existed since 1941 and that is currently in place in 22 other states, including the red state of Texas and the blue states of California and New York, so on the surface it’s not necessarily a political issue. The federal government began allowing the creation of State Guard units when the National Guard units of most states were deployed overseas during the Second World War. Most of these went inactive following the war, but the program was never…
