There's perhaps no more revered institution in America than the beloved defense monopoly, more affectionately known as "the military." No other area of government is more likely to offend Americans if denounced than than idea of praising the protection racket that is the Army, or the Air Force, or other branches that embody the State's aggressive nature. No other "essential service" holds the possibility of infuriating so many with so little effort. Very much so, one can find themselves in a threatening situation to speak negatively of it to any extent. The military is to be seen as nothing less than the prime reason why we're [supposedly] rich and free.
While the Right accuses the Left of being easily offended, and politically correct crybabies, they're the one's who experience outrage if anyone "stomps on my flag" or berates "my military." In thinking this of course, they accept the same false premise as any other, more Leftist socialist that "the State is us"; and therefore, that things the military does with our property are in our interests. And so much for believing in property rights and freedom, they think your flag is theirs; and accordingly, if you desecrate it then they're moral in using violence against your property and person.
It has somehow come to be "American", whatever that now means, in Trump's America, to accept and worship the military. But this was not the early idea behind America, which "the idea behind America" is something they're obsessed with too. The "idea" behind America, if anything, founded in a necessarily libertarian revolution against taxation and monopoly, is to be free from anyone violating our property rights, foreign or domestic; to have a lack of political order, i.e., to have capitalism. But in advocating for a monopoly military they're only saying that they're for a socialist military, however limited a degree of socialism they pursue once allowing this one to be established. No longer are they against standing armies, or decentralized defense to the states and such, or any other American cause. No longer do they fight against taxation and monopoly; to be sure, they protect the expropriation of the State.
The idea held within in us now is that the military is a necessary and permanent fixture in our lives. To get rid of it would be the end of the world. It is no longer to be regarded as a means of defense either. The military is to be used to all its might, imperialistically establishing its hegemony the world over, to offensively take down anyone politically deemed a threat. Whereas libertarianism would hold that only overt aggression is criminal, and not the mere thought of doing something bad to someone, i.e., a rape fantasy, it has become completely acceptable to now make preemptive attacks on anyone labeled an enemy. In the present surveillance state, which the military protects and upholds, simply thinking of something and expressing it may have you deemed a terrorist. And as George W. Bush defined the enemy, "you're either with us, or with the terrorists." So, oppose us, the military, and you're the enemy.
It's not ISIS who is subjugating me, or would without the government. It's not the Russians, the Chinese, or whoever else that is the one who attempts to rob as much of mine and my neighbor's income as possible. It's not anyone else that tells me I can't use X drug or do X thing with my property when it infringes upon no one else's rights to do the same. It's the U.S. Government. They're the gang that takes away our freedom. They're the terrorists. They're the warlords.
The idea of having someone steal from you, coercing you into giving up your property at gun point, the way the State always works, to protect you from theft is patently contradicting. It's no different than if a private business came to rob you, considered you a "customer" of their product upon giving you a little something in return, and then proceeded to claim to be some voluntary provider of a service for you. And not only that, you're expected to thank them for their "service!" In fact, it's private businesses who you should thank for their service.
I find it cheesy, even, that they're thanked for joining the military. I would see more reason to "thank" them, or maybe say "I'm sorry", if there were the dreaded establishment of the draft, i.e., of kidnapping. Most of them do so because it's one giant welfare program, assuring them housing, a car, a job, and some degree of social standing among their community. They join the U.S. Military's most formidable gang for the same reason lowlife thugs join street gangs: "Because I had nothing going for me and it was a good opportunity." It's just a jobs program.
The defense monopoly, "the military", is no sacrosanct institution, different than other socialized institutions of the government. There is nothing special about the area of protection which makes it an exception to the economic or the moral law. Being monopolized by the State, like any other product, good, or service, will cause many inefficiencies; namely, the price to rise and the quality of the services to go down. In the case of the defense, that translates to less safe. The same applies to health care, education, etc., where the government limits competition, and therefore supply, and subsequently the cost of the services rises.
If only those who knew we don't need socialist agriculture would logically concede there's no need for defense socialism, then, contrary to what we're told is true of its existence, which we all owe our lives to, we would indeed be more free and more safe. It should be ended, and the provision of security privatized and funded by voluntary payment; not the involuntariness, and therefore immorality, of forcing people into paying for something they never agreed to.
To mention quickly, they cannot understand this because they conflate the terms voluntary and volunteer. The military, it is true, does not at this time have conscription. Aside from the slavery though that you can't get out once you signed up, which would apply nowhere else in the private economy, the military is not voluntary, i.e., it's involuntary. You must give money to the guys who protect you from being shot or they'll shoot you. What a deal!
For the Left-socialists, though, they think ending the Department of Education would mean there would be no education whatever. For the more Right-socialists, they just assume that no defense monopoly is equivalent to no defense at all. It isn't so easy for the indoctrinated to see how there can be a voluntaryism, when we grow up in a flag-waving society, and spend our most impressionable years inside the government-schools pledging allegiance to their flag, but we can only hope that secession and radical decentralization will become more popularly seen as the only way out. As it stands now, what was always considered a racist Rightist thing, to avoid taxes or to secede from the central government, is being looked at by the Left as a viable alternative. They don't wish to be ruled by Trump either.
Even the Left can see a prime area of corporate welfare is to what has come to be known as the "military industrial complex." Since they can't see what government must destroy before it alleges to create something, they consider the "jobs" at companies wholly born out of taxpayer-dollars, i.e., expropriation, to be productive, enriching employment that's "good for the country." These economic illiterates see only the money the soldiers are spending into the community, and in buying the Keynesian economic idea line and hook that it's consumption and spending that drives economic growth, and not savings and investment and production, they don't care that they produced nothing in exchange for what they receive in trading their paper-money for real production, and so think the economy would be devastated were their consumption to be ended and the property stolen returned to the private, contractual owners of it.
There is nothing morally, or economically, good about the military. Remember, the military produces nothing; they consume capital. In short, they make us poorer. We would be many times richer without them. They're not that moral, market institution that works for "us". The military fights for no objective goal, such as preserving capitalism and freedom, and even if they did then they're the hypocrites being the invaders of our property via taxation, but instead they essentially fight for the socialist ideology of democracy. Whoever their Commander in Chief is, they've accepted that he or she is the ruler. There is no principle they live by other than follow any arbitrary orders commanded to them by higher ranking persons than themselves making up "the government."
Indeed the aggression of the State is more rampant than ever, and it's obvious to anyone who works that the parasites who called themselves "the government" are robbing us of half of our income, not to mention the wealth that has never came into existence or been outright plundered by its mere existence. So what does the military fight for? The constitution? Liberty? I say they fight for nothing; they fight to preserve the State.
Minarchists, who believe in the minimal state, i.e., a defense monopoly and nearly nothing else, hold the view that we must at least have a national military. They make many excuses as to why this would actually be voluntary, but there is no reason for this involuntary service anymore than other ones they agree shouldn't be provided in the "common good." If anything, I would see it the opposite way: why doesn't government take a monopoly on something less essential, like, well, I don't know: nothing.
It comes down to participating in the State or not. This truth cannot be brushed off as "just doing my job" when you're job is to violate people's property rights. For those veterans who came around, adopting the libertarian ideology of non-aggression, like 
Fuck you for your "service."