Professionals don’t like amateurs, hobbyists or enthusiasts doing for free what they get paid for. A profession has to have entry credentials, some sort of officially recognized certificate of competency to practice, arcane jargon with which to baffle outsiders, and overweening certitude that nobody can do what they do as well as they do.

[snippage]

A recent post about the Alaska Territorial Guard in WWII got me to thinking about sub-national military and paramilitary capabilities. Sub-national as in echelons below fedgov.mil. The ATG had to be recruited because the Alaska National Guard had been mobilized for federal service and sent off to Washington State before the war started. That could happen again to your state. The Army National Guard and Air National Guard are Reserve Components of the federal armed forces, paid, equipped, and trained with federal taxpayer money, and if you have a Category 5 hurricane while the best part of your state’s National Guard is in Darfur delivering pizza, well, DoD regrets the inconvenience, I’m sure.