This article examines the social and political struggles out of which emerged the proposal to expand the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC). Situating the proposal in the contexts of the 1992 presidential campaign and the aftermath of the Los Angeles Uprising, the article discusses how particular struggles and debates structured the policy field in such ways as to make possible the program's expansion. The article also examines how arguments in favor of JROTC expansion functioned to win popular support for conservative analyses of public problems, unite diverse groups under Republican leadership, and (re)articulate conservative constructions of government-citizen relationships. (Contains 17 notes.)