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Although at the present time I am one of very few
people, if not the only person, vociferously advocating revitalization of
“the Militia of the several States” along strict constitutional
lines, I am confident that the Forces of Darkness fully anticipate that I
shall not remain for much longer a lonely “voice crying in the
wilderness” of the Internet and the market for rare books. Rather, as
this country lurches ever-closer to crisis because of their insatiable
avarice, ambition, and appetite for power, accelerated by their inexhaustible
arrogance, the Forces of Darkness realize that time is running out and that
truth will out. The consequences of that eventuality being so detrimental to
them, they need to take counteraction soon, before they find themselves
pitched out on their ears.
They have four options:
- Silence—to keep as many people as
possible in the dark about revitalization of the Militia for as long as
possible. If that does not work,
- Misdirection—to lead the initially small
number of self-educated idealists and activists into self-destructive
behavior. If that
does not work,
- Defamation—to smother the movement in
derision and demonization, so as to poison the minds of the general
public, and thereby stunt the movement’s growth. And only if all these do not
work,
- Suppression—to employ brutal police-state
methods to smash the movement (although such a course of action may
prove problematic, possibly self-defeating, once the Militia have been
revitalized in even a few States).
With
the Internet in so many homes, silence is no longer a viable tactic. The idea
already courses through the ether, easily accessible to all and not subject
to erasure. Moreover, left to its own devices, it can only gain adherents and
practitioners, because revitalization of “the Militia of the several
States” offers the best alternative available to return this country to
constitutional self-government by We the People in the near future.
Defamation
is not at the present time a viable tactic, either. Inasmuch as derision and
demonization contradict the tactic of silence, they can be employed only when
silence no longer suffices: that is, only when an idea already threatens to
explode into a powerful political movement. For revitalization of the
Militia, however, that time has not quite arrived. So the Forces of Darkness
need not yet mobilize their morally club-footed Goebbels-figures in the media
and among the intelligentsiia—although this country can expect to hear
from these ranters soon enough, as more and more common Americans wake up,
listen up, and start to speak and act up, and the enemies of popular
self-government try to shut them up with name-calling, bluster, and threats.
So,
right now, Americans should expect the Forces of Darkness to favor
misdirection in order to divert idealists and activists from the true Militia
to various false “militias”. Misdirection can be adventitious,
when the Forces of Darkness rely on common people who are acting in good
faith, albeit mistakenly. Or it can be artificial, when the Forces of
Darkness deploy their own malicious agents provocateurs and other operatives
to conduct people down blind alleys.
1.
In the first category are found most of those
Americans around the country who already participate in, or contemplate
joining, various private “militias.” By in large, their
motivations are patriotic and to that extent laudable. Nonetheless, because
few of them are legal historians, their research tends to be less than
sufficient, their plans less than adequate, for the difficult task they have
set themselves to perform.
2.
Although
some of these private “militias” claim “common law”
as their basis, they cannot stand on such a foundation. For “common
law” had nothing whatsoever to do with the formation and operation of
the Militia in any of the Colonies or independent States prior to
ratification of the Constitution. All of those Militia were the products of
charters or statutes. And in none of them did judges or sheriffs play any
directing role. Under the Constitution, therefore, the same pattern must
obtain today.
As
wholly private organizations with no legal authority peculiar to
themselves—for certainly not a single one of them has been empowered by
a State statute to participate in the activities they have taken upon
themselves—these “militias” are necessarily not parts of
the government of any State or Locality. Indeed, they view themselves as at
least potential antagonists and opponents of “the government” in
general—which they condemn (and not inaccurately) for serial
oppressions already inflicted upon common Americans; which they suspect (and
not unfairly) is plotting to commit even more of these offenses; and which
they intend and are preparing to resist. Their resistance, however, they
proclaim will be entirely defensive—an assertion supported by their
behavior. For their members arm for and train in the small-unit tactics
practiced by guerrilleros, steeling themselves for the day when “the
government” causes some crisis so devastating that large numbers of
Americans are compelled to rise up in open, armed rebellion, to preserve
their lives, liberties, and property from wanton destruction.
That
such a crisis is possible, perhaps rather probable, is anything but a
paranoidal delusion that haunts these private “militias” alone. For example:
- Some 9/11-type “terrorist strike,”
whether real or engineered, might be used to rationalize a nationwide
police-state lockdown under “emergency powers” and
“martial law.”
- As part of or in preparation for such a
lockdown, a nationwide seizure of privately owned firearms might be
attempted.
- A gun grab might set the stage or provide the
excuse for a nationwide round-up of dissidents for incarceration in
concentration camps.
- A monetary and banking collapse might usher in,
or result from, a nationwide police-state crackdown. And,
- Even an apparently benign “merger”
that melds Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a North American
Union could serve as a reason for confiscation of Americans’
privately owned firearms—because the “gun-control”
laws in Canada and Mexico could not coexist with the rights Americans
now enjoy under the Second Amendment; with “open borders”
the traffic into and out of the United States would defeat those
Canadian and Mexican laws; and, therefore, the Second Amendment would
have to be set aside perforce of the North American Union’s
supposed “supremacy” in hemispheric legislation.
In
any event, when the day of reckoning finally dawns, for whatever reason,
these various private “militias” expect to fight “the
government” somewhere —in the forests, swamps, and hills—in
the sewers and utility-tunnels of the big cities—in the residential
rabbit warrens of suburbia—until the majority of the population finally
comes to its senses and joins them. Or at least the “militias”
will survive as guerrilleros, managing to elude extermination or capture.
Such
private “militias” exist, and will continue to exist, because
they embody the romantic legends that surround Robin Hood, Francis Marion,
John Singleton Mosby, Michael Collins, the French Resistance, and the
Hungarian freedom fighters. Unfortunately, in any major crisis in the near
future they will fail of their purpose, because they will lack sufficient
members, supporters, and sympathizers. This, for at least three reasons:
First,
these private “militias” enjoy no credible claim to any actual
legal authority as “militias.” And, absent color of authority,
they cannot convince more than a small minority of Americans to participate
actively in their operations, or the majority of their countrymen to support
them even passively.
Second,
these private “militias” tend to recruit their members almost
exclusively from one social group: the so-called “gun culture.”
For this reason, all too many Americans dismiss them as being composed of
“extremists,” if not worse. Such misconceived disdain is the
practical kiss of death for their strategy, because in the classical formulation
guerrilleros are the fish, the rest of the people the sea—and without
the sea in which to move, to find nourishment, and to hide from predators,
the fish will die.
Third,
and worst of all, these private “militias” predicate the
necessity for their existence on the conclusion that the American people have
already lost the major legal and political battle for liberty. For them,
“the Constitution is dead”—“the government” is
separate from, independent of, antagonistic to, and irretrievably the enemy
of We the People—and tyranny cannot be deterred, forestalled, or defeated
throughout this country, only feebly resisted here and there.
To
characterize this argument as merely erroneous credits it too much. It is
pernicious. For the Constitution is absolutely essential to prove what We the
People’s powers are, and (even more to the point) what the powers of
rogue public officials are not—in particular, that these usurpers and
tyrants enjoy no more authority, and should expect no more obedience, than a
bag-woman on the streets of New York City. After all, without the
Constitution, what legal basis for self-government by We the People must
public officials respect? If the honest ones want to claim their offices
under the Constitution (as all of them do, at least in form), they must also
admit the Constitution’s limitations on the powers of those offices.
They cannot assert their constitutional powers without abiding by their
constitutional disabilities. Therefore, they must concede We the
People’s supreme authority under the Constitution, too. And as for
dishonest, rogue public officials, the Constitution provides We the People
with the most efficacious means to suppress their misbehavior, if Americans
have the wit, the wisdom, and the will to use it—the very first step in
the process being to affirm that those means are very much alive, not
“dead.”
Edwin
Vieira
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