(01-22-2018, 03:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-21-2018, 10:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Criminals, addicts, idiots, and lunatics can never form a well-regulated militia.
You kind of need a commonly perceived threat. In the old days, there were natives and Europeans. There were no rapidly moving regulars or National Guard. You needed a local force, not transport. Once a week, after church, they drilled. Sorta. The militia was more a social club than fighting force towards the Civil War. After church, the party.
But just because the drilling and (perhaps) the threats went away, the Constitution and Rights did not. The old laws governing the militia are generally still on the books. The states can still appoint officers. Congress can still specify training. Adult males still must follow orders. There are still specific conditions (invasions, insurrections, and to enforce the law) where the militia could be called up to follow the federal commander in chief, if not sent abroad. Etc...
The founding fathers knew what it took to run a militia, but there would be quite a political storm if anyone tried any of the above today. The old militia laws could trivially get a Commander in Chief unelected if abused. Trying to organize the militia without a real threat would be viewed as an abuse.
They got away with it as the good citizens under threat outnumbered the criminals, addicts, idiots and lunatics. The militia consists of all adult males. Todays groups of politically motivated individuals operating without orders from state appointed officers are not The Militia, but a joke.
You have the point. The militias of the American Revolution were well-disciplined soldiers, men (gender may be irrelevant today but it wasn't then) recognizing that militia service was public service requiring some sacrifices. Part of the sacrifice was to put up with the regimentation inherent in the 'well-regulated militia'. Nobody saw militia service as a lark. People knew that facing even a skirmish, let alone some 'small' raid was dangerous and unpleasant. So people in the Colonies joined militias to make clear that some unruly tribe of First Peoples would know that it was a bad idea to take goods and family members away from 'our' side of the frontier. People served in militias not to enjoy the drilling, but instead to protect their communities.
The drilling was not fun. It was a clear hardship. It meant that one could not then go to the local pub and raise a ruckus. It meant that one could not then go hunting, bowling, or whatever. But the militias had to be competent if the members were to avoid having too many losses and communities were to be protected. Defense was often local; by the time a skirmish was over, a militia from a dozen miles away would find that it was all over, as bad as the roads were and as slow as getting infantry over. If you wanted to protect your community as late as the American Revolution when the frontier was within a few miles of cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, then you needed a well-regulated militia.
Most significantly the colonial (and later Revolutionary) militias were responsible to elected officials. Indeed the American Revolution was a contest between the authority of the British King and elected colonial legislatures. The American Revolution was not so much a struggle for freedom but instead a question of whether a distant King or people in the independence-seeking Colonies through elected legislatures would have the formal authority from Maine to Georgia. There was no anarchist element in the American Revolution.
The militias of the American Revolution were responsible to elected governments and vice-versa. Today's private, politicized militias would chafe at the idea. Private, politicized militias not responsible to elected officials are a bane of democracy. This is as true of fascist Blackshirts or Commie militias often essential to the overthrow of elected democracy and the imposition of tyranny.
Maybe those private, politicized militias aren't quite as much a joke as you think, should they ever become competent enough to challenge elected government. After they aid in seizing power on behalf of their cause they become the enforcement of the undemocratic regime -- and enforcers of the new Establishment.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.