You know that men understand women not at all - because they are men, and women shake their heads when men do things they can't comprehend (although the women will be sure they do Understand men - but that men are just fools or fallible). My point, quickly, is that we understand ourselves and our environment better than someone that doesn't live it with us. Trust me on this, Eskimos, Mongolian herdsmen and camel riding Bedouins live well where they are much better than I ever will be able to - in their environment and culture.
So in my studies and my storytelling, I have been bumping along on the American Revolution, Militia, Minutemen, and the Second Amendment to the Constitution. And for various reasons, me being a loner mostly, I kept concentrating on the People keeping and bearing arms - without the infringement from government. LEAVE ME ALONE! should be painted on my t-shirts, but I don't like too many printed shirts, plain dark somber colors. Okay, so far, that seems to be an important point from the Heller case - it does belong to the People (by only one vote). But you shouldn't trust the government to get it right, any more than you should trust a man or a woman to really understand the other gender. I don't trust the government goodness (and I do believe in fairy tales) when they spend so much time dividing the population into groups with different rules and privileges - I know why they do it and it never is the reason that they tell us, but back to what I almost missed.
Living in this high tech age, where Farmer Frank can plant, weed and harvest bushels of corn and beans that in the long ago past (1890's ?) would have taken long strings of horses and hundreds of men to produce on more acres (look at the pictures). So we don't really understand the old German farm houses, with the animals on the ground floor, the family on the second floor and the workers living in the tiny rooms on the third and fourth floors. We have trouble understanding community - we don't live in communities we just call where we live "a bedroom community" I watched my wife get up and leave for the day in Korea, to help the community replant the rice shoots (they have machines for it now) but everyone went out and helped replant the rice from the village, they would all go out and help harvest (they do have machines now - which is why they have so many people making cars for resale in America). Anyway, those are just two examples of community activities that everyone participating in for the benefit of the community. About the only community activity I see now, is sandbagging against floods - and we are being encouraged to stop that and run away by our government. Mandatory evacuation orders. I must be wandering again.
Back to my point, when you live as a community you also protect yourself as a community, establish good manners, laws and priorities -- and the community expects cooperation and responsibility from its adult members. You will talk, you will vote, you will abide or you will have to walk away an outcast, an outlaw (those are real important historical terms of condition). The MILITIA is the community's military power -- we don't have that any longer, governments don't want independent militia, an armed and organized bunch of citizens. The militia of the 1770's through the early years of America was the men of the community - not the state and never the Federal government. If we had communities today, not ones that just sleep together, the militia would be all the adult men and women of the community, armed and trained to protect the community. From sandbagging, fire fighting and catching crooks and perverts - it would be the community militia, but mostly the Community that would protect itself.
I now read that first part of the Second Amendment as what the Founding Fathers lived within, communities where the people formed their militia (not the government's nor King's military but the People's). Until you build communities again, it won't come back -- there are some places in America that aren't just bedroom communities: but they aren't on the news, on the Interstate or bothered much by Washington, DC. But then once upon a time Americans lived in communities not in enclaves (computer caves?) preparing to become part of the Matrix.
7 comments:
There are communities, that are not just bedroom communities. However, nowadays they are not predicated strictly on geography - and probably don't work as well because of it. Lately I've been thinking greatly about communities & what our present way of life is missing due to that. A recent reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird" enhanced the items we are missing & the militia wasn't one of those things. And aren't the reserves (except those shipped over to Iraq or Afganistan) a form of the militia?
Nope, the National Guard is a temporary State military force - Nationalized when the Federal Government need it. Arkansas National Guard called up by the Governor to stop integration of the school was Nationalized by Eisenhower to force the integration, a fine example of point of view.
A Militia would be a unit of adults from the community training in military matters for the defense of that community - long ago against the Indians, but there wasn't any real pay, no particular qualifications for the officers and NCOs and we are so far from people having the danger of marauders and such - there isn't a need for it when we can depend on the government's goodness to protect us.
I'm not sure about the "loss" of communities. Maybe they never were all that communal. I do know that I see my neighbors at the neighborhood association events. When I had more time for them, I went to all the meetings. Now I go to the big ones. I figure that I'll go to the small ones again when I'm no longer teaching. We do have a strong community at my school with staff, faculty, students, volunteers, parents, and alumni. We may not live near each other, but we are a community in heart and soul. I think that what constitutes a community changes according to the situation and times. Or am I just fooling myself?
THat is the crux of the matter Earl, what today defines community? Where you live? WHere you work? or whom you associate with?
You are Spot On about the militia vs. the present National Guard, but here is the irony: Militias by definition are lightly armed, local troops, while standing armies (the nationalized National Guard for instance) employ far heavier weapons and boast far more intensive training.
Yet what are we fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?
We are fighting 'militias', aren't we? No heavy weapons, light weapons; i.e. small arms and relatively poorly trained combatants.
My question is "Why haven't we destroyed them?" I know, I know we ARE winning, but the fact remains they are a scourge that won't go away.
I think we are returning to the day where one thousand adequately trained militia armed only with semi-auto AR-15s or corresponding rifles and plenty of ammo could do better than what the popular wisdom would think.
Just a thought...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
We did't really begin winning Iraq until the Sunni militias joined us, because 150,000 heavy troops just can't contrl a population of tens of millions.
Which side would you rather be on, 150,000 troops with strykers and tanks for tens of millions of people with light weapons?
I just finished "Last Centurion" by John Ringo, and he talks a lot about community vs. a cluster of houses, and who would best survive hard times. it's interesting.
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