Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
Do you think the militia concept is still relevant?
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Here is an article which I highly, highly recommend entitled "The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality". It has a Libertarian sounding point of view that talks about the actual civility that existed under local, private, control in what has erroneously been referred to as the "Wild West." In the main it contrasts the civility of a type of local self governance of people associating in mutual commerce to the breakdown of civility caused by the intervention of a powerful central government reshaping that society in order to advance the interests of political ideology fueled by greedy politicans and corporate types. It touches on the relative peacefulness and civility during the militia concept in practice in the Western U.S. frontier in contrast to the change to violence that occurred when the federal army entered and replaced the militia with federal law:
http://www.independent.org/publicati...cle.asp?id=803
It's a trifle longish, but an extremely interesting, eye opening, and not boring, article. Here is the excerpt that specifically mentions militia:
"Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney relate how Thomas Jefferson found that during his time negotiation was the Europeans’ predominant means of acquiring land from Indians. By the twentieth century, some $800 million had been paid for Indian lands. These authors also argue that various factors can alter the incentives for trade, as opposed to waging a war of conquest as a means of acquiring land. One of the most important factors is the existence of a standing army, as opposed to militias, which were used in the American West prior to the War Between the States. On this point, Anderson and McChesney quote Adam Smith, who wrote that “‘[i]n a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.’” A standing army, according to Anderson and McChesney, “creates a class of professional soldiers whose personal welfare increases with warfare, even if fighting is a negative-sum act for the population as a whole."
"The change from militia to a standing army took place in the American West immediately upon the conclusion of the War Between the States. The result, say Anderson and McChesney, was that white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army. On their own, they were much more likely to negotiate peacefully. Thus, “raid” replaced “trade” in white–Indian relations. Congress even voted in 1871 not to ratify any more Indian treaties, effectively announcing that it no longer sought peaceful relations with the Plains Indians."
"Anderson and McChesney do not consider why a standing army replaced militias in 1865, but the reason is not difficult to discern. One has only to read the official pronouncements of the soldiers and political figures who launched a campaign of extermination against the Plains Indians."
Much of the article can be applied to the current nexus of big government with big business. And to a potential danger in federalizing the "militia"--of making it a form of a select standing federal army rather than a localized "whole people" defense force.