In 2019, at Camp Constitution’s unique bookshop, Hal Shurtleff guided me to make three priceless purchases: Frederic Bastiat’s The Law (1850-ish), John McManus’ Changing Commands, 1995 (about the CFR), and Daniel McGonigle’s editing of Edwin Vieira’s “Execute the Laws” To Restore the Republic, 2013.
I didn’t tackle Vieira’s work back then in 2019, but I am gobbling it up now.
We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Op-Ed Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
In naming my series Mary’s Moral Militia, I had a general idea that you can’t have a government — as we’ve had now for decades — that laughs at morality. It can’t work. The moral militia is, for me, not necessarily armed. It relies on law, and good ol’ enlightened self-interest, to straighten situation out our lugubrious situation. The citizen-led grand jury is one such way to put an end to the so-called immunity of the powerful.
Vieira
But for Vieira there exists a provision in the US Constitution whereby all adults are to be armed by their state. He makes a water-tight case for it. Allow me to preach his sermon:
1. When our Constitution was written in 1787, the word militia meant what a militia had been since the 1600s. Each time “militia” appears in the parchment, it is referring to that thing and not to some later development that we are familiar with (be it the National Guard, or a private group of rebellion-minded citizens).
2. And what was that entity that existed from 1600s to 1787? It was the body of men in the community, age 16 to, say, 60, who could be called up as law enforcers, or handlers of emergencies. There was no army. (And police forces didn’t get invented until Sir Robert Peale organized the Bobbies in London in 1820.)
3. Service in the militia was mandatory and it required training. Were these men allowed to own guns? Edwin Vieira would laugh at you for asking. These men were required to own a gun and keep it at home in good working order. If a man was too poor to buy a gun, the group would help him.
So now let’s look again at the three references in the Constitution. Two of them are in the amazing section 8 of Article I where we see 18 clauses that lay out Congress’s job. I covered these in Part 1 as follows:
Section 8, Clause 15: “Congress shall have the Power to … provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
And where would that militia arise from? It comes from the militia of each state:
Clause 16: “Congress shall have Power … to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States….”
(Pardon me, but if you will phone a few friends to tell them to vote Mary Maxwell up to The Hill, on September 13, you will have a Section 8 maniac in place when the crisis comes, y’know.)
The third time the word militia appears in the Constitution is in Article II, sec 2:
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
Same Old Same Old
You may recall that President Washington in 1794 set 15k citizens in motion to deal with a problem in western Pennsylvania, known as the Whiskey Rebellion. He said “I ordered the militia to march.” But even earlier, in 1775, the Minutemen of Lexington had stepped up to the plate when they were needed. Paul Revere and Co were not acting together as inspired individuals. It was all disciplined and official.
Note: there was not yet a break with England. The Declaration of Independence did not come about until 1776. The Minutemen of 1775 were fighting British soldiers because they were being oppressive bullies.
So are you with me? When the Constitution came in, establishing a republic, characterized by limited government and lotsa rights of We the People, there was no new authorizing of the federation to set up a new militia. Vieira insists that the militia in all three mentions (plus in the Second Amendment) is the every-able-bodied-man militia whose duty is to show up when needed.
Normally they are under the state’s authority, but Congress has constitutional power to deal with “governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States.”
Does this mean the militia men are under the feds’ wing year-round? No! Can’t you read English? Three circumstances may call for a call-up by Congress (and a consequent handover of the men to the Commander in Chief). This can only be: to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections, and “to execute the laws of the Union.”
And So?
In this series of articles, I am mainly interested in the execution of laws. Indeed, I am mainly interested in the fact that laws are not enforced against numerous criminal members of government. It’s quite the impasse, isn’t it? Members of the DoJ, or of Congress for that matter, break laws left right and center, and yet are protected by the law-enforcement institutions.
A little piece of good news here is that many members of We the People have caught on to the inappropriateness of condoning the crimes of the powerful in this way. Hark to the Boston Town Records of 1772:
“We are trodden in the dirt. The Colonists have been branded with the odious name of traitors and rebels, only for complaining of their grievances; How long such treatment will, or ought to be born is submitted.” Ahem.
It’s even better. Vieira thinks that we, in the constitutional militia (all of us), can use our minds. Yep, minds as in moving forward instead of being quicksanded in contemporary history. (See also Philip Allott’s Eutopia.]. Vieira says, on page 40 of McGonigle’s book:
“Revitalized militia would mobilize millions upon millions of individuals for hundreds of different programs and bring with them the innovation and experimentation that emanate from minds not mired in the ruts of rigid bureaucratic centralism…[ No longer would ‘homeland security’ depend for direction on exclusive cliques of professional ‘security’ and ‘intelligence’ operatives including former high-ranking KGB and Stasi agents.” (Good heavens!)
He goes on to say, on page 41:
“State and local politicians, the media, the organized legal and medical professions, the intelligentia, the modernist churches and synagogues, and all the Establishment’s other mouthpieces, front groups, camp followers, and hangers on are constantly inveighing about how ‘guns cause crime.’ [Yet when wielded by] the increasingly para-militarized State [Vieira wrote this in 2004] the most savagely lethal varieties are double plus good and would never, ever, be used to further usurpation or tyranny.”
That was written in 2004. We’ve wasted 18 years of Edwin Vieira’s insight into the real militia of our Constitution. How about cottoning onto it now?
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