By: J.J. Jackson
When the United States of America was being born it was thanks to brave men and women willing to fight against tyranny in ways that today would make many Americans (and certainly most liberal, progressive, socialist so-called Americans) faint. It was these men, the militia, that helped out in ways not often remembered. History often whitewashes the fact that many who fought against the English Crown were not regulars of an organized military but rather men brought up from the fields or who came down from the mountains and who left their homes to take up arms in the fight.
They were not soldiers. The militia lacked the same rigorous training of the normal enlisted man but at the beginning of the war it was all that America had. Lightly armed and without uniforms, these state militias formed of average men provided the firepower to get the ball rolling. It was not until June of 1775 that a regular army was formed by the Continental Congress. As the historic year of 1776 started, a full one third of those fighting for independence were still militia however.
After Washington trounced the English forces at Trenton and captured a thousand Hessians following his famous, and often embellished, crossing of the Delaware on Christmas of 1776 it was the New Jersey militia that eventually caused the remnants of the British forces which had pulled back to Princeton to retreat fully back to New York . It was the militia that won the Battle of Bennington and it was the militia who rallied to General Horatio Gates and helped turn the war with a victory at the Second Battle of Saratoga. It was militia that rolled out of the hills and hunted down English loyalists lead by Major Patrick Ferguson and who planted his grave firmly on top of King’s Mountain in 1780.
So important was the militia to the United States that our founding fathers enshrined its place in our Constitution as one of honor not to be touched. They did so by stating boldly that , “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State , the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Those who fight to oppress the people of this great nation through violations of our Constitution rightfully fear the militia for they have seen what happens when theAmerican people are pushed too far. They have seen what happened to their fellow oppressors in the past and how Americans reacted by taking to arms when redress for egregious wrongs was not given. For years they have done their best to vilify the militia due to their own fears of what might happen when the American people have had enough of their bastardization of our government. They have to do something after all to deflect attention away from the wrongness of their own actions because their acts are indefensible.
Those on the left, today’s “progressives” for whom progress means regressing to tyrannies long since shed, claim to be Americans but rarely, if ever, seem to put forth ideas in line with American ideals. They call people in militias any derisive slur they can concoct. They mock them as nut cases playing soldier among other idiotic claims that simply do not hold up to any sort of historical context. Again, had it not been for those, “nut cases playing soldier,” back in the 1770’s America would not be here today. King George's Generals mocked the militia too and it was fatal for their effort.
Tyrants whether they are today’s progressive liberals or the kings of ages past are just cowards at heart and they know that the militia is to be feared. And yes, that is indeed a good thing. Only when tyrants and would-be tyrants fear for their futures and even their very lives do they back down. King George after all did not let the colonies secede out of the goodness of his heart. No, he was forced to submit to the concept of the colonies being independent from England at the point of a musket.
So, being the student of history that I am it is no real surprise that the would-be tyrants of the political left would react as viscerally as they are to the thought of people and some representatives in a state like Oklahoma actually wanting to form up a militia. The purpose of this militia is to protect the state against an intrusive federal government breaking the compact of our Constitution more readily than Hillary Clinton changes pants suits.
For the political left who are often unable to even be bothered to muss up their own hair for fear of breaking a nail this is an unacceptable action. They are stepping up attacks on the movement trying hard to paint those contemplating this plan as everything from lunatics to racists. But once again they are showing how uneducated they are with such attacks which are a mile wide and barely one sixteenth of an inch deep.
We still have a federal Constitution in this country which grants only limited powers to our government in Washington. All that is not given is reserved, as many of ourFounding Fathers repeatedly told those that questioned the expanse of the power they were signing over to Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. The militia is just the legitimate defense mechanism against those that seek to reach too far into those reserved powers. Mock them all you want. But in doing so you only show how little you know.
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J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the FreeStudios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com
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