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Those that have read some of my more personal posts will have noticed I make references to the MN Militia on occasion, and those that haven\’t read this blog for a long time probably aren\’t completely sure what I\’m referring to, and that is completely my fault.  It\’s an inside joke, which has never been adequately explained and probably very easy to misinterpret.

To be clear the MN Militia is simply a reference to a group of very close friends of mine.  The guys hunt, drink, camp and snowmobile together.  The wives do scrapbooking and naked pillow fights or whatever it is women do together.  We spend holidays together.  The name came from one of our hunting trips, in fact our first prairie dog hunting trip, where not knowing what to expect and how to prepare, we each brought virtually every firearm we owned and quite a few thousand rounds of ammo apiece.  When unloaded we resembled a militia invading the Dakotas, hence the name which now serves as a convenient anonymous nickname for a group of friends whose activities are occasionally mentioned here.

So while by no means am I truly part of a militia, in the normal sense of the word, having used it on multiple occasions on my blog without adequate explanation has produced some rather interesting results.  On a fairly regular basis my site gets hits from people searching for \”Minnesota Militia\” or some variation.  And it\’s fairly common for me to get the occasional email about it.  Some of them are innocent emails inquiring what I meant.  Others are……well, less innocent.  Fortunately none have creeped me out enough that they went anywhere beyond my own inbox.

However, I have noticed a trend…the pace of those emails has increased and it\’s clear a growing number of people are at least interested in the concept of militias, and some are actively seeking them out.  Back in 1995, Glenn Reynold, not yet of Instapundit fame, wrote an article on the rise of the militia movement and the motives/rationale for that movement.

Although many militia supporters can quote the framers at great length on the right to bear arms, few seem aware that the framers also put a lot of effort into distinquishing between legitimate revolutions-such as the American Revolution-and mere \”rebellions\” or \”insurrections\”.  The former represented a right, even a duty, of the people.  The latter were illegitimate, mere outlawry.  The framers developed a rather sophisticated political theory for distinquishing between the two.

The most important aspect of this theory was representation.  Those who were not represented lacked the citizen\’s duty of loyalty.  A government that taxed its citizens without representation was thus no better than an outlaw, and citizens enjoyed the same right of resistance against its officers as they possessed against robbers.

But revolting against taxation without representation is not the same thing as revolting against taxation, period.  Like it or not the government we have now is the government that most citizens at least thought they wanted.

Glenn goes on into more detail, describing the sutle details and how they relate to our current situation, but that\’s the basic upshot.

So I understand the interest in militia, trust me I really do.  I symphathize with the raw emotion that inspires the fears and worries that fire that interest.  But I don\’t find it difficult to argue that now is not the time.  In fact, Mitch Berg, as is his habit, wrote a very well supported argument along these same lines.  Read the whole thing for his other points, but the end result is this…

The point being that, so far, the Obama Administration isn’t the worst thing our constitution, our economy and our society has faced – yet.  And while the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the Founding Fathers well-recognized the possibility that Americans might need to throw off another tyranny someday, this isn’t it.

Not yet.

It’s a big government, and it’s getting bigger.  It’s a not-ready-for-prime-time government, run by a lot of very canny people who buffaloed a lot of our nation’s not-too-bright with a lot of breezy platitudes, and which rode to office on an almost-but-not-quite-unprecedented wave of discontent with the status quo.  It’s a government full of poltroons and ideological three-card-monte sharks.  But it’s not a communist dictatorship.

It was elected, for better or worse.  And we have three years and eight months to make the case that it should be thrown out of office and – this is the important part – nobody’s changing that.

So what does all this mean…well as Mitch already quotes…

As Douglas Adams said, “Don’t Panic”.

[Crossposted at True North]