This interview of
Edwin Vieira is instructive. His
discussion is based on his book The Sword and Sovereignty: The Constitutional
Principles of “the Militia of the Several States.” Vieira holds four degrees from Harvard, including
a Ph.D. and law degree, and as an attorney he has argued landmark labor
cases. I have had a couple of small
interactions with him. As well, Mark
Mix, the head of the National Right to Work Committee, has spoken to my
classes, and Vieira has worked directly with him.
Some of Viera's points are:
-All competent Americans belong to the Constitutional
militia. The chief exceptions involve physical and mental incapacity. The
males-only limitation, which was prevalent in the 18th century, no longer
applies, so all able-bodied and psychologically fit Americans are members of the
militia. That is true legally because the state-based militia codes are still in effect.
-John Trenchard, in the 1690s, made the case that a standing
army is incompatible with liberty. Whoever holds the sword, the ultimate force
in society, exercises sovereignty. Since the US is a self-governing republic,
the people need to hold the sword.
Delegating this authority to the federal government is equivalent to delegating
sovereignty to an elite special interest or tyrant.
-Current approaches to homeland security are incompatible
with freedom, self-governance, and the Second Amendment. A true Constitutional militia is the basis
for true homeland security. The Second
Amendment says that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of
the a state. In other words, only when the people hold military power can the
state be secure and free.
- The average person is the object of control of the current
homeland security institutions; he is not a participant in them. Hence, America
has adopted police state tactics: surveillance, propaganda, lies, indefinite
detention, and ultimately assassinations committed by the executive branch
without judicial review. These practices
are unconstitutional and incompatible with freedom.
-The current homeland security system directly contradicts
the vision of the founding fathers.
-The National Guard is Constitutional, but it is not a
militia. A militia conforms to the
historical patterns of militias that existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Vieira says that there are 17
principles associated with a well-regulated militia. These
include universal service and all militia members' owning their own
firearms.
-The militia, although it still exists on paper, withered in
importance because of the Dick Act, also called the Militia Act of 1903 (32
Stat. 775), and The Efficiency in
Militia Act of 1903.” The Act separated
organized and unorganized militias. This distinction is unconstitutional.
-Vieira argues that the pro-freedom and pro-Second
Amendment movements have erred in
emphasizing the individual right to bear arms, which Vieira says is certainly
part of the Second Amendment, but only a small part. The main purpose of the Second Amendment is
to insist that well-regulated militias are necessary to the defense of a free
state; in diminishing the importance of the militia itself, the debate has
centered on individual rights rather than a full understanding of the founding
fathers' vision of freedom.
-Vieira argues for a renewal of legitimate militias that are
similar to the current Swiss militia system. To adhere to the Constitution,
the states would need to establish universal militia service requirements and
training, and the current federal control of homeland security would need to
end. The people should be trained to
protect homeland security, which is not a federal function.
Vieira's view is radical, more radical than any
left-oriented aim of further centralizing the state and putting more police
power in state hands. Institution of universal militia service might lessen the
obsession with higher education, which could be in part replaced by militia
training requirements for 17-year-olds.
