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Militias
A militia is a civilian military force that raises to supplement the official military in defense of homeland, or to stand against them in a state of rebellion.
459 Questions
George Roger Clark was the militia leader who convinced many Native Americans to abandon their British allies leading to the recovery of the fort at Vincennes Indiana.
What role did the colonial militia play in the war?
The traditional mercantilist roles of colonizer and colonies were inverted over the last few decades. For millennia, colonial empires consisted of a center which consumed raw materials and produced and sold finished goods to the periphery whose role was to extract minerals and cultivate commodities, edible and not.
In the wake of the Second World War (a failed German colonial experiment in the heartland of Europe) and as a result of escalating scarcity, caused by a variety of economic and geopolitical factors, the center of geopolitical-military gravity shifted to the producers and owners of mineral and agricultural wealth.
These countries have outsourced and offshored the manufacturing of semi-finished and finished products to the poorest corners of the Earth. Thus, in stark contrast to the past, nowadays, "colonies" spew out a stream of consumer goods and consume raw materials imported from their colonial masters.
Colonial relationships are no longer based on bayonets and are mostly commercial in nature. Still, it is not difficult to discern 19th century patterns in these 21st century exchanges with one of the parties dominant and supreme and the other obsequious and subservient and with the economic benefits flowing and accruing inexorably in one direction.
From Venezuela to Thailand, democratic regimes are being toppled by authoritarian substitutes: the military, charismatic left-wingers, or mere populists. Even in the USA, the bastion of constitutional rule, civil and human rights are being alarmingly eroded (though not without precedent in wartime).
The prominent ideologues of liberal democracy have committed a grave error by linking themselves inextricably with the doctrine of freemarketry and the emerging new order of globalization. As Thomas Friedman correctly observes in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", both strains of thought are strongly identified with the United States of America (USA).
Thus, liberal democracy came to be perceived by the multitudes as a ruse intended to safeguard the interests of an emerging, malignantly narcissistic empire (the USA) and of rapacious multinationals. Liberal democracy came to be identified with numbing, low-brow cultural homogeneity, encroachment on privacy and the individual, and suppression of national and other idiosyncratic sentiments.
Liberal democracy came to be confused and confuted with neo-colonial exploitation, social Darwinism, and the crumbling of social compacts and long-standing treaties, both explicit and implicit. It even came to be associated with materialism and a bewildering variety of social ills: rising crime rates, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, prostitution, organ trafficking, monopolistic behavior, corporate malfeasance, and other antisocial forms of conduct.
The backlash was, thus, inevitable.
"Democracy" is not the rule of the people. It is government by periodically vetted representatives of the people.
Democracy is not tantamount to a continuous expression of the popular will as it pertains to a range of issues. Functioning and fair democracy is representative and not participatory. Participatory "people power" is mob rule, not democracy.
Granted, "people power" is often required in order to establish democracy where it is unprecedented. Revolutions - velvet, rose, and orange - recently introduced democracy in Eastern Europe, for instance. People power - mass street demonstrations - toppled obnoxious dictatorships from Iran to the Philippines and from Peru to Indonesia.
But once the institutions of democracy are in place and more or less functional, the people can and must rest. They should let their chosen delegates do the job they were elected to do. And they must hold their emissaries responsible and accountable in fair and free ballots once every two or four or five years.
As heads of the state in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and East Europe can attest, these vital lessons are lost on the dozens of "new democracies" the world over. Many of these presidents and prime ministers, though democratically elected (multiply, in some cases), have fallen prey to enraged and vigorous "people power" movements in their countries.
And these breaches of the democratic tradition are not the only or most egregious ones.
The West boasts of the three waves of democratization that swept across the world 1975. Yet, in most developing countries and nations in transition, "democracy" is an empty word. Granted, the hallmarks of democracy are there: candidate lists, parties, election propaganda, and voting. But its quiddity is absent. It is being consistently hollowed out and rendered mock by election fraud, exclusionary policies, cronyism, corruption, intimidation, and collusion with Western interests, both commercial and political.
The new "democracies" are thinly-disguised and criminalized plutocracies (recall the Russian oligarchs), authoritarian regimes (Central Asia and the Caucasus), or Vichy-like heterarchies (Macedonia, Bosnia, and Iraq, to mention three recent examples).
The new "democracies" suffer from many of the same ills that afflict their veteran role models: murky campaign finances, venal revolving doors between state administration and private enterprise, endemic corruption, self-censoring media, socially, economically, and politically excluded minorities, and so on. But while this malaise does not threaten the foundations of the United States and France - it does imperil the stability and future of the likes of Ukraine, Serbia, and Moldova, Indonesia, Mexico, and Bolivia.
Worse still, the West has transformed the ideal of democracy into an ideology at the service of imposing a new colonial regime on its former colonies. Spearheaded by the United States, the white and Christian nations of the West embarked with missionary zeal on a transformation, willy-nilly, of their erstwhile charges into paragons of democracy and good governance.
And not for the first time. Napoleon justified his gory campaigns by claiming that they served to spread French ideals throughout a barbarous world. Kipling bemoaned the "White Man's (civilizing) burden", referring specifically to Britain's role in India. Hitler believed himself to be the last remaining barrier between the hordes of Bolshevism and the West. The Vatican concurred with him.
This self-righteousness would have been more tolerable had the West actually meant and practiced what it preached, however self-delusionally. Yet, in dozens of cases in the last 60 years alone, Western countries intervened, often by force of arms, to reverse and nullify the outcomes of perfectly legal and legitimate popular and democratic elections. They did so because of economic and geopolitical interests and they usually installed rabid dictators in place of the deposed elected functionaries.
This hypocrisy cost them dearly. Few in the poor and developing world believe that the United States or any of its allies are out to further the causes of democracy, human rights, and global peace. The nations of the West have sown cynicism and they are reaping strife and terrorism in return.
Moreover, democracy is far from what it is made out to be. Confronted with history, the myth breaks down.
For instance, it is maintained by their chief proponents that democracies are more peaceful than dictatorships. But the two most belligerent countries in the world are, by a wide margin, Israel and the United States (closely followed by the United Kingdom). As of late, China is one of the most tranquil polities.
Democracies are said to be inherently stable (or to successfully incorporate the instability inherent in politics). This, too, is a confabulation. The Weimar Republic gave birth to Adolf Hitler and Italy had almost 50 governments in as many years. The bloodiest civil wars in history erupted in Republican Spain and, seven decades earlier, in the United States. Czechoslovakia, the USSR, and Yugoslavia imploded upon becoming democratic, having survived intact for more than half a century as tyrannies.
Democracies are said to be conducive to economic growth (indeed, to be a prerequisite to such). But the fastest economic growth rates in history go to imperial Rome, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and post-Mao China.
Finally, how represented is the vox populi even in established democracies?
In a democracy, people can freely protest and make their opinions known, no doubt. Sometimes, they can even change their representatives (though the rate of turnover in the US Congress in the last two decades is lower than it was in the last 20 years of the Politburo).
But is this a sufficient incentive (or deterrent)? The members of the various elites in Western democracies are mobile - they ceaselessly and facilely hop from one lucrative sinecure to another. Lost the elections as a Senator? How about a multi-million dollar book contract, a consultant position with a firm you formerly oversaw or regulated, your own talk show on television, a cushy job in the administration?
The truth is that voters are powerless. The rich and mighty take care of their own. Malfeasance carries little risk and rarely any sanction. Western democracies are ossified bastions of self-perpetuating interest groups aided and abetted and legitimized by the ritualized spectacle that we call "elections". And don't you think the denizens of Africa and Asia and eastern Europe and the Middle East are blissfully unaware of this charade.
As the United states is re-discovering in Iraq and Israel in Palestine, maintaining democratic institutions and empire-building are incompatible activities. History repeatedly shows that one cannot preserve a democratic core in conjunction with an oppressed periphery of colonial real estate.
The role of imperial power entails the suppression, subversion, or manipulation of all forms of free speech, governance, and elections. It usually involves unsavory practices such as torture, illegal confinement, assassinations, and collusion with organized crime. Empires typically degenerate into an abyss of corruption, megalomaniacal projects, deceit, paranoia, and self-directed aggression.
The annals of both Rome and Britain teach us that, as democracy grows entrenched, empires disintegrate fitfully. Rome chose to keep its empire by sacrificing its republic. Britain chose to democratize by letting go of its unwieldy holdings overseas. Both polities failed to uphold their erstwhile social institutions while they grappled with their smothering possessions.
Does New Jersey have a current militia?
Yes, New Jersey has a state defense force known as the New Jersey State Guard, which is a volunteer organization that operates under the authority of the state. Unlike the National Guard, the State Guard is not a federal entity and can be activated by the governor during emergencies or natural disasters. The New Jersey State Guard serves to support civil authorities and assist the community, but it does not engage in combat operations.
What was the militia storing at concord?
Primarily weapons and gunpowder, things pretty valuuable if you want to supply a revolution.
What were the advantages of the militia during the Revolutionary War?
I Really Dont Know
THEN DONT PUT ANYTHING IF U DONT KNOW! JEZZ
Why did congress pass the militia act before Lincoln issued the emancipation proclomation?
To allow African Americans to join the Union military
What was the militia during the American Revolution?
A militia is a volunteer army. I'm not sure which ones helped the Americans during the American Revolution, but i hope you know what a militia is now if you didn't know.
How is the National Guard a militia?
Their status as a militia can be an issue of debate. However, as far as the technical aspects go, they are a militia in the sense that they are not a regular military formation, and that they can be called to serve the needs of non-federal entities. The Militia Act of 1903 defined the National Guard as the organisedmilitia, with other militia entities being the unorganisedmilitia.
A number of bills have been passed in the years since 1903 which have further separated the National Guard from the Constitutional definition of a militia, such as the National Defence Act of 1916 (which merged the National Guard into the US Army, and established the National Guard as the primary reserve force of the US Army, rather than the Army Reserve), and the Total Force Policy of 1974, which effectively defined the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard as one entity.
But, until the Supreme Court rules otherwise (which is highly unlikely), the Militia Act of 1903 stands.
What was another name for men in the colonial militia who fought the American revolution battle?
Minuet men
What does well regulated militia mean?
A "well regulated militia", back when, our constitution was written meant every able bodied and armed man who was not in the Army whose help could be requested in a time of danger.
(The meaning of many words gradually changes over time. For example the word "awful" once meant the exact opposite of what people now mean when they use it. )
When the Constitution was written the term "Militia" meant all armed men who were not in an "army". An "army" was a collected group of structured and organized men at arms. The term "regulated" when applied to a militia, at the time our constitution was written, did not carry the same nuances it does today. During our revolution there were those in the "Continental Army" and there were militia (ordinary people not subject to military discipline who could fight when they wanted and go home when they needed to do so.)
When the Constitution was ratified, most states passed laws requiring all adult men not in the Army to maintain their own guns and ammunition, and to know how to use them, should a dangerous situation arise. The specific intent was to minimize thee need for the government to maintain an army. The citizens at that time were extremely opposed to any army which could be misused to control ordinary people. It was in fact that very issue which had triggered the American Revolution (Think about the Quartering Act, the Boston Massacre, the battle of Concord, etc.) If you consider the discussions and correspondence among the new country's leadership at the time it becomes clear The terms "well regulated" were intended to signal strong limits on the government's utilization of the militia (the people with arms) rather than limits on the armed people themselves.
How many militia are in the National Guard?
Technically, one could say that all the National Guard are militia, in accordance with the Militia Act of 1903, which classes the National Guard as the Organized Militia, or one could argue that none of the National Guard fit the Constitutional definition of a militia, as they wear the uniform of the Army, and on the basis that the Total Force Policy ultimately maintains that the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard are one force.
Whatever your stance on this matter is, all National Guard personnel are required to attend the same Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training which their counterparts in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, Air Force, and Air Force Reserve are required to attend.
Some states have an auxiliary branch, known as State Guard Forces, State Defence Forces, etc. While administered under the National Guard bureau of each state, these outfits are not actually members of the National Guard.
Fort Necessity
How did the colonial militia differ from the modern us Army?
Colonail milita trained for moth; modern slodiers are hardly trained at all
