In ancient times,
thugs from neighboring clans would attack your village to kill you and take
your stuff. If you had a skilled group
of tough guys in your clan who would watch your neighboring thugs and would
attack them first, you avoided the attack.
Eventually your tough guys became your government whose job was to
protect your village.
The next logical step
for your Tribal Chief to take is to enlarge the clan militia to deter any
further attacks on their villages. When citizens were trained to fight they
added their militia duties to their other tasks like hunting, gathering and
farming.
Determining when
danger approaches and alerting the militia to form was done with lookouts,
spies and signals like bells, horns and drums. When the signals were sent, the
militia members would mass. These clans would grow, because they were
protected. Successful clans would eventually gain a reputation for being
dangerous to attack and would experience long periods of peace.
Squabbles in the clan
posed a problem for the Chief as clan members complained. This marked the
beginning of making a Militia Chief a King. Blame the complainers.
The settlement of the
US starting in the 1600s posed a different problem. The clans who would attack the settlers were
American Indians and the settlers had moved in to the land. Settlers had to defend themselves because
they were ultimately trying to settle over 3 million square miles of land. The
only signal the next farm could see was the smoke from their neighbor’s house
burning. The Indians used smoke signals because of the vastness of the land.
As the West expanded
settlers became accustomed to settling their own disputes. Large ranches also
had their own militias and bullied everybody. Everybody carried guns. US
military bases were not everywhere and few towns had Sheriffs to keep the
drunks from burning down the towns.
The Law of the West
was risky and tough but was working.
Self-defense was
determined when witnesses could testify that the bad guy drew his gun first.
Eventually the bullies were defeated.
Now we have a
different problem, the bullies are in the government.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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