Government Overreach History

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