Customer Reviews

To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement

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With the sole exception of The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of Americas New Militia, by Jonathan Karl (1995), this is the first book on the constitutional militia movement that is not part of a campaign of demonization by those with a stake in portraying constitutionalists as threats to the established order. Churchill not only does a good job of tracing the movement back to the American Revolution through an almost unbroken line of militia revivals, but also convincingly debunks the critics and shows how their pretended scholarship is weak or disingenuous. It is a book that is long overdue and that deserves to be read by every thinking American. It should also be read by people elsewhere in the world, since it presents a view of political thought that lies at the foundation of most modern republics.

However, this is not the definitive history of the modern phase of the movement. That remains to be written. It is an excellent introduction to such a history, outlining the main elements that deserve further examination. It is an invitation to historians to join him in exploring this part of our history and bringing out the issues that have driven it.

Churchill was one of the debunkers of Michael Bellesiles' anti-firearms twisting of history with fabricated "facts", Arming America, which has been overwhelmingly discredited.

Rather than accepting the popular media myth about the militia movement, Robert Churchill actually went out and gathered the facts, following the historical precedent from the beginnings of the American Revolution. Contrary to the media myth, most militia members are not uneducated rural bigots, but in fact are more highly educated than the general population (over half have college degrees), and are middle class Americans from the suburbs and have successful careers.

The constitutional militias actively root out any infiltration by Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups, and maintain an overt nondiscrimination policy of membership. The ideals of the constitutional militia members are best reflected by the writings of one of their most influential leaders, Mike Vanderboegh, who is well studied in American History, ethics and legitimate defense of liberty. Mike maintains a blogspot called Sipsey Street Irregulars where he keeps his readers informed of current events and commentary, with an emphasis on current threats to liberty. Mike best describes the militia's view of itself as "sheep dogs;" non-threatening, but willing to protect itself and the flock, self-sufficient and independent, aspiring to the highest ideals of early Americanism.

Professor Churchill also examines the collectivist, extreme left, Neo-Nazi-hate-group type militias, and found that they are actually quite few in number and fizzle out quickly. Nevertheless, these are the types that the Southern Poverty Law Center wants to project as the mainstream of the militia movement, a view that is propagated by the mainstream media, the Department of Homeland Security, and other militarized segments of law enforcement, and is utterly false.

The motivation of the modern constitutional militia is also examined in this book. It is primarily concerned with the relatively recent militarization of law enforcement resulting in the tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco, as well as other incidents of no-knock home invasions by militarized law enforcement into the homes of innocent citizens, and growing federal government limitations of liberty, second amendment rights, property rights and confiscatory taxation.

This is an excellent, scholarly examination of the modern militia movement and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the facts, rather than the media myth, of this movement.

Professor Churchill's work is a brilliantly written and thoroughly researched history of the militia movement in the United States. It is a must read for anyone interested or concerned with the militia movement or with the right to bear arms from a historical perspective.

It is not an "easy read" and is not intended for someone looking for light reading from a superficial perspective. However, if the reader's interest is in really understanding the subject from a truly researched effort, then this is the book for that reader. Were I teaching current history rather than Systems Engineering, this would be required reading.

C. Thompson Pardoe
Lecturer
Johns Hopkins University

The first part of the book was a little boring and I almost quit reading it. Glad I didn't as the author does great service to righting a lot of the historical "wrongs" that we all learned in school. I would recommend this book to anyone with an open mind and a willingness to see American history from a different perspective than what we were taught in school.

The author attempts to link the 1990s militia movement - the self-styled "Constitutionalists," as you might recall - to the militias of the Colonial-Revolutionary era, seeking to tie them together in one larger "movement." This is nonsense, as the legal militias of early America were official state organizations. Self-constituted lynching parties, however, were something else again. This is the true origin of the 90s militia movement.

As we recall, the militia movement was funded by Western "conservatives" who bought into apocalyptic survivalism and thought the end-times were a-coming when Republicans lost the White House in '92. Ruby Ridge, Waco, et al, were convenient excuses to demonize Janet Reno as the harbinger of a "jackbooted" totalitarian regime in the making.

Also of note is that Churchill does not condone the extremist violence of the left. But that was as surely an extension of revolutionary libertarianism as the examples he treasures, from the Haymarket martyrs of the 1880s to the Black Panthers' "self-defense" armed struggle. In truth, militias and guerrillas played a destructive role in US life whenever they emerged. The US civil war began in Kansas, for instance, as self-organized pro and anti-slavery guerrillas formed and slugged it out, until their violence assumed formal shape in pitched armies at battle.

As an antidote to such partisan scholarship as this I recommend "Arming America," by Michael Bellesiles. The campaign of vindictive villification launched against his work, and himself personally, should in itself show he's taken true aim.