Guns are not enough

[Jon_Roland]

You need to combine the RKBA with organization, training, and equipping citizens as militia. Otherwise you risk discrediting the right by the misconduct of undisciplined individuals.

Forget all the adverse propaganda that has been attached to the word "militia". It is simply people in their capacity as defenders of the community, and is the duty that comes with the social contract. When you defend yourself what you are really doing is issuing a militia call-up to which you are the respondant, defending a member of the community who happens to be yourself. What you are doing is not just self-defense, but law enforcement, which is a duty of every citizen, and everyone needs to be trained how to perform that duty competently.

Every country has a militia tradition. Indians need to revive yours.

For more on this see http://constitution.org/cs_defen.htm

[hvj1]

Welcome Jon_Roland!

[hamiclar01]

welcome to the forum john. what you say is quite true

[ravi.sharma]

Hi Roland,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your thoughts, Hope you shall find the discussions interesting.

Ravi

[shooter]

Hi Jon_ronald.
Kindly post an introduction in the "introductions" section and tell us a bit more about self so we can all formally welcome you and know you a bit better.

[goodboy_mentor]

Hi Jon,
Welcome to IFG

What you are doing is not just self-defense, but law enforcement, which is a duty of every citizen, and everyone needs to be trained how to perform that duty competently.

Every country has a militia tradition. Indians need to revive yours.

what you have mentioned is the real truth.

[Jon_Roland]

In response to requests for more information about me, I offer the following:

I am the founder and president, in 1995, of the Constitution Society, website constitution.org . Abundant resources on everything related to constitutions. I am not sure, but I think I had the Constitution of India online before anyone in India did. At least none showed up in search engines, which rank our site very high. Last April we passed 100 million pageviews, which is good for a site with content like ours.

I am also sometimes credited with being a founder of the modern constitutional militia movement. I don't claim to be the founder, since it has antecedents going back centuries, but I took to the the Internet and made it a topic of conversation worldwide.

Needless to say, the enemies of freedom have tried to hijack the word, and stigmatize it. You can help counter that by insisting the word be used correctly, to mean "defense activity". That is, whenever anyone engages in defense activity, he or she is engaged in militia. It did not originally mean an armed group. There is another Latin expression for that, which is discussed at http://constitution.org/col/mil_inim.htm

I have been trying to revive the militia tradition, not just in the United States,. but worldwide, as a way to get people to take responsibility for their own communities and to act as a counterbalance to excessive and abusive government.

The one country in the world today where the citizens "get" it is Switzerland. We in the U.S. were supposed to have a similar system, and did for several decades, but it was allowed to decline. the results were a decline in civic virtue and an increased dependency on government, with the result of a nanny state.

I encourage all of you to join us in the States in reviving the militia tradition, which you can learn about on our site. If we can get the concept anchored on your side of the planet, it will help in spreading it to parts of the world where the concept and tradition are weak, and where it tends to degenerate into redistributionist efforts. Militia is not about "economic justice" or anything except strict compliance with constitutions (assuming they are well-designed).

And in case you are wondering, yes, I am better armed than some small countries, and an instructor in both armed and unarmed martial arts, although my professional field has been as a computer scientist.

Now a question for the rest of you: What are the closest words to "militia", as I have defined it above, in the several Indian languages?

-- Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:55 pm --

By the way, at my last job with a Fortune 50 company a lot of my co-workers were from India. I would razz them by asking each of them if he or she had read the Bhagavad-Gita. Not one of them had. I read it when I was a little kid (in English). It's worth reading if you haven't, because it makes some points on the subject of militia.

[winnie_the_pooh]

Jon,

Welcome to IFG.Re. your question as to what is the closest to militia in India,in the North,at least in Punjab and I am sure Haryana,we have the concept of thikri pehra in villages.These are volunteers armed mainly with sticks and occasionally with spears and kirpans and a a sprinkling of guns if any one has a license for one,formed whenever there is an upswing in crime.They patrol the village at night.The Village Patrol Act of 1918, as applicable in Punjab empowers the District Magistrate to direct villages for patrolling.However,many times villagers themselves resort to this without any formal orders.

Amongst the sikhs,there is the concept of forming jathas lead by a jathedar.Here is a historical perspective

http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Jatha

[Jon_Roland]

Thanks for your reply. The concept is universal, although it it more embedded in some cultures than in others. For example, I find it similar to the Islamic idea of jihad, as originally and properly understood, though not as the word has been hijacked by those more accurately termed as engaged in fasad, or troublemaking. In most cultures there is a similar distinction between activity that is righteous and activity that is unrighteous, with different terms used for each, but with a tendency for the unrighteous to hijack the term for the righteous to mask their methods and purposes.

Now we need to find some terms in the South. I suspect the Tamils have a word.

People across the world need to share this concept and the words used for it. Sharing music and art is great, but defending one another against crime and oppression is important.

[eljefe]

...like the deobandis vs the sufis ,I guess? well, a way OT from guns, but welcome aboard.
while there may not be a strictly defined word for a group of citizens defending themselves or their community, I have seen many such examples in my childhood, when there were a spate of 'dacoit' attacks in Bangalore,common citizenry patrolling with hockey sticks and airguns

[Antiglobalist]

Very interesting site. I have been visiting many forums overseas and its been a real education since the Mainstream Press in America is completely gone now and I can only get news overseas and from overseas forums, so I thank you for having this forum.

I am a gun owner and committed believer in liberty and freedom as were my forefathers that helped to create the American nation and republican form of government to protect those liberties and inalienable rights, so its a perfect match given your nations great history in many areas.

Its nice to see other Americans on here, hopefully you will learn that our people are diametrically different than their lying leaders and controllers. I hope to educate you to that fact with plenty of documentation. Our governments globally can no longer be trusted since they have been coopted at the top by the international bankers and foreign interests of just one nation in collusion with those bankers and world war is the goal for making money off the blood and spirit of the various nations people. Hopefully, with enough "people to people" communication, we can stop all this before it gets out of hand. Thank you for listening and welcoming all of us to your site.

-- Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:00 pm --

[Jon_Roland]

There is a tension between the people and the government in every country larger than a village, because size brings complexity that overwhelms the cognitive capacity of even the best of people. The result is decisionmaking that may seem righteous to the decisionmakers, but too often has unintended consequences that include suffering by a lot of people. Leaders become desensitized to the suffering they cause, and thus take on the attributes of sociopaths, even if they weren't sociopaths from their genetics.

Ultimately people need guns to provide a balance of power between people and government. Those with power will tend to abuse those without power because they can, and they will refrain from abuse when everyone has the means to defend his rights. Of course, that also requires a culture of personal responsibility, and that is mainly up to the parents and their neighbors to raise children right. Barbarism is never more than one generation from overtaking civilization.

[hvj1]

Hello Antiglobalist and Jon_Roland
Very thought provoking posts, we see the same symptoms here and I agree with you that people to people communication is a good approach to create awareness of the global designs by those silently running governtments all over the world. Recently the Times of India and The Jang Group of Newspapers in Pakistan have started a great initiative for bringing the people of both countries together. As more voices (of the common man on the street grounded firmly in sanity) on both sides and all around the world combine, more and more govts. across the globe could be reined in.
Regards

[mundaire]

Welcome aboard Jon_Roland & Antiglobalist, both your introductions made very interesting reading. Hope you enjoy your stay here

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[Antiglobalist]

Hvj1, thank you for that great piece of information on the "people to people " initiative. I have to say, I brought that up on a very good site that I visit regularly which is "PAK ALERT" and everyone on there from many different countries in central asia responded very positively about doing the "people to people" initiative.

This is very GREAT NEWS. I have talked with someone over here who is beginning a blog and will be also setting up a "people to people" intiative world wide and it will be to expand the effort into true action and creative thinking outside the box on how we can avoid world war and the deaths of millions all for international banker profits and wealth extraction. This is a way to bring the PEOPLE OF THE WORLD together, without the corruption and disinfo and propoganda of our governments. Imagine the problems when they try to lie about one country to the people of another country and we, by then, know better and can respond appropriately.

These initiatives can be a way for everyone to check in on truth and coordinate a massive "MAHATMA GHANDI" type movement against violence and war. You can't have war IF EVERYONE REFUSES TO FIGHT IN IT. Our cooperation is critical to the successful initiation of war. WHAT IF YOU HAD A WAR AND NO ONE SHOWED UP TO FIGHT IT? No war. WE must rid our nations of these few who control, bribe, threaten, blackmail and otherwise coopt our leaders. Only then can we take back control of our various governments.

One thing history has shown, humans everywhere are the same and when adversity strikes at the heart of the nation, the people rise up and exhibit great courage, creativity, personal resources, character and integrity to fight back. Guns are a "TOOL", but "OVERCOMING THE CORRUPT" IS A PROCESS. That is what we have to do is that process. It may require we use the "tools" but if we are together in the billions, it may not be necessary and that is the place we should strive to be.

-- Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:31 pm --

hvj1, I just realized I forgot to ask for any links to such initiatives that we here in the US, might be able to contact for those of us trying to do the same. It would be the seedling beginning of a movement globally that would result in historic changes to the way such actions and issues are dealt with everywhere. Thanks for any info, direction, links etc that I can access.