ABSTRACT
The history of the United States is of fundamental importance to the militia movement. To ignore how militia members relate to and attempt to understand America’s past is to fail to understand the militia movement itself. Only by considering how militia members engage with the periods of the American Revolution, the drafting of the Constitution, and the settling of the West can we come to terms with why they believe what they do; and only by understanding what they believe will we come to terms with how they act. In the broadest sense, militia members are concerned with how the ideals, principles, and values they have identified in these periods of American history have determined, and should continue to determine, what it means to be American-hence the reason why these three periods are so prominent in the militias’ (re)constructions of America’s past: because these are the periods of history which point to the origins of the United States, and which are therefore central to any attempt to determine the nature of American identity.
