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The U.S. militia movement has long been permeated by a peculiar-and undoubtedly mistaken-interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and civil liberties.

This is true of an armed militia group calling itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently uncovered plot to overthrow the Michigan government and kidnap Gretchen Whitmer.

As I wrote in Fracturing the Founding: As the Old Right corrupts the Constitution published in 2019, the core of the militia movements devotion to what I have called the Old Right Constitution is a poisonous mixture of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths.

Private militias

The term militia has many meanings.

Article 1 of the Constitution refers to militias and authorizes Congress to provide for the organization, arming and disciplining of militias.

But the Constitution does not provide for private militias, such as the extreme right-wing Wolverine Watchmen, Proud Boys, Michigan Militia and the Oath Keepers, to name a few.

Private militias are simply groups of like-minded men-their members are usually whites-who profess a sometimes confusing set of beliefs about a miserly federal government hostile to whites and white heritage, and about the sanctity of the right to bear arms and private property. They believe that the government is under the control of Jews, the United Nations, international banking interests, leftists, antifa, Black Lives Matter and so on. There is no evidence of this.

On Thursday the FBI arrested six men, five of them from Michigan, and charged them with conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer. Shortly thereafter, state authorities accused another seven men of attempting to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek civil war. Among them were the founders and several members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

According to the FBI affidavit attached to the federal indictments, the six accused men claimed to be defense attorneys for the Bill of Rights. In fact, some of the men had participated in April rallies in the state capital of Lansing, where armed citizens tried to force their way onto the floor of the House of Representatives to protest Whitmers order to shut down the pandemic as a violation of the Constitution by a tyrannical government that wanted to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of the COVID-19 struggle.

According to the FBI affidavit, the conspirators wanted to create a society that adheres to the U.S. Bill of Rights and in which they can be self-sufficient.

The militiamen see themselves as the last true American patriots, the modern defenders of the United States Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

Thus the Bill of Rights-and especially the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms-play an important role in the United States Constitution. It is no coincidence that the first discussions about the overthrow of the so-called tyrannical governor of Michigan began at a Second Amendment rally in June.

According to most militias, the Second Amendment authorizes their activities and also makes them free from legal regulation by the state. In reality, the Second Amendment does nothing to authorize private armed militias. Private armed militias are expressly illegal in every state.

No limitation of rights

Another basic principle of militia constitutionalism is absolutism. In the world of militias, absolutism is understood as the idea that basic constitutional rights such as freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to property cannot be restricted or regulated by the state without the consent of the citizen.

The extreme right-wing reading of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution which regulate freedom of speech and the right to bear arms respectively is based on a simple premise: Both amendments are literal and absolute. They believe that the First Amendment allows them to say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without consequences or accusations from the government or even from other citizens who disagree or are offended by their speech.

Similarly, advocates of old-fashioned gun ownership believe that the Second Amendment protects their God-given right to own a gun any gun and that government efforts to deny, restrict or even register their guns must be unconstitutional. They believe that the Second Amendment

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The conspiracy to kidnap Governor Mich. grew out of the constitutional falsehoods of the militia. - The Washington Newsday