Book Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Series editors' preface -- 1 Introducing the militia movement -- Where and why? The location and causes of the militia movement -- America in the 1990s: the paranoid decade? -- Gun control and the sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco -- Gun control -- Ruby Ridge -- Waco -- 2 Approaching extremism -- Defining extremism -- Status politics and status anxiety: questions of causation -- Style: the characteristics of extremists -- A critique: towards an alternative approach -- Putting the alternative in place -- 3 Conversations with the dead -- Inheriting the past -- Contesting the past -- Accessing the past -- The authority of history -- 4 A Revolutionary history -- Citizen soldiers, militias, and the American War of Independence -- The fatal nineteenth -- A nation of minutemen -- A people at war: stories from the American Revolution -- Citizens' militias and the Continental army -- The Patriot(s) -- The rhetoric of Revolutionary action -- Revolutionary rhetoric -- "Words have consequences" -- "Liberty or death": rhetorical strategies and patriotic postures -- A sacred text: the militia movement and the Declaration of Independence -- "To alter or to abolish" -- Facts submitted to a candid world -- "Light and transient causes" -- Contested meanings -- Conclusion: a continuing inspiration? -- 5 A republican tradition -- The lost republic -- Reconstructing republicanism: basic principles -- The limited republic -- "Commerce and defense" -- The supremacy of the states -- Which founding? Whose republicanism? -- Small republics -- An extended republic -- The Anti-Federalist legacy -- Resisting tyranny: militias and the Second Amendment -- Interpreting the Second Amendment -- Militias, virtue, and the republican roots of the right to bear arms.

Federalism, Anti-Federalism, and the insurrectionary theory of the Second Amendment -- Well-regulated militias and republican society -- Conclusion: a republican legacy? -- 6 A frontier nation -- Going West: militias, independence, and the American frontier -- Fighting talk: militias and the ideology of vigilantism -- A vigilant safeguard -- Crises, crime, and community welfare -- Tales from the West -- The homestead ethic -- No duty to retreat: the militia movement and the Code of the West -- The Code of the West -- Remembering the Alamo: militias and the history of Texas -- Conclusion: the Weird West? -- 7 Conclusion -- The conspiratorial turn -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index.

American Extremism explains how at the heart of the politics practiced by the militia movement is an attempt to define the nature of 'Americanism', and shows how militia members employ the myths, metaphors and perceived historical lessons of the American Revolution, the constitutional settlement and America's frontier experience to do so. Mulloy argues that militia members' search for the 'authority of history' leads them to a position best characterized as 'ahistorical historicism', in which political interests in the present are given greater weight than the demands of a historically accurate reading of the past. With discussion of such recent events as the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco and the September 11th attacks alongside topical issues including militia conspiracy theories and the origins of Americans' right to keep and bear arms, this work provides the deepest understanding to date of the American militia movement.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.