After completing eighth- and 12th-grade civics and government classes and a college-level political science course -- all in the 1950s -- I cannot remember hearing or reading much mention of the term "militia" again until about 20 years ago.

In those classes, I had learned that militias were ad hoc civilian groups envisioned by the authors of the Second Amendment as citizens self-equipped with guns so that they might be prepared to respond to such an alarm as, on that fateful "eighteenth of April in Seventy-five," Paul Revere "spread ... through every Middlesex village and farm, for the country folk to be up and to arm."* By "respond," I mean to the lawful command of elected authorities.

Gradually I came to understand that the National Guard is, in fact, a militia organized in the several states under the immediate jurisdiction of their governors. The guards can be called out to support local law enforcement agencies when the going gets rough, which is what happened, for example, during the July 1967 unrest in Detroit. Now more frequently they are called up to augment the standing U.S. Army.

In the years following the Reagan-Bush administrations and the inception of the two Clinton terms, I began to hear and read of militias being formed by citizen groups apart from government oversight. Such militias were composed almost entirely of white males who lived primarily in rural areas of the country.

It occurred to me not long ago that lawsuits disputing the meaning of the Second Amendment increased in number at just about the time the militias began to flex their muscle. Such litigation has resulted in widespread "open carry" ordinances along with increased political pressure applied by the National Rifle Association to make the possession and carrying of firearms an easily attained, universal state of affairs.

It has further occurred to me that the strife in the Middle East with competing nongovernmental militia armed to the teeth against one another may be a natural result of the ready supply of firearms. If you've got 'em, use 'em, in other words.

Clearly, militants just now upsetting apple carts all over Iraq and Syria believe that the deliberate process of making and enforcing laws is not only too American and too secular, but that armed aggression fueled by radical religion is the way to settle disagreements and establish policy in a macho might-makes-right fashion.

Given our own domestic unrest, egged on by an aggressive mixing of the gun culture with some brands of fundamentalist Christian preaching, I wonder why the U.S. Supreme Court's originalists are unwilling to affirm what was so obviously the founders' intent in the Second Amendment, viz., to empower individual citizens to keep and bear arms against the day when they might be called to serve in a militia. The idea was not to be able under the law to use such arms for the random satisfaction of ideological dudgeon.

The nation seems headed toward universal armament even as the ad hoc militia movement grows in strength. With the nearly untrammeled availability of guns having been given constitutional standing by the courts, how long will it be before disgruntled, renegade militias decide to take the law into their own hands and attempt to thwart the lawful administration of justice and public policy?

One renegade with an itchy trigger finger -- nursing resentments and carrying a loaded pistol -- could lead others similarly disposed. That spells anarchy in any language, as seen in what's left of Iraq and Syria.

In the United States since January 20, 2009, the background noise of self-styled militias has become more obvious and ominous. Despite that, Congress still cannot muster sufficient political courage to act on President Obama's call for reasonable gun control legislation. Is Congress, are the media aware of the connection?

More and more political rallies are attended by men openly carrying loaded firearms. Partisans running for office are not hesitant to use guns as props for their stump speeches in which there is often insinuation that the president and the government are enemies of freedom. Even some of the tough talk from prominent television evangelists occasionally edges away from plain disrespect toward subversion.  

What's worse is that the banshees of talk radio occasionally can be heard savoring with not so suppressed glee the veiled threats against America's first African-American president.

Who knows how many such threats are taken seriously by the Secret Service? Regardless, the fact that they have been made at all and continue to be made suggests that the nation is approaching some kind of tipping point.

So: two questions. 1. Where does free speech end and sedition begin? 2. Should not the national worry meter be registering greater alarm?

*Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, Paul Revere's Ride from The Landlord's Tale