Political fundamentalism is an ideology that like its religious counterpart thrives on simplifications. In the case of America's militias, gun and property rights movements, it blurs the complexities of history in its interpretation of the Constitution and the beliefs of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson. PNS associate editor Andrew Reding explores the origins of the new fundamentalist doctrine. Reding directs the North America Project of the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research.

Driving America's increasingly powerful militias, gun and property rights movements is a new ideology that might best be defined as political fundamentalism. Like its religious counterpart, it centers on scripture, a group of apostles, and a covenant betrayed by sin. But the scripture in this case is the Constitution, the apostles are the "founding fathers," and the fall is the betrayal of America's freedoms by federal bureaucrats.

The genius of fundamentalism is its ability to simplify -- to interpret scripture, for example, in the light of a few key passages. The new political fundamentalists extend this to the Constitution. In tracts making the rounds on the Internet, they identify the key element of the federal contract as the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states and to the people. Backing it up is the Second Amendment, which they believe empowers citizens to form militias and stockpile the weapons they may need to defend their freedoms from encroachments by the federal government or, worse still, some incipient world government.

The constitutional provision these activists love to hate is the Fourteenth Amendment. That amendment forbids states from making or enforcing "any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," and from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws.

It is in their opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment that the militias find common cause with racial supremacists. Imposed on the southern states by the victorious Unionists after the Civil War, it was designed to end discrimination against African Americans. To die-hard advocates of states' rights, it is the amendment that defiled the sacred canon of the Constitution, betraying the purposes of the "founding fathers."

Just who were these supposed apostles of states' rights? Certainly not George Washington, who when farmers launched Shay's Rebellion to protest high taxes and foreclosures, argued abandonment of states' rights in favor of a federal government. Several years later, Washington sent federal troops to suppress a similar insurrection known as the Whiskey Rebellion.

If there is a Jesus among the apostles, it is Thomas Jefferson. It was Jefferson, after all, who argued for adoption of the Bill of Rights -- including the all-important Second and Tenth Amendments. Jefferson openly sympathized with Shays' rebellious farmers. And while serving as vice-president, he secretly drafted the Kentucky Resolutions, which argued that states had a duty to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.

But Jefferson's defense of states' rights was anything but absolute. It was Jefferson who also vastly expanded the range of the federal government with the Louisiana Purchase. Worse yet, Jefferson was the most dedicated internationalist of the founding fathers, the man who argued that all human beings are created equal, and who helped draft the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Ironically, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts as a way to counter Jeffersonians and their foreign and immigrant allies.

In sharp contrast to the subsequent history of the states' rights movement, Jefferson argued that the states needed to step in to defend universal human rights -- not local or even national prejudices -- when they were threatened by the federal government. This is a logical complement to the Fourteenth Amendment, which obligates the federal government to intervene when the threat comes from state or local government. Both reflect Jefferson's belief, incorporated in the Declaration of Independence, that the proper role of government is to protect human rights.

What, then, was the role of the Second Amendment in protecting human rights? Like many of his contemporaries, Jefferson feared that standing armies could be used to curtail civil liberties, as indeed they have throughout the world. The alternative was to rely on "well-regulated militias" -- not posses of self-appointed individuals -- organized by and answering to the democratically elected governments of the various states. These militias existed until the early part of this century, when they were federalized into the National Guard by Congress.

The new political fundamentalists have a point in arguing that the federal government has strayed from the original purpose of the Second and Tenth Amendments. But not in the way they imagine. The Second Amendment was never intended to protect the formation of private armies. The founding fathers could not have been clearer about this in their suppression of the Shays and Whiskey Rebellions.

There are, however, compelling arguments to be made for denationalizing the National Guard, and restoring the genuine, democratically based and "well-regulated" state militias. Not the least of these is to prevent extremists from usurping roles assigned to the states by the Constitution, but unwisely and unnecessarily assumed by the federal government.