Every year, hundreds of U.S. citizens patrol the Mexican border dressed in camouflage and armed with pistols and assault rifles. Unsanctioned by the government, these militias aim to stop the movement of narcotics into the United States. Recent interest in the anthropology of ethics has focused on how individuals cultivate themselves toward a notion of the ethical. In contrast, within the militias, ethical self-cultivation was absent. I argue the volunteers derived the power to be ethical from the control of the dominant moral assemblage and the construction of an immoral “Other” which provided them the power to define a moral landscape that limited the potential for ethical conflicts. In the article, I discuss two instances Border Watch and its volunteers dismissed disruptions to their moral certainty and confirmed to themselves that their actions were not only the “right” thing to do, but the only ethical response available.

每年，数百名美国公民身着迷彩服，手持手枪和突击步枪在墨西哥边境巡逻。这些民兵未经政府批准，旨在阻止毒品流入美国。最近对伦理人类学的兴趣集中在个人如何培养自己的伦理观念。相比之下，民兵内部则缺乏道德修养。我认为，志愿者从对占主导地位的道德组合的控制和不道德的“他者”的构建中获得了道德的力量，这为他们提供了定义道德景观的能力，从而限制了道德冲突的可能性。在文章中，