Kevin at The Smallest Minority refreshes his 2003 essay Pressing the Reset Button with an updated consideration of the topic here.Kevin is a smart fellow, and I recommend that you take the time to read both essays, as well as stopping by his place daily on your strolls through the 'Net.
Here's my concern, though - and some sincere open questions for all 2A/RKBA advocates:
1) Given that, as referenced by Oleg's poster above and numerous other examples as outlined by David Codrea's War on Guns, .gov forces across our nation are intent on violating the clear language of the Second Amendment, as written, pretty much any time they want, is there any reasonable doubt remaining as to the desired endstate of the American statists, their collaborators in the two major political parties and the Supreme Court, media oligarchs, and the global transnational progressive movement?
2) If a rational analysis of the past sixty years of human history does in fact lead to the conclusion that government agencies and their allies want to eradicate private arms ownership as quickly as possible, doesn't that make a brutal conflict inevitable between
- those forces at the local, state/provincial, national, and transnational levels
and
- free men and women who believe that weapons possession and use is a fundamental human right, to be defended unto death?
3) If such a conflict is inevitable, then aren't essays asserting that "resistance is futile" actually increasing the probability of bloodshed by encouraging gun confiscators to downplay the unintended consequences of their actions?
4) Similarly, if such a conflict is inevitable, shouldn't the intellectual horsepower of the 2A/RKBA community be focused on winning that war, whether through
- political means (the so-called "soft war"),
- the candid and widely-disseminated discussion of "the unthinkable" and other positive propaganda (see, e.g., the classics by John Ross, Boston T. Party, James Wesley Rawles, and Matthew Bracken, along with everything written by Mike Vanderboegh over the past 15 years),
and, if necessary,
- unrelenting armed defense of fundamental human rights against the transnational elites, their media minions, and their hired thugs?
Consider, as an example of what should be coming from the freedom-minded community, this downloadable book recently cited by Codrea and Horton's Mindful Musings.
While you mull those issues, just keep in mind this link from Instapundit listing the anti-gun proclivities of the next President of the United States, who will, at current course and speed, enjoy a veto-proof majority in both Houses of Congress.
Let me be completely clear.
There is nothing I want so much as to live the rest of my (hopefully very long) life in peace and prosperity.
I want government forces around the world to honor and obey limitations of their power, just as the blessed Irish people insisted a few days ago in their rejection of the EU Constitution/Treaty of Lisbon.
I want adults in every country to understand and accept the challenges of individual freedom and political liberty.
I want children around the world to grow into responsible, healthy, educated adulthood.
I want my species to live up to its potential for Good, and reject its blood-soaked and irrefutable history of tyranny, oppression, and slaughter.
But what I want and what I will actually get in the remaining years of my life are likely to be miles apart.
If there is a viable formula to avoid the coming Horror without abjectly submitting to It, please share that roadmap.
Please.
For without a "new way forward", as Kevin noted in another essay, we have some tough history coming.
I can't escape the conclusion that we are hosed, and we each should use the time remaining in the most efficient and effective way possible, rather than wasting it on wishes and illusions:
Tempus fugit.
From Mike V., as posted on The Smallest Minority:
ReplyDeleteRaven sez: "Beg to differ, John. The reset will not make the 'bad' go away. Usually makes it worse. Refer to any civil war- and note there are damn few that actually resolve themselves in an ordered society."
Well, the Founders pulled one off didn't they? But there's no such thing as a free lunch, to recall Heinlein. War IS horror, especially a civil war. But if the greedy/stupid/incompetent bastards who start them aren't stopped, the outcome is oppression, slavery and death. Churchill was right, sometimes you have to fight even when all hope of victory is lost, just for the privilege of dying a free man.
People have a misconception about revolutions, at least our revolution. Our revolution was not carried out by oppressed, harried desperate people, but by people who, thinking and acting before they felt, were smart enough to wish to avoid being oppressed, harried and desperate. See the works of Gordon Wood.
I wrote an essay sometime back on the contrast between the Germans of the Weimar Republic who waited until too long to strike against the enemies of liberty and our Founders who anticipated the tyranny and acted in time.
Remember that all of history is made by determined minorities, not sheep. In our case, the number of active combatants was a mere 3 percent of the population, supported actively by perhaps another ten percent. The British actually had more Americans in uniform fighting for them by the end of the war than we did. So what? We won, they lost and the Tories, mostly, left.
Three percent. The Spartans had the 300, we had the 3 percent. I've been thinking of having a bumper sticker made up that says, "I'm one of the 3%. Don't make me mad."
It may well be that our republic is past restoration. The only thing rarer in history than the establishment of a successful republic is the restoration of a decayed one. But even so, as free men and women upon whom the mantle of blessings and responsibility of and for American liberty have been bestowed by the sacrifices of previous generations, can we in good conscience do less than fight, even if the chance of our success is slim?
We are sheepdogs, and the wolves are at the flock. It's time to bare teeth and charge. Who knows, they may run away before we have to rip out a throat or two. We won't know unless we try.
Mike Vanderboegh, PO Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126
More from Mike V:
ReplyDeleteSez HokiePundit: "Voting is supposed to be that mini-revolution. We're at the point where people are shedding blood because we're not willing to do the work it takes to maintain our system of government. Let's back away from the pitchforks, force our legislators to enact term limits and expand the use of sunset provisions, and see where that gets us."
And how are we to accomplish that, exactly? We are becoming -- no, we ARE -- a despised minority in our own country. After the next election, it will be worse. As gun owners particularly, we have been shoved back from the free exercise of our God-given, inalienable rights for 70 odds years now. At what point are you willing to concede that we have lost the "democratic" (read majority rule) argument? If the Constitution and the traditional rule of law no longer obtain (cf. Olofson case for recent glaring example), then we are at the point where it's three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what (or who) to have for dinner. That's democracy my friend, which is why the Founders mistrusted and despised it so.
Backing away "from the pitchforks", as you say, accomplishes nothing against collectivists which, though gradualist and Gramscian, our opponents are. The definition of crazy, they say, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
I have argued, politicked, written, and struggled to maintain the Second Amendment for 20-odd years now, as have many, many of my extended circle of friends. What have we to show for it? Regardless of which candidate is elected, we can expect the government seizure of control of the private sale of arms (read "gun show loophole"). Not even King George III was THAT grasping. If their tenuous reasoning for regulating gun stores is that they participate in interstate commerce (unconstitutional on its face, but give them that for point of argument) then how do they justify forcing me, who buys and sells wholly within my own state's boundaries, to seek their permission (and surrender my name and that of the other private individual to whom I wish to sell the firearm)with the always present threat that they can deny me a right that is God-given and inalienable? Yet they will demand it, and we will refuse. If such a law is passed, we the 3% will defy it, holding our own private gun shows and dare the Feds to attack us.
NO ONE you can find has done more "work it takes to maintain the system of government" than I have, and I tell you now it was a waste, a necessary waste, a ticket that had to be punched, but a monstrous waste. We are moving my friend, into one of those dark moments of history where the normal rules, held at bay by the Founder's creation of our constitutional republic, are going to reassert themselves. Those rules are the rule of man, rather than the rule of law, which is to say, the law of the jungle. And people are going to die. You would do better to resign yourself to the times we live in, remove the blinders of your wishful thinking and look at things as they are and will be.
They will pass more restrictive laws with the object of disarming us. The 3% will resist. You WILL have to make a choice. Wishing it were not so will be as useful to you and your country as King Canute commanding the tide to not come in. The collectivist Borg is coming, resist or get assimilated.
Mike Vanderboegh | Email | Homepage | 06.16.08 - 3:34 am | #
But, for the present, while you "formez vos battaillons" please keep the lists to yourself, as well as your plans of resistance.
ReplyDeleteThe minute we start publishing that information, we are targets of the government. Never forget that. Freedom of speech is already abridged enough to be worthless in your defense.
When you DO decide to push the reset button, don't advertise on anyone's blog, just push it, and keep pushing it as long as you can, but never forget that you will have ZERO folks left that you can trust with your life. At that point, it will be you and your rifle, alone, against the world.