Forced Consent

As we enter the Age of the New Lincoln, best to take a look back at how things were at the time of Emperor Abe the First.

Lysander Spooner takes us there:

Forced Consent

Abraham Lincoln did not cause the death of so many people from a mere love of slaughter, but only to bring about a state of consent that could not otherwise be secured for the government he had undertaken to administer.

When a government has once reduced its people to a state of consent—that is, of submission to its will—it can put them to a much better use than to kill them; for it can then plunder them, enslave them, and use them as tools for plundering and enslaving others. And these are the uses to which most governments, our own among the rest, do put their people, whenever they have once reduced them to a state of consent to its will. Andrew Jackson said that those who did not consent to the government he attempted to administer upon them, for that reason, were traitors, and ought to be hanged. Like so many other so-called "heroes," he thought the sword and the gallows excellent instrumentalities for securing the people's consent to be governed.

The idea that, although government should rest on the consent of the governed, yet so much force may nevertheless be employed as may be necessary to produce that consent, embodies everything that was ever exhibited in the shape of usurpation and tyranny in any country on earth. It has cost this country a million of lives, and the loss of everything that resembles political liberty. It can have no place except as a part of a system of absolute military despotism. And it means nothing else either in this country, or in any other. There is no half-way house between a government depending wholly on voluntary support, and one depending wholly on military compulsion. And mankind have only to choose between these two classes—the class that governs, and the class that is governed or enslaved.

In this case, the government rests wholly on the consent of the governors, and not at all on the consent of the governed. And whether the governors are more or less numerous than the governed, and whether they call themselves monarchists, aristocrats, or republicans, the principle is the same.

The simple, and only material fact, in all cases, is, that one body of men are robbing and enslaving another. And it is only upon military compulsion that men will submit to be robbed and enslaved, it necessarily follows that any government, to which the governed, the weaker party, do not consent, must be (in regard to that weaker party), a merely military despotism. Such is the state of things now in this country, and in every other in which government does not depend wholly upon voluntary support.

There never was and there never will be, a more gross, self-evident, and inexcusable violation of the principle that government should rest on the consent of the governed, than was the late war, as carried on by the North.

There never was, and there never will be, a more palpable case of purely military despotism than is the government we now have.

Curtain time's a-closing fast, ladies and gentlemen.

Enjoy the weekend.

Vanderboegh: Reply to Knox the Younger

Knox the Younger Misses the Point, and the Boat

Folks,

Knox the Younger has responded to my Open Letter and in the process has missed both the point and the boat.

The first sentence of his counterpoint deliberately mischaracterizes the reality we face. I say deliberately because he is otherwise a reasonably intelligent chip off the old Knox. (And I daresay that if his daddy ain't rolling over in his grave, he is at least restive at his son's latest foray.)

Sez KtY: "As expected, and intended, my latest Knox Report column has upset some in the, 'All is lost; let's start a shooting war' camp. It is mind boggling to me that intelligent people could be so short sighted and misguided as to think that killing people and blowing things up is somehow going to make things better for our grandchildren."

The predicate for armed conflict in this country will be made not by us, but by our would-be tyrants, who will pass more laws stealing our traditional liberties and seizing our property. It will be our enemies who, having read Knox's soothing missive, 'Let's get real, no one's going to resist the Leviathan,' will take it as evidence -- a professional opinion from 'one of them' -- that they can plunder us and, if necessary, kill us, without risk of retaliatory violence.

If they make this mistake, this is how it will go:

** Confiscatory Law is discussed.

** Free people will vote with their wallets and buy up every firearm and round of ammunition in sight.

** The Leviathan, failing to take the warning seriously, passes the law.

** The KtY's of the country say, "Oh, you want this?" and peaceably hand over their property and their liberty because the regime is "democratically elected."

** The 3% refuses and gets ready.

** The Leviathan dispatches federal police to disarm the 3%.

** Three percenters are killed defending their lives and liberties. So are many federal cops.

** Wishing to live until retirement, federal cops bring more forces to next raid. Many raids kick in the doors of empty homes, those of the three percenters already on the move. Still, the raids go on.

** More fed cops die, some shot from behind by victim's friends and neighbors.

** The Leviathan begins to realize that there are not enough forces to subdue the 3%.

** Now that the ball is opened, other three percenters, in the thousands -- representing a tiny fraction of their total number-- begin targeting, not the fedcops, but the politicians who sent them and the media who support them (Bill Clinton's rules of engagement, not mine). They begin working through the list of "Yea" votes of the legislation, and the editorial boards of the newspaper who approved.

** When these "statesmen" become surrounded by so many bodyguards that they cannot be touched easily, their property, which can be reached, is totally destroyed. Television station towers are blown down, vacation homes torched, printing presses wrecked -- sometimes by raids, sometimes by sabotage. The Leviathan discovers that the Chinese Communists are not the only ones who can hack computer systems.

Note that at any point along this narrative, the Leviathan can stop, back down, reconsider, negotiate. They are willing to fight to last dead federal cop.

Are they willing to fight to their own deaths?

I think not.

Note also how few rights-oriented people are necessary for this to work.

Knox spends much of his rebuttal belittling the number who he thinks would resist. Again, he offers no statistics, merely gratuitous opinions which may be as easily refuted.

Who indeed cares what the real number would be? It would still be enough.

He should recall how many cops tried to find the DC snipers - two mokes who were not very bright, had no support network, and a one-trick pony MO. They still managed to freeze the DC area for what, how many weeks? More then a month wasn't it? Two morons -- with the entire resources of the federal government and the local police looking for them, it was just two morons.

But why would the Leviathan go down this path in the first place?

BECAUSE THE JEFF KNOX'S OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE ALREADY TOLD THEM THEY CAN, THAT NO ONE WILL RESIST, THAT NO ONE SHOULD RESIST.

Knox the Younger asks, "What I want to know is, where are the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adamses and Hancocks? Who do these Bozos think is going to lead the new America out of the ashes and back to its Constitutional glory, and why arent these giants running for public office and leading the political revolution?"

They are around, they simply haven't been pushed forward by events yet. Knox's historical sense must be pretty meager if he counts Hancock as one of the desirables. I suppose, if he survives the coming bloody period by hiding, Knox himself can apply for Hancock's slot.

Knox asks what our traditional enemies will be doing when the three percent (who he calls "terrorists") are "busy crippling our nation and trying to foment rebellion?"

I reject the notion that it will be we who will cripple our nation and foment rebellion. He has us confused with the Leviathan. This decision is entirely up to our would-be oppressors. Of course our enemies will take advantage of such a situation. All the more reason why the Leviathan should not push us into this corner.

Then Knox asks, "What exactly do they expect the 'end' of their rebellion to look like?"

Gee, I don't know. Maybe the country I grew up in without the stain of segregation and racial discrimination?

Once they start this dance, if they want to get out of it with their lives, the Leviathan will have to dial back to a time when they didn't control so much of our lives. It's either that or they lose their lives. Which way do you think they'll vote when they understand that?

Knox next criticizes us for advocating "revolution", when it is really Restoration that we are seeking. We want the constitutional republic of the Founders back. We want it restored.

It is the collectivists who have infested and infected every corner of our government with the statism and corruption of their nanny regime.

They are the revolutionists.

They are the cannibals.

Knox also condemns us us for talking "revolution" but not "actively and diligently working hard every day to elect quality people to office at every level and to educate the elected officials already in office about their core responsibilities."

What does he think we've been doing these past twenty years of more? Does he think we just jumped into this thing and started threatening people?

I was doing political work on behalf of the Second Amendment when Jeff Knox hadn't sprouted short and curlies. The real question is how long do we continue to labor in those fields when the collectivists keep dumping Agent Orange on our work?

We have sacrificed in the political arena, we have fought and spent and argued ourselves half to death with the struggle.

And yet - here we stand today on the precipice.

Again I ask, how are we ever to win another national election after Obama and his minions pass amnesty for thirty million illegals? I tell you -- we won't, and if you think so you are smoking something hallucinatory.

Knox says "revolution" should be the last resort. I may agree with him, but the Founders didn't. Read Gordon S. Wood's Creation of the American Republic. Wood makes the point that the Founders reacted BEFORE they felt the lash. They resisted when they perceived the King picking up the whip.

And Obama's "democracy" will oppress far more than King George III ever dreamed. Take the "gun show loophole." This is nothing less than the seizing of control over the private sale of arms -- ALL private sales, including handing a family heirloom down to your children.

Not even King George was that grasping.

And our enemies call it "reasonable regulation."

It matters not, KtY, if you have a "voice" in the halls of government if that voice can be disregarded without consequence. It matters not that we have a vote if that vote can be discounted because of sheer numbers.

It's not as if our enemies haven't already measured us for our coffins. They have. They are not shy about their intentions. Pay attention to what they say.

KtY gives much ink to the threat of another OKC Bombing. Well, if he wishes to find today's McVeighs and Nichols he should look on the confidential informant lists of the FBI and ATF. The feds know everything that goes on in the neoNazi and racist organizations of this country. They control them no less than they did the CPUSA cells in the 50s or the Panthers in the 70s. Will there be another OKC Bombing as a result of this? Probably, and for the same reasons as last time. Because the FBI, accidentally or deliberately, let the conspiracy go too far.

Knox should find out more about what actually happened at Oklahoma City before he uses it as a major argument of his thesis. I refer him to the work of Oklahoma journalist J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Gazette, among others.

I spent the Nineties fighting the racist stooges of the FBI. Any google search will be able to prove that. An upcoming book by Dr. Robert Churchill, entitled "Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face", soon to be released by University of Michigan Press, documents what those of us whom Knox sneers at as "patriots" and "unorganized militias" did to fight terrorism back then.

Here is the point. No matter what the political landscape is in a constitutional republic, the rule of law, not the rule of man, should obtain. When it doesn't, it becomes necessary for those who support the rule of law to shoot the tyrannical SOB who now seeks to rule in its stead when he comes to our homes to enforce it.

Knox the Younger concludes with this peroration:

"So I say to Mike Vanderboegh and those who believe as he apparently does: If you want to start a violent revolution, go do it in Iran, or Cuba, or Mexico, but don't bring you destructive, self-defeating, chest beating into my fight for the Constitution and liberty. If the time comes when we must resort to violence to restore our republic, I will be in the vanguard, but until that time comes, I will dedicate my life - as my father dedicated his life - to using the Constitution, and the rights and limits it illuminates, as the most powerful weapon for preserving it and the republic."

The Constitution is a piece of paper if its spirit does not live in the hearts of men. If it is despised, disregarded and prostituted against the Founder's intent, then it is so much toilet paper.

Knox still has not answered the question: What will he do when they use the "law" to move the line of firearms regulations behind us?

He says he stands for our traditional liberties. But how will he win a political argument with the system stacked against him and a loaded Federal gun shoved in his face?

Strip away the bluster and he has told us -- he won't. He'll fold like a cheap suit. Having prepared the way for more oppression by spreading defeatism, he will stand on the sidelines while the Leviathan deals with us "domestic terrorists," probably clucking his tongue with "I told you so’s." If he doesn't further lick the boots of his oppressor by providing them the names of us "terrorist malcontents" I'll be surprised.

Collectivists don't pay attention to legal niceties if they get in the way of their intentions. Like Stalin asked of the Pope, "How many divisions does HE have?" With the election of either candidate and a solid Democrat party majority in the national legislature, the line will be moved once again, this time behind us, and those of us who refuse to move will be dealt with.

I can understand why Knox the Lesser wishes to avoid the consequences of his previously enunciated principles. Everybody wants to live as long as possible.

So do I.

I want to live long enough to rock all my grandkids to sleep, singing them the same songs of freedom I did with my children. But what I want above all is for my grandchildren to inherit a free country.

In the end, it matters not what Knox thinks or says or writes. WE will not fold when the time comes. WE will fight. And the inexorable but faulty logic, appetite and power of the Leviathan will do the rest.

He may try to wish the coming conflict away. It will not happen.

We will fight, he will fold, they will lose. The Republic will be restored, despite little boot-lickers like Knox the Lesser, precisely because we will raise the cost of tyrants doing business in this country, just as the Founders did.

I repeat my previous advice to you, Jeff. Hide and watch. We’ll show you what the Founders taught us.

Your approval or disapproval is but a fart in the historical wind.

Mike Vanderboegh

III

Loons on the Left

Published this hour on Drudge:

It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her friends more than a little anxious.

A few days ago, Jong, the author and self-described feminist, gave an interview to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the choicest bits of which were brought to my attention by the reliably sharp-eyed Christian Rocca, the U.S. correspondent of Il Foglio, who published excerpts on his Camillo blog. Basically, Jong says her fear that Obama might lose the election has developed into an "obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night." She also says that her friends Jane Fonda and Naomi Wolf are extremely worried that Obama will be sabotaged by Republican dirty tricks, and that if an Obama loss indeed comes to pass, the result will be a second American Civil War.

Here's a translation of Jong's more spirited quotes to the Milan-based Corriere, as selected by Rocca.

"The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged."

"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"

"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."

"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."

Knox the Younger Responds

Here:

Philosophical Wars
Written by Jeff Knox
on 10-30-2008 14:19

As expected, and intended, my latest Knox Report column has upset some in the, "All is lost; let's start a shooting war" camp.

It is mind boggling to me that intelligent people could be so short sighted and misguided as to think that killing people and blowing things up is somehow going to make things better for our grandchildren. They seem to think that because only about 5% of the populace supported the idea of seceding from the English Empire back in 1776, that their "magic number" is 3% and they think they have that because some survey suggested that 3% of the population thinks violence against the government is justified or could be justified today.

What they fail to take into account is the "bluster factor" of people who will agree with such a statement, but who don't really mean it, and the radical other side - the people who support the terrorist tactics of the Animal Liberation Front and radical Leftists like Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

What I want to know is, where are the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adamses and Hancocks? Who do these Bozos think is going to lead the new America out of the ashes and back to its Constitutional glory, and why aren't these giants running for public office and leading the political revolution? What do they think China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea are going to be doing while their merry little band of terrorists is busy crippling our nation and trying to foment rebellion? What exactly do they expect the "end" of their rebellion to look like? How are our children and grandchildren going to be better off?

Revolution is like cannibalism; it can be justified, but only when there is absolutely no other choice for survival. Anyone who talks revolution but isn't actively and diligently working hard every day to elect quality people to office at every level and to educate the elected officials already in office about their core responsibilities, is just a bag of hot air who would rather talk about sacrificing everything - and possibly act on that talk - than do the hard work and make the sacrifices necessary to solve the problems within the system our founders created.

When our forefathers revolted against English rule, they were in an untenable situation. They had no vote in the legislative body. They had no say in their government. They had no voice in regulatory matters. They were mere subjects and had no means of redressing wrongs.

That is not our situation today. We have a voice. We have a vote. We have the means to talk directly to our elected officials and our fellow citizens, and we have the means to fire politicians who don't listen to our council and to replace them with politicians who understand their jobs.

It is not easy and it is often frustrating, but it is not impossible and our situation is not hopeless. Things might be headed further in the wrong direction with the coming elections, but such swings are part of a pendulum and that pendulum will swing back in our direction again - unless some self-proclaimed freedom fighters screw it all up and convince the majority that liberty is too dangerous and freedom too costly. That's exactly what happened in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh decided that he was going to get the revolution rolling by blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City. The pendulum was already swinging back to the right. The public was fed up with the federal government's anti-liberty actions and had sent a large crop of, mostly very conservative, mostly firs-time politicians to Washington to start straightening out the mess. The "far right" was building and growing and, while there was a loud "lunatic fringe" element to the militia movement, the overall motion was in the right direction - until McVeigh took his action.

The destruction of the Murrah Federal Building caused a backlash that continues today. Where once "unorganized militias" and groups calling themselves "patriots" with a focus on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, suddenly there were empty shells and the name "patriot" became tainted and remains suspect to this day.

Timothy McVeigh - and the gun show philosophers who fueled his misguided sense of patriotism - did more to hurt the cause of liberty than Janet Reno and Bill Clinton could have ever dreamed. One misguided moron with a rifle can do more harm to the fight to restore our gun rights than a thousand Barack Obamas or Hillary Clintons.

So I say to Mike Vanderboegh and those who believe as he apparently does: If you want to start a violent revolution, go do it in Iran, or Cuba, or Mexico, but don't bring you destructive, self-defeating, chest beating into my fight for the Constitution and liberty. If the time comes when we must resort to violence to restore our republic, I will be in the vanguard, but until that time comes, I will dedicate my life - as my father dedicated his life - to using the Constitution, and the rights and limits it illuminates, as the most powerful weapon for preserving it and the republic.

----------------

Be sure to read the column by clicking here and Mike Vanderboegh's rebuttal by clicking here. As America slips into a dark period, it is important to realize exactly who our enemies are on both sides of the political spectrum.

Dear Jeff:

To answer, briefly, your questions below:

...What I want to know is, where are the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adamses and Hancocks? Who do these Bozos think is going to lead the new America out of the ashes and back to its Constitutional glory, and why aren't these giants running for public office and leading the political revolution? What do they think China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea are going to be doing while their merry little band of terrorists is busy crippling our nation and trying to foment rebellion? What exactly do they expect the "end" of their rebellion to look like? How are our children and grandchildren going to be better off?

1) The brave men and women in the realist wing of the RKBA movement are indeed the spiritual equals of the Founders, who, as the shooting part of the First AmRev began, were also considered dangerous radicals and seditionists by their peers. In addition, the realists I know have spent years and many of their personal dollars fighting the political "soft war".

The difference between we realists and you pragmatists is that we have the intelligence to recognize when our tactics are not working and the humility to change course upon that realization.

Moreover, today's members of the Restoration Movement have an advantage the Founders did not. We have the benefit of the Declaration, the Articles, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, each as written, to guide us along the way, as well as the painful experience of what happens when the American people allow their political elites to deviate from, and ultimately completely invert, charters that were designed to cage Leviathan, rather than Leviathan's masters.

That hard lesson will be taught, in painful detail and multiple iterations, over the next several years. Collaborators such as yourself - and, sir, you have richly earned that moniker with your McVeigh smear and your closing sentence - will only increase the agonies.

I pray that enough Americans will remain intact at the conclusion of those lessons to ensure that the Beast of unfettered government never again rises.

2) I'm surprised that a lifetime observer of the American political scene such as you still honestly believes that our political system is capable of meaningful reform. I thought you were smarter than that. Perhaps next Tuesday's lessons and their consequences will better illuminate modern America's polity for you.

Perhaps not.

3) As for America's foreign enemies, they will be doing exactly what they already plan to do: exploit to their benefit every aspect of the American Empire's demise. Are you so naive as to think that mass murderers such as the leaders of the countries you named will be deterred from pursuing their national interests by good little citizens such as yourself continuing to play the rigged American political game?

4) Rather than castigate Americans who dare to publicly proclaim the same principled defiance of tyranny expressed by the Founding Generation, why don't you look around at the hordes of domestic enemies slavering to tear flesh from Liberty's carcass?

Why don't you admit that despite the vaunted Heller victory, the lower Federal courts continue to uphold patent infringements of the God-given human right of armed self-defense?

Why won't you see that any "Constitutional right" which is routinely violated pursuant to both Federal law, as well as state and local law in California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, and scores of other jurisdictions is in fact no "right" at all, but instead a mere whim of those jurisdictions' applicable executives, legislators, and judiciary?

Why can't you understand that the massive amounts of voter fraud being perpetrated in favor of today's collectivist candidates means that each rights-oriented vote is voided on a one-for-one basis?

Why won't you concede that the arc of American freedoms since 1968 has been catastrophically compromised by the collectivists and their facilitators, who counsel at every turn "reason" and "patience" and "working within the system"?

Why won't you admit that you're too scared and too comfortable to stand up to the people who mean to cage you?

5) You ask about the end state sought by the Three Percenters and their allies. I speak for no one but myself, but I can tell you the causes for which I am willing to bleed, and if necessary, die:

- Individual freedom in all aspects, limited only by the same personal and property rights possessed by my neighbor;

- Extremely limited government, with power for all but national/space defense retained and guarded zealously at the state and local level;

- Economic freedom, whereby I keep all but a very small portion of the value of my productivity for myself and my family; and

- To ensure that never again will the most venal of our species gain control over my country, my property, and my freedom, a virtually unlimited right to keep, bear, and use any arms whatsoever, subject only to the caveat of full responsibility for all damages caused by their use.

To these goals inherent in the Restoration of the American Republic, and to the welfare of my American brothers and sisters who have the sand you so sorely lack, sir, I pledge my property, my life, and my sacred honor, so help me God.

In the final analysis, Jeff, it's pretty simple.

Many people will cringe and submit to a whirlwind of indignities simply to preserve their pitiful lives.

Many others, such as the Three Percent, will never do so.

You've made your choice.

Now live with it.

Alea iacta est.

III

Constitution? Don't Make Me Laugh

Please read this essay by Judge Andrew Napolitano, author of A Nation of Sheep, Constitutional Chaos, and The Constitution in Exile.

As you read Judge Napolitano's article, think about the following:

1) Exactly what keeps the government - at local, state, and Federal levels - from doing whatever it wants to do, especially given

a) the number of Americans directly or indirectly dependent on government money for their daily existence, and

b) the death of adversarial journalism as envisioned by the Founders?

2) In light of the answers to #1, how will an Obama/Pelosi/Reid/SCOTUS government behave towards armed, educated, defiant people who insist that the government Leviathan be defunded, defanged, and defeated?

3) In light of the answers to #2, what are you prepared to do?



You best be ready to play by Chicago rules, boys and girls.

The other side will be.

And this ain't no movie.

Alea iacta est.

Nominee for Quote of the Year - 2009

LTC John Dean "Jeff" Cooper, USMC (retired)
10 May 1920 - 25 September 2006:

It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will.

Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength.

Operation Anthropoid

Read this tale of heroism, slaughter, and consequences inside WW2 Czechoslovakia from this entry from The Belmont Club.

Related Videos:

Operation Anthropoid - Part I

Operation Anthropoid - Part II

In light of recent articles by folks who should know better, Fernandez's closing words ring especially sharply:

***
...No one wants to get in the playpen with bad guys.

Almost anything but that.

We remember the Anthropoids today only because the Soviet Army and the Western Allies of the time were willing to generate more violence against the Third Reich than it could generate against them. If Hitler had won the war, Benes would have been the goat.

Well, give it time and he will be the goat still. Dennis Kucinich’s proposed new Department of Peace and Nonviolence will convince us all that resistance, if not futile, opens all of us up to reprisal.

That’s called the Cycle of Violence.
***

I prefer Jeff Cooper's maxim:

“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure — and in some cases I have — that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”

Alea iacta est.

III

Vanderboegh: Destruction - Yes. Mutually Assured? No!

An Open Letter to Jeff Knox:
Destruction? Yes. Mutually Assured? No!

There is nothing "mutually assured" about the destruction firearms confiscation will unleash.

By Mike Vanderboegh
29 October 2008

Jeff Knox has this day penned a letter designed to calm his fellow sheep, entitled "Mutual Assured Destruction." You will find it here. He makes a number of assertions in it, which I will deal with below ad seriatim.

Dear Jeff:

You begin: There are some who are fond of repeating Jefferson’s comment about the tree of liberty needing to be “refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” though they often skip the part about patriots and choose to only include the tyrants. The problem is that in actual practice you couldn’t leave out, “the blood of patriots,” because when the blood of tyrants is spilt, the blood of patriots must also be spilt. There is simply no way around it. The same guys are often fond of bumper sticker slogans like, “…from my cold dead fingers,” and the more erudite, “MOLON LAVE,” and while I can appreciate the sentiment, I also know that in 99.995% of cases it’s simply not true.

Sez MBV: To quote the Bard, "Who hath measured the ground?" You KNOW this to be true? Because you did a poll? Asked the guys down at the gun club? Consulted your navel under the covers at midnight with no one watching? The latter is more likely.

Then sez you: The fact is that only those who have nothing to lose (and nothing to live for) are willing to give up everything – including their lives – in a symbolic gesture of defiance. The rest of us, those with families – kids, grand-kids, vulnerable parents – and homes, jobs, and lives, are not interested in ditching the house, refrigerator, and HD-TV in exchange for a prison cell or a mountain cave.

Sez MBV: Here you are saying that YOU aren't interested in "ditching the house, etc." Extrapolating from your own cowardice is a dangerous thing Jeff, as I often tell liberals.

Then, sez you: Sure, if the Russian paratroopers start landing in “Red Dawn” fashion, many of us will grab our guns and go join the “Wolverines,” but that’s only when everything is gone anyway. Don’t expect average Americans to rise up in revolution because the government is playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights or because taxes get too high. That’s not the way modern Americans think, nor is it the way the world works today.

MBV: Again what you are saying is that this isn't the way YOU work, nor the way YOU think. Your public omniscience without supporting footnotes is perhaps the only daring thing about you.

Then you say: Armed revolt in America would not lead to a renaissance of Jeffersonian liberalism; it would lead to the destruction of our nation and the guarantee that whatever replaced it would be worse than what it replaced.

MBV: "Armed revolt" will come about because the leviathan will one day pick on the wrong guy, and a large number of them will be killed by this one guy. They will be shocked, they will be horrified and they will want blood. This individual case of resistance will cause a violent reaction on their part, lead to more onerous laws, confiscation, etc., which in turn will lead to even more incidents, and again, and again, until you get your "Red Dawn" or the ATF equivalent of it. As to whether it would lead to the destruction of our nation or the restoration of our republic is a matter of military argument. Don't wave your white flag just yet - you might be embarrassed.

Then you postulate:

Like nuclear deterrence, it is the threat that saves the world, not the execution. If all of the 60 to 80 million gunowners in this nation were to rise up as one to ward off invasion or reject tyranny, they would be an unstoppable force. Nay-sayers like to dismiss this idea because of the technological advantages enjoyed by the modern military, but there are 90 guns for every 100 people in the US and many, if not most, of the 2 million members of the military and the 1 million sworn law enforcement officers are strong supporters of the Second Amendment and the principles of liberty. There is simply no doubt that the citizens’ militia does have the capacity and potential to defeat just about any military force in the world. Only serious application of nuclear and/or biological weapons – wiping out a substantial portion of the population – would be able to turn the tide.

MBV: So, you're saying we have the ability but not the will. If we begin shooting, won't we run out of targets before they will? Oh, I forgot, you and yours aren't going to come to the party, so sad. One other thing. We're not talking about nuclear weapons, Jeff, we're talking about aimed rifle shots. Nothing indiscriminate about that. Which ought to make the gun-grabbers even more queasy, unless of course they're falsely reassured by your cowardly pap. One wonders indeed which audience you are writing this for.

Then you say: While this is all accurate and works well on paper, just like Marxism and Amway networks, the whole thing falls apart in practice because people never do what you want them to do or what they ought to do – even when doing so is clearly in their own best interests. During the Revolutionary war, a full 40 to 45% of Americans actively supported the revolt. Today, less than 6% of gunowners are even minimally active in political activism. Gunowners turn out for elections at about the same rate as the non-gun owning public.

MBV: So what? We don't even need 6%. All we need is 3% -- less than that really -- to provoke the response that forces you, Knox the Younger, and your ilk to submit, or fight.

Then you moan: If gunowners and supporters of liberty can’t even agree on a presidential candidate, what makes any of them think that they will be able to agree on a revolution?

MBV: You fool. You don't have to agree with us. In fact, we're counting on your type folding at the first shock. People don't AGREE on revolution, they are FORCED into it by events. And there are enough of my kind, the three percent, to create the events. Have you learned nothing from history? It is made by determined minorities. We may be a minority but we are determined. If you want to hang onto ANY of your guns or other liberties, you will HAVE to fight. We will make sure of that.

Then you conflate civil war with nuclear war: The threat of armed revolt must be maintained, but like the mutual assured destruction of nuclear war, its implementation must be avoided at all costs.

MBV: Toothless threats are not threats. The liberals are not even convinced of "mutual assured discomfort" if they seize our arms, and why should they? We have allowed ourselves to be pushed back from the free exercise of our traditional, God-given rights for seventy plus years now, all in the name of entreaties such as yours to be "law-abiding." And if the laws are pushed back behind where we now stand, you wish us to back up once more? Toothless indeed.

Again with the moaning, you whine: If we have the numbers and the commitment to win a revolution then we should easily be able to win an election.

MBV: Not so, and after the Obamanation finishes integrating the thirty million illegals into their new order, we'll NEVER win another national election. So what? Democracy is not what we're fighting for - a constitutional republic is.

Then you say: The solution lies in the ballot box rather than the ammo box because the reality of a new revolution is that it is an all or worse than nothing proposition.

MBV: And how has that ballot box thing been working for us, eh? We must resign ourselves to being a despised minority in our country. If so, fine. As long as we are a despised FEARED minority, everybody will get along fine. How we accomplish that without somebody dying on both sides is a mystery to me. That's why I have reconciled myself to it happening. We are to the point where nothing will change without blood on the ground. I am willing to make the trade. Sorry about you, Knox.

Then sez you: When people who should know better talk about revolution being the answer, impressionable idiots and misfits like Timothy McVeigh or the morons caught plotting to assassinate Barack Obama, believe that they are leading the revolution when in reality they are just giving the government an excuse to tighten the screws and pushing the public to accept the screw-tightening as necessary.

MBV: The screws will tighten regardless. The only thing which will slow them down is a precise understanding on the part of the screwers what happens to them if they pick up the screwdriver. As Ben Franklin said, "Nothing concentrates the mind so wonderfully as the prospect of being hung in the morning." And you want us to leave the rope at the house because we might frighten the tyrants?

You then aver: The whole idea behind mutual assured destruction is that it forces the parties to find better ways to settle their differences. Our founders put the mechanisms in place and it’s up to us to use those mechanisms to restore liberty and save the republic.

MBV: The "whole idea" is that these mechanisms have broken down. We will be unable to "save the republic" by peaceful means when we are out voted at every turn, out shouted (by the loss of talk radio, and mark my words, the Internet right after that), and out threatened ("We are the fearsome Imperial Feds, what are you going to do about it?"). In the end, it comes down to Jefferson's liberty tree being watered with blood. And it will have to be that way, because pusillanimous rubber spines like you didn't want to scare anybody or make anybody mad. Hang around, Jeff, and you'll see an exercise in destruction, but there will be little mutually assured about it.

I don't expect to live to see it end.

I do expect to live long enough to start it.

So do a number of my friends.

Your problem is that you'll have to deal with it whether you like it or not.

Or, you could take the advice of the Sheriff in Silverado:

"Hide and watch."

There - that sounds safe. Why don't you try that?

Leave the heavy lifting of the maintenance of our liberties to those of sterner stuff.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of three percenters.
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com

III

The Other Guy's Playbook

Spartacus passes on this synopsis of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals with this note:

Obama and Hillary were both highly influenced by Saul Alinsky, radical community organizer. I have his book, Rules for Radicals, but never found time to read it.

Attached is a shorthand version of his rules.

The danger of his rules is that his rules work well for Have-Nots seeking power; that is their beauty too.

So, if you find yourself a Have-Not, turn to Alinsky's rules:

- Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.

- Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.

- For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people's organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then...conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.

- Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

- Second: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

- Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

- The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

- The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

- Sixth rule: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

- A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment.

- Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

- The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

- The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

- If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

- The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his suddenly agreeing with your demand and saying "You're right - we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

- Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

- In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and "frozen." By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck. The target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target.

- One of the criteria in picking your target is the target's vulnerability - where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, the target can always say, "Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?" When you "freeze the target," you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all others to blame.

- Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the "others" come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target.

- The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a community's segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.

Alea iacta est.

What Is To Be Done: Resistance Mindset

Excerpted from Billy Beck:

Start letting go of everything that you love that the state can use against you as hostage, in order to prepare yourself for starving it out of existence.

Stop paying for it.

This government will always keep stealing your productivity as long as you let it, and there will be no other recourse.

Alea iacta est.

Repost: Practical Long-Range Riflery by Zak Smith

Zak's one of the principals at Colorado Multigun, whose mission is "to promote world-class multigun skills through competition. Multi-gun includes long range rifle, carbine, pistol, and shotgun, with an emphasis on their practical application."

You can sign up for their match notifications at coloradomultigun-subscribe@googlegroups.com.

He's also graciously granted us permission to publish his three-part series on practical long-range shooting.

Read 'em and enjoy:

Part 1: The Rifle & Gear

Part 2: Optics

Part 3: Shooting

What Is To Be Done: OpFor Mindset

As you consider responses to the fall of the American Republic and the concomitant rise of totalitarianism, use the following items from Radley Balko's The Agitator to help you understand the law enforcement mindset you will face:

1) NYPD Police Professionalism

2) Detective's Response to Erroneous Raid on Mayor's House

Alea iacta est.

Vanderboegh: Unleashing the Killer Angels

Unleashing the Killer Angels

by Mike Vanderboegh
26 October 2008

'If man is an angel, Colonel, he must be a killer angel.'

--Sergeant Buster Kilrain, Twentieth Maine Infantry, in 'The Killer Angels' by Michael Shaara

Lincoln Reincarnated

One of the most amazing things about the present presidential campaign (which has been full of the amazing and improbable) is how historical amnesiacs like Barack Obama and his followers can speak of "The Lightworker" as Abraham Lincoln reincarnated without apparent irony.

In a column in the 26 June 2005 issue of Time magazine, ("What I See in Lincoln's Eyes"), Obama wrote,

"And as Lincoln called once upon the better angels of our nature, I believe that he is calling still, across the ages, to summon some measure of that character, the American character, in each of us today."

His acolytes, in the press and elsewhere, have proclaimed this second coming of Lincoln with great approval. See here and here, among many, many others.

We have it from no less an authority than the Civil War documentary film maker Ken Burns that Obama is the new Lincoln (see "Ken Burns Compares Obama to Lincoln").

Why do they think this? Obama set himself on Lincoln's stage to be sure but he is maintained there by his willing allies in the press. A lifelong journalist, Michael S. Malone, has a theory. You can find it here at "Media's Presidential Bias and Decline".

Malone says, in part:

"So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal? The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits. Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension."

"In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire. And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there. And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country."

Legal analyst and talk show host Mark R. Levin expresses the fear that Obama generates in the rest of who have not yet drunk the Obama Koolaid, in "The Obama Temptation".

Says Levin:

I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. . . There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff. . .

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization.

Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government.

Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits - limits Obama would set for the rest of us . If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class).

And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual. Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The greatest American philosopher of our time, Thomas Sowell, fears that Obama's election will be one from which we will never recover.

"Better Angels" or "Killer Angels"?

And this is where Lincoln's (and Obama's) "better angels" transmogrify into Michael Shaara's famous characterization of the battle at Gettysburg, 'The Killer Angels'.

How is it that these idiots can claim the mantle of Lincoln without irony when Lincoln's first imprint upon the history of the United States was to sunder it into disastrous civil war?

Americans were heaped in bloody windrows in the hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands, and Obama and Company want you to believe that they will do again what Abe Lincoln did then.

This is a GOOD thing?

Levin is right - Obama is a "hardened ideologue" collectivist. He will seek to remake us in his image, and woe betide those of us who resist.

In the final analysis, I don't think Obama himself IS an historical amnesiac. I think that he knows exactly where he's going and where he wants to compel this country to go. In his own way, he has been as up-front about his prejudices and appetites as Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.

It is just that the press has neglected to inform you of that.

There are those of us who will resist at the muzzles of our rifles where Obama wants to force us to go.

I have said it. So have many others.

We are the "three percent" who will never disarm and never stop fighting for the Founder's Republic we swore to uphold.

They cannot convince us; they will not scare us.

So they must kill us.

Obama, for all his packaged slickness, knows this. He knows of the "bitter clingers" - he has said so.

What he hasn't told you is precisely how he's going to deal with us if we get in his way.

WE are NOT the people HE's been waiting for.

Believe me, Obama's election does not herald the coming of "better angels." It is the killer angels which, like Lincoln's, will once more stride across our blood-soaked land.

Obama is Lincoln. He has said it and we should believe him.

Like Lincoln, he will bring civil war. Lincoln might be forgiven by some for the horror his election created -- he did not know the vast butchery it heralded. Obama, on the other hand, self-proclaimed student of Lincoln and history, has no such excuse. Is this what Joe Biden was hinting at?

In his column for Time, Obama begins:

"My favorite portrait of Lincoln comes from the end of his life. In it, Lincoln's face is as finely lined as a pressed flower. He appears frail, almost broken; his eyes, averted from the camera's lens, seem to contain a heartbreaking melancholy, as if he sees before him what the nation had so recently endured. It would be a sorrowful picture except for the fact that Lincoln's mouth is turned ever so slightly into a smile. The smile doesn't negate the sorrow. But it alters tragedy into grace. It's as if this rough-faced, aging man has cast his gaze toward eternity and yet still cherishes his memories--of an imperfect world and its fleeting, sometimes terrible beauty. On trying days, the portrait, a reproduction of which hangs in my office, soothes me."

So what has Barack Obama learned from Lincoln?

That if you smile through the butchery of your own people, it imparts grace and eternal fame.

May God help us all.

Barack, and his killer angels, cometh.

Get ready to face them.

Mike Vanderboegh
The "alleged leader" of a "merry band" of "three percenters."
PO Box 926
Pinson AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
III

PS: Feel free to distribute this as widely as you like.

Redistributive Change

From both Spartacus and Mike Vanderboegh comes this gem, along with supporting audio.

Key graf:

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society... and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that."

Bill Whittle at National Review Online develops the story further in a must-read article.

What's your plan to deal with this betrayal of the American heritage?

Alea iacta est.

Constitution-Free Zone

Read this note from the ACLU and its embedded links, as noted by Staying Alive.

Still think you can vote your way out of these problems?

If you do, explain in detail how exactly that would work, especially given the scores of millions of your fellow citizens in thrall to the Obamessiah and his collaborators.

Alea iacta est.

The Plan

From The Belmont Club:



Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground’s post-revolution governing plans for the United States on a YouTube video. The video is taken from the 1982 documentary "No Place to Hide".

Editor's note: All six parts of that documentary are here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

The Weathermen’s plans included putting parts of United States under the administration of Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Russia and re-educating the uncooperative in camps in located in the Southwest. Since there would be holdouts, plans were made for liquidating the estimated 25 million unreconstructable die-hards.

The most interesting moment of the video comes when Grathwohl asks the viewer to imagine what it’s like to be in a room with 25 people, all of whom have master’s degrees or higher from elite institutions of higher learning like Columbia, listening to them discuss the logistics of killing 25 million Americans.

Actually, it’s easy. What’s hard to imagine is sitting in a room full of plumbers discussing the same thing. The longer I live the less I believe that humanity is able to live without submitting itself to some kind of belief system. Western Civilization decided to liberate itself from a belief in Christ — whose Kingdom was not of this world — and went straight to the altars of Nazism and Communism, whose kingdom was in the camps. People like Ayers aren’t atheists, they’re true believers. GK Chesterton was right when he said that a man who declares he has stopped believing in God often doesn’t mean he believes in nothing. It only means he’s willing to believe in anything.

Jean Paul Sarte believed Che Guevara was “not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age … [the] era’s most perfect man”, which just goes to show you can get a fancy diploma from the École Normale Supérieure and still graduate with not an iota of common sense.

Unclogging a drain with a snake is something anyone with a little intelligence and persistence can do.

Planning the death of millions of Americans takes an education.

Alea iacta est.

Support David Codrea

Espeically if you are from Ohio, take a few minutes and go support David at his new gig.

If you blog or even maintain an email list, pass the word.

It's time to help out someone who has helped a whole bunch of us.

And I can't wait for the first Vanderboegh siting at the new digs....

Election Night Follies?

Read this article, passed along by Spartacus.

Consider what steps, if any, you need to take in your AO should people get foolish.

And don't forget the orders given to NYPD forces in 1991 by Mayor David Dinkins' administration during the first 36 hours of the Crown Heights riots/pogrom in 1991:

"Let them get it out of their systems - officers are to retreat when confronted by crowds".

Those were the orders that my cop friends received, on the line while wearing riot gear, for the first day-and-a-half of the "rage". Not until Mayor Dinkins was being excoriated in the media were the police allowed to put down the riot.

Alea iacta est.

Vanderboegh: The Unholy Triumvirate

Folks,

I have, in response to leftists insulting the author of the editorial below, crafted the following reply. Among the issues, why we were so disparaging of "liberals."

MBV
***********
Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what, or who, to have for dinner.

Republic: Three wolves, a sheep and three million sheepdogs voting on whether the wolves have overstayed their welcome.

Sorry, but "progressives," or your old moniker "liberals," are still collectivists. Collectivists murdered hundreds of millions in the name of their "cult of personality" leaders pushing various perfectibility of man schemes during the 20th Century.

But here's a clue - you know why they didn't here? Because the American citizenry is armed.

It is, except for you liberal pukes who have willingly disarmed yourselves, still armed.

So tell me once more how it is that we are the Nazis when all we want is our God-given liberties? The fascists, Nazis, and communists, collectivists all, at least had guns to force their will on the rest of the disarmed population.

What do you have?

Hot air and bluster.

I tell you now, be careful what you wish for, you may get it. We're still the ones with the guns. And if you think we're going to give them up just because some government tells us to, you are extrapolating from your own cowardice.

We will fight, and we will win.

My suggestion would be to try it and see what happens.

Or as my bumper sticker reads:

Obama in 2008.
Revolution by 2010.
Change you CAN believe in.

Mike Vanderboegh

III
****

The Unholy Triumvirate

Posted by George Neumayr on 10.22.08 @ 6:09AM

If Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid had to write the Declaration of Independence and Constitution from scratch, what would those documents say? Would they read like the current ones? No, they would read like the platform of the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama's America started not in 1776 but around 2006. By letting slip the comment, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country," Michelle Obama said as much.

The only question that remains is: If Obama wins, will the Democrats have the courage of their convictions? Will they hold a sort of ongoing constitutional convention and transform America into the liberal country of their dreams -- the America in their minds which they identify now as the source of true patriotism?

Politics and parasitism would appear to be the only obstacles that could stop them: fearing a backlash, they might temporize and moderate their plans, or like Bill Clinton they might not want to risk total chaos by devouring the conservative host whole. Liberalism, after all, has to feed off the lingering order of conservatism for it to exist at all. Were liberalism implemented fully and purely, the disorder unleashed, as even Clinton sensed, would make life increasingly impossible.

Then again, absolute power could corrupt absolutely and Clinton-era circumspection may now appear to the Democrats hopelessly passé. Debates in D.C. seem to shift ever leftward, with last year's liberal positions becoming this year's unacceptably reactionary ones -- a trend that is bound to accelerate under a Democratic monopoly of all three branches of government.

The extent to which the 1960s counter-culture has become the culture and 1960s anti-Americanism become the new patriotism is amazing. That's why Obama could launch his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist and pay almost no price for it. As Chris Matthews lectured Pat Buchanan on Hardball last Friday night, Ayers was a terrorist with a worthy motivation: he bombed the Pentagon because he wanted America out of Vietnam, a blameless goal indeed. Under the Left's tortured understanding of the new patriotism, even Jeremiah Wright is pro-American: his fulminations had the purpose of drawing America into the light.

Patriotism is now measured not by respect for the conservatism contained in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution but by the level of one's enthusiasm for the America to come.

To be a good American now means you nod vigorously as an Obama supporter at a cocktail party bashes the Boy Scouts as bigots while explaining to you why Obama's association with the "distinguished" education professor (as Congressman Rahm Emanuel put it) Bill Ayers is no big deal. It means you chuckle along with Joe Biden as he tells Ellen DeGeneres that conservative Californians are deluded to oppose gay marriage.

Or it means listening in hushed awe as unimpeachable American hero Colin Powell calls the most liberal Republican presidential nominee ever "narrow" and insufficiently "inclusive," and scolds unnamed Americans for objecting to the notion of a Muslim president. (I was half-expecting him to join Barney Frank in calling for the elimination of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign-born presidents. Surely that's not "inclusive" either.)

What was once considered the anti-American Left now has the power to define who is and who is not a good American. Seeing victory in sight, they grow more bold and unapologetic. Over the last few days, instead of denying charges thrown at Obama, they have readily conceded them and basically said: So what?

To them, Obama's "spreading the wealth around" comment isn't a cringe-inducing gaffe but an appaluse line and sound basis for policy. "What's wrong with the state redistributing wealth?" more than a few of them have asked, including, by the way, Colin Powell after his Meet the Press appearance before reporters.

Here, too, we see the new Americanism at work: where the founding fathers saw King George III's overtaxation as an occasion to start the country, an enlightened modern American is expected to join Joe Biden in welcoming new taxes as a "patriotic" duty.

Under the unholy triumvirate of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, good Americans will be expected to entrust their economy to redistributionists, their defense to pacifists, and their culture to proponents of abortion and gay marriage.

Expect a crisis within six months should Obama win, promises Joe Biden.

Perhaps he is right, but the first one is more likely to be domestic than international.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review.

Vanderboegh: Praxis #1

prax·is (prkss)

n. pl. prax·es (prksz)

1. Practical application or exercise of a branch of learning.

2. Habitual or established practice; custom.

Folks,

As the probable results of the election will diminish the utility of political arguments to maintain our liberties, we must of need then turn to the practical arguments left to us. Thus you will be seeing from me -- as time goes by and events go spiraling to their logical, if bloody, conclusion -- items such as the one below which have information that liberty-minded individuals may find of use in the days ahead.

I will tag these as "Praxis" to delineate them from the usual political hot air which I provide in quantity. With a H/T to Texas Resistance of www.awrm.org, I present one such gem of praxis.

Mike Vanderboegh

III


War Spurs Change in Sniper Gear, Tactics

October 08, 2008

Tactical Life
by Michael Haugen

The conflicts stemming from the attacks on 9/11 showed America's military snipers were badly in need of modernization. Their gear, operational doctrine and training needed an update -- and fast. As the war evolved, units with combat experience shared lessons learned, identifying new requirements for a unique conflict. Fortunately the services took notice and began to revamp the sniper community in numerous ways.

Problem: Inadequate/outdated doctrine.

Solution: Small-unit leaders began to develop employment strategies that earlier training never covered, based on the current situation and environment. This, coupled with after-action reports, lessons learned and the general sharing of information, led to comprehensive sniper planning, support and employment-things like providing security for the sniper team during movement and relying on the sniper to provide the real-time intelligence for on-the-spot combat decisions.

Probably the biggest change was when-and-how to bring the snipers to bear for the desired result. Unit leaders learned that snipers could control large areas, create enemy reluctance and force enemy movement in a desired direction. There was a gradual recognition of how valuable assets like snipers and designated marksmen could be when properly utilized.

Problem: Inadequate equipment.

Solution: A number of commercially procured items became popular, including the Eberlestock pack, which allows the sniper to carry his rifle on his back protected and concealed while he carries a battle rifle for his own protection during movement. Other items such as rests, tripods and various bipods were procured to meet the varied terrain and conditions.

The issued spotting scope and tripod did not perform as needed in environments where ranges were either very long or very short, and precise optical definition was an absolute requirement for friend-or-foe identification. High-end spotting scopes such as the Leupold 12-40x60mm Mark 4, Zeiss 85mm, and Swarovski ATS 80's were quickly procured along with better quality tripods/mounts. Hydration systems, too, became a crucial ingredient in the sniper's pack.

The sniper of today is vastly better outfitted than he was six years ago. Individual and organizational efforts outside of official channels to provide free equipment/gear to snipers played a huge role in sniper evolution as well. Groups such as "Adopt a Sniper" (www.AmericanSnipers.org) collected and pushed large quantities of equipment to operators in the war zone and provided a conduit for specific requests from the field. In most cases the equipment was donated by industry or provided at a huge discount.

Problem: Inadequate optical sights.

Solution: Early on the word went out to procure optics for a variety of uses from crew-served weapons to M4 carbines. Many snipers purchased or procured variable-power optics for use on their sniper systems to allow them to open up their field of view while retaining the zoom capabilities.

In other cases higher-power optics were procured to allow the snipers to engage at extended ranges. The Marine Corps was in the process of selecting the Schmidt & Bender PMII (a.k.a. M8541), which has proved to be an outstanding product. Many Army units procured the Leupold Mark 4 M3 LR/T 3.5-10X as a replacement for the fixed 10X Leupold M3 "Ultra." Many other optics companies such as U.S. Optics and Nightforce saw increased sales of their products in an effort by the military to meet field requirements.

The acquisition of new optics also opened up the need or desire for mission-enhancing accessories. Devices such as the "angle cosine indicator" from Sniper Tools and a variety of mounting solutions like the Modular Accessory Rail System from Remington became popular and are now in widespread use.

In addition to the new optics, mounts and accessories, this new war brought interest in new reticule systems such as those offered by Horus Vision, Leupold, Nightforce and U.S. Optics, which provide different or enhanced approaches to range estimation, hold offs, elevation/windage changes and firing solutions.

Problem: A shortage of snipers and precision weapons.

Solution: Simple things such as adding an optic to an M4/M16, which previously had been considered "Hollywood," became the norm with the widespread purchase of the Trjicon ACOG. While not by itself a "sniper" system, units quickly discovered that troops with above-average shooting ability and snipers could extract a heavy toll on the enemy with such a system. It was this revelation that helped define the concept of the designated marksman - basically a soldier with slightly more training than the average grunt, equipped with an optically sighted rifle to engage targets at ranges the "typical" shooter could not.

Problem: Modernization of existing SWS (Sniper Weapons Systems.)

Solution: Around 2004, Remington introduced its M24A2 as an upgrade to the M24. This included a new stock, variable power optics, an optics rail that allows the use of in-line night vision IR lasers and a sound suppressor. While being very popular with the snipers, funding and authorization have never materialized. The U.S. Navy worked with Sage International to procure the Enhanced Battle Rifle, which is a modified M14 placed in an aluminum chassis that features multiple rails and a collapsible stock. They found this combination, although somewhat heavy, to be very effective. The Corps has conducted a variety of experiments with adding suppressors to their M40A3's but to date these suppressors are not in widespread use.

Problem: Rate of fire.

Solution: This problem gave rise to the development by the Army of the Semi-Automatic Sniper System solicitation. This effort was intended to procure a 7.62 semi-auto system that provided the accuracy of a bolt system in addition to the rapid firing capability of a semi. The Army eventually selected a system which they are now beginning to field in small quantities. The original concept was to replace all of the bolt-action systems with the new autoloading system. But it now appears that snipers need both capabilities. The USMC and USAF are currently reviewing the concept to determine which direction they will go.

Problem: Weight and the inability to engage targets at ranges beyond 1,000 meters.

Solution: Early solutions included the application of the .300 WinMag, but the availability of ammo was an issue. Many U.S. allies fielded systems chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, which has gained considerable popularity among U.S. snipers. It remains unclear as to what direction this will take, as both industry and the services themselves are exploring alternatives.

The benefit of the current conflict in terms of equipment and technology development has been vast and modernization efforts in this area will likely continue. As in any war, necessity has been the mother of invention and snipers have never been as educated and well equipped as they are today