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

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