Defending ourselves against our government
 

There's been a lot of supposition on the current "gun control thread" (the one started by shani) by pro-gun advocates about the unrestricted right to keep and bear firearms based on the circumstance that one day we, the people, may need to to take them up to defend ourselves against our government.

And it's gotten me to wondering...what exactly does that mean?

Is there a plan? Is there some kind of comprehensive, yet secret, society that is prepared with strategies and registries and organized hierarchies and, most importantly, a follow-up plan?? (Ya! Gotta have one of those! Trust me!)

Or is it just a vague idea? A picture in the mind of defending your family with your trusty rifle through the broken-out window in your living room while a US tank rolls up into your front yard?

I'm really curious to know. And, in fact, in order to buy this idea I need to be sold on it as one that is grounded in rational, practical thought.

...and I just don't see it.

To steal a cue from shani, educate me. :p

Well that's the dirty little secret isn't it. Despite the obvious fact that a bunch of yahoos with rifles wouldn't be able to stop the government's weapons of war, the pro-gun crowd continues to insist that personal firearms are necessary to keep the government in check. If you want good evidence of why that's crap, go look up the video of the nut that stole a tank several years back. We had an untrained man in one tank rampaging through a city, and the cops were powerless to stop him. ONE TANK. And he didn't even fire the gun. The ONLY reason the rampage ended was because he screwed up and got his tank stuck on a concrete divider. Now multiply that by an entire tank company, with tanks driven by trained men and women who won't make mistakes like that, and who by the way know how to fire the tank's weapons instead of just driving over stuff, and tell me how a pistol or a rifle is going to stop them.

We haven't even discussed bombers.



Plus, despite the fact that the government has been systematically and deliberately stripping us of our rights for the better part of a decade now, the pro gun crowd still hasn't taken up arms and done anything about it.

So their entire argument is theoretically and in practice, bullshit.

I think the idea is that if you want to get slaughtered wholesale by the u.s. military, it's better to do so fully armed than unarmed.

And why is that?

it's no wonder democracies and republics fail

Ya know dk, you can sit there and crack off pithy little phrases all you want, but you still have NEVER managed to logically address my two points, in ALL the threads on this over the years.

I admit that this tactic often works - when you can't come up with real answers, spew out snarky one-liners. That fools a lot of people, but the folks around here are a lot smarter than the average guy. It isn't going to work.

Which brings to mind...

Say there was a people's revolution and (let's stretch it) say it was successful. What sort of a society do you suppose we might have then? What are your thoughts on the inevitability of tyranny, dksuddeth?

I don't agree that tanks and bombers are the end all be all answer to stopping the people that live within the cities. If that was the case then Afghanistan and Iraq would have been much shorter. We'd just pull up in our tanks and the people would just kneel down and say uncle.

No, it goes beyond that since the war there isn't over.

Self appointed militias which exist from Texas to Montana, they are the ones that have the plans A and B, possibly C.

I'd agree that it is better to go down fighting than to be kneeling in subservience.

and that's fine. One thing i've learned over the last couple of years is you can't fix stupid, which tells me that nothing I say to half the people on this board will ever change anything. I'm now firmly convinced that there will be another civil war over ideologies so far away from what the founding fathers envisioned and it really doesn't matter to me. I'll die free, you can live as a slave to government. I really don't care anymore. This is a land that has been dominated by communists and socialists for the last 70 years. congrats.

Maybe it's because I reject most of the macho John Wayne bullshit - not just because I am a pain in the ass, but because it is a mythical misrepresentation that has prompted men to have irrational expectations of themselves, often to the detriment of many others - but, maybe it's because of that that I don't see those as the only two options.

Violence or subservience.

violence or subservience, because it's never happened before. how did this country come about again?

the militia set has a real problem with the modern state.
rather than outline that problem--you know, make it coherent--they prefer to fetishize the founders and on that basis to pretend that they are the new minutemen conducting preparations for the rerun of the american revolution/tax revolt. so it seems to me that the "get a gun and get freedom" folk simply retreat from a complex world into a make-believe 18th century agrarian society made up of yeomen farmers. it is a projection, a fantasy of the type that could enable some among these folk to maybe even read tocqueville's democracy in america and overlook one of the central underlying arguments: tocqueville was writing about the early 1830s---and even then it seemed clear to him that the political space imagined by the founders was evaporating and that capitalism was the explanation for it--a fundamentally different mode of production was taking shape--at the time, it was primarily confined to the cities--but tocqueville was quite clear about what he saw--the writing was on the wall and this experiment in democracy in america was nearing its conclusion. what remained of it seems to me to have been wiped out by the american civil war. but because if your committment to hallucination is adequate, you can avoid anything, it follows that they could read tocqueville and leave out that part. if they read tocqueville.


what it seems like the militia set is doing politically is waiting for the existing order to collapse on its own.
they are quite sure it will any minute now...... any minute................any minute now..............there it goes--oops no, not quite yet.............soon though..............soon..............

when this collapse comes, it seems that a consequence of it will be the atomization of state power which would be reflected in the evaporation of its police and military functions.
they would just stop.
pfft. all gone now.

and into this imaginary vacuum the minutemen would stride wearing ten league boots and clutching a gun or twelve. the switching away from the capitalist mode of production would also take care of itself because it is all artificial and beneath the surface it is still 1797 pennsylvania somewhere really. we know this because other statements are obviously true, in the way that all such are true: the nation is a substantive entity, it has an internal logic and that logic will deploy automatically. that's why it is important that they claim to be "real americans" or "patriots" you see. they are Prophets awaiting the descent of the Society of Yeomen from where it is Presently Hidden.

meanwhile, in their incoherence and powerlessness, they imagine themselves to be the Only True Upholders of Democracy. that their understanding of history is surreal, their political vision loopy, their plan for the future a retreat into the past--none of that matters. they have guns so they are free. they have mystical insight which allows them Direct Communication with the Founders, who tell them Important Things like nothing ever really changes, all is illusion on the surface and that sooner or later Something Will Happen and that illusion will dissolve. like the air its made of.

they are revolutionaries who are afraid of revolution. they are afraid of the present and are afraid of the future so they run away from both. they have no politics of radical social transformation: they want only to restore the past, which they control since they made it up. there is no plan: none is needed. there are no coherent politics, then. they dont even like democracy particularly--democracy is unstable, it corrodes certainty. yeomen farmers as as they are because they own property--they are wholly adverse to uncertainty--so for them, the political process in any form is superficial and reality is primarily taken up with what you the isolated individual do on your private property. that is why they confuse locke's second treatise on government with a documentary. they think it really existed and that the vision expressed in it is therefore coherent.

in other words, blah blah blah (militia, gun nuts, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, right wing nuts) blah blah blah.

nice dk: try taking on the arguments maybe. for once.

what argument? all i've seen is how anything other than socialism (which is what everybody really wants, whether they know it or not) is not conducive to a productive society. That 'agrarian libertarianism' and conservative dictatorship capitalism is really nothing more than keeping everybody down while a select few have all the power. How most people are so distrusting of their fellow man that they would rather live without liberty and have the protection of a government than be free and responsible for themselves.

Again, you can't fix stupid and i'm done trying

Shakran, you're underestimating the effectiveness of guerella warfare. It's what those who don't have the firepower to match their enemy toe-to-toe will inevitably resort to. They resort to that because it works. Fighting an assymetrical war takes away the firepower advantage your enemy posesses.

One man, no. Give me twelve trigger-pullers behind .30 calibre semi-autos, and you've got a trashed convoy. Urban, rural, doesn't matter; twelve people, perhaps just six for a smaller setup, and groundpounders are toast, armor included. The trick is to play to the aggressor's weakness. Here's what it looks like.

Convoy Alpha is driving through, say eastern Kentuckey. The roads are narrow and full of switchbacks in the mountains, and as they come around one of the curves, the come face-to-face with a rockslide that has covered the road several feet deep in stones ranging in size from golfballs all the way up to one big ol' sucker almost as big as a Humvee. Around-about the time the CO figures out how sucky this is about to get, 200 gallons of ANFO buried 100 meters behind the rockslide explodes. This does several things: it destroys any vehicle in the neighborhood, it cuts the convoy in half or isolates it entirely (preferably the latter), while creating a deep, steep crater that even tanks will have a hard time traversing. The poor ol' CO's ears have just started ringing when a .30 bullet smacks him in the left lung from 600 yards out. Several other people unfortunate enough to be sticking out or obvious targets (ossifers, gunners, radiomen, drivers) suffer the same fate at about the same time. Everyone scrambles to button up or get behind cover as a three-man enemy fire-team opens up on the convoy. In less than fifteen seconds, the shooting stops. A moment later a second enemy element, also a three-man team using .30 rifles, opens fire from the opposite direction. The guys who were behind cover or at least concealment from Bandit Alpha are now sitting ducks for Bandit Bravo. Bandit Alpha is, meanwhile, relocating and reloading. Each team, Alpha through Delta, fires one 20-round magazine apiece, then falls back to a secondary position. Ideally, they would be pre-ranged from both positions. In addition to exposed personell, the enemy would also target the viewing periscopes and thermal optics of tanks and APCs, and the engines of trucks and Humvees. If one of the insurgents is fielding a 12.7mm rifle, which is possible, this anti-materiel work could be done from a mile away.

The poor Federales would be having a -very- bad day by this point. Assuming even 25% hits by the insurgents (and I've met many who were -much- better), that's 15 casualties every 15-30 seconds. Meanwhile, the tankers are going blind as their scopes keep getting shot, and the crew-served weapons are doing little good because every time somebody gets up to use one of the damned things, he gets shot. If he gets shot by that 12.7mm gunner, he makes a -big- mess. From 500-600 yards away, it's difficult to determine with any accuracy where the shots came from; lack of visible smoke and muzzle-flare means that the enemy riflemen are almost impossible to spot without magnification. If this is going down at night, everybody has muzze-flares to shoot at, but the insurgents are pre-ranged if they're half smart.

In less than three minutes, the shooting stops. It takes awhile before the survivors stick their heads out, possibly several minutes before communications are re-established. If there are any survivors, that is. The insurgents, of course, have either moved into the kill zone and secured it, or retreated into "the bush." Assume the insurgents have retreated. Three minutes of fighting at about one hit every two seconds comes to a lot of dead, wounded, screaming men who have just been shot to ribbons and know it. Trucks and Humvees are immobilized; engines shot through and/or set on fire. Tanks and APCs are stuck driving "hatches open" because some asshole insurgent with a sub-MOA competition rifle kept shooting out the 'scopes every chance he got. The survivors are pissed. They call for air-support, ASAP, Napalm, the works.

The brass, however, have a problem. Identifying the insurgents is difficult. People are disinclined to discuss the issue, even with significant "help" from their interrogators. And ever mistake, every instance of "collateral damage" breeds more insurgents. It breeds more of that uniquely American species of insurgent that's capable of hitting a man from 600 yards away. If this sounds like Iraq Squared yet, there's a good reason. The US is losing in Iraq, to a bunch of mostly untrained fanatics and nationalists who can't shoot and don't grok small-unit tactics very well. And only 20,000 of them.

Assume, if you like, that 1% of America's 85,000,000+ legal gun-owners decide to resist the Gov't by violence. That gives you roughly 850,000 combatants.

Assume further that the 1% who decide to resist retain posession of 1% of the US's 270,000,000 known legal firearms. This leaves you roughly 2,700,000 firearms; enough for each insurgent to field two rifles and a sidearm each.

Assume finally (because it's true) that a large portion of this 1% is composed of people from military backgrounds who have spent the past decade or more passing on their knowledge and training to their counterparts.

If this isn't turning into a very, very ugly picture yet, check your pulse. 850,000+ insurgents operating on their own ground from within their own communities would be a nightmare for both sides. The casualties would be murderous. But the Gov't would lose, because no Gov't has ever won a guerilla war fought on their enemy's home soil and terms. It took 800 years for the British to finally get the hint, hopefully the US will have a sharp enough learning curve to avoid provoking such a thing.

dk: that's funny.
so what you are saying is that one either agrees with you or one is a pinko.
"so dont even try to work out what my politics actually are: if you try, you're a pinko: if you weren't you'd agree with me."
so if i understand this correctly, you are saying the same thing that jesus said: you are either for me or against me and those in the middle i will spit from my mouth i come to bring the sword and not the one you see sticking out of a hunk or red meat in a steakhouse but the Big Sword, the Mighty Sword....
now that's some sophisticated shit.

i prefer the church of the subgenius.
they say everything you do, dk, but unlike you they *know* it is a joke. so step on up and meet Bob, dk:
he'll help you find slack.
if you have slack--which is what we all want---then you will be a bystander when the stark fist of removal comes and takes care of all the pinks.

http://www.subgenius.com/index.htm

You know, Roachboy, I'm truly beginning to get tired of your relentless ad-hominem attacks upon the militia movement, both as a group and as individuals. You have pretty obviously never actually listened to any; I'd be very surprised if you'd even -met- any. Your screeds sound like something cut-and-pasted from a vitriolic mixture of Morris Dees, Ward Churchill, and Rosie O'Donnel. Kindly refrain from putting thoughts in people's heads and words in people's mouths. If you want to ask questions, groovy. Ask away. I'm setting myself up here, but go ahead. But kindy remember to ask someone what they think instead of -telling- them what they think. If you bothered to do this on occaision, you might find yourself having an easier time dealing with people who, beleive it or not, are your natural allies. All the "militia set" want is to be left to Hell alone. You can establish all the Communist paradises you want and, as long as you don't try to force them to join up or support you, they'll leave you completely to yourselves. Libertarian ideaology does not demand that everone be libertarian; all it demands is that people respect the rights of others to do as they like as long as they are not harming other unconsenting parties. And the militiamen would defend your right to set up a Commune with their lives; indeed, they would be doing just that if their fight ever got started to begin with.

So please, lay off the scientifically-worded smears on these people. It's nothing but a way to discount their perspective by marginalizing them internally and externally, particularly their mental capabilities and rationality. Sound familiar?

thank you dunedan, for saying that more eloquently than i've been able to.

No I'm not. Guerella warfare works only in cases where the "tyrannical" government isn't as tyrannical as you'd like to believe. Guerellas in LA? Nuke the city. Poof, no more resistance.

My entire point is that 1) this right to bear arms crap is NOT supported in the constitution unless you're in a well-regulated militia, and a bunch of jackholes stockpiling shotguns is not well-regulated. 2) If the government REALLY got tyrannical and wanted to abuse their power, those shotguns won't stop them and 3) the government is ALREADY abusing their power, flagrantly, and no one's shooting at it.

The whole argument that this well regulated militia of freedom-loving dksuddeth clones is ready to stop the big bad government is total bullshit because they're not doing what they claim they're ready to do.

What this really boils down to is that they want their guns, dammit, and they'll make up any excuse for being able to have them. Slowly but surely those excuses are disappearing. No one needs to hunt for food anymore, we aren't at war with the Indians anymore, the days of Billy the Kid are long gone, and we certainly don't need a citizen's auxilliary militia to fight off foreign invaders, because if they manage to get through the Armed Forces, a bunch of untrained landowners with rifles don't stand a chance.

The only thing left for them is to claim they're here to defend us against an abusive government. But they (ahem) have just shot themselves in the foot over that one, because they aren't doing anything to stop this abusive government that we're enduring right now.

Even if you discount the fact that a rebellion will NOT work, you cannot discount the fact that the rebellion they claim to be preparing for is not happening despite the fact that the government is, according to them, doing things that require that rebellion.



As for Afghanistan and Iraq, Cynthetiq, when an outside country funds and arms the rebels/insurgents, the equation changes. What country out there is going to fund and arm dksuddeth's rebellion? To do so risks total war with a military that has the capability of wiping out all life on the planet. Dksuddeth's rebellion, if they ever decide to actually stage it, will be entirely on its own.

look, dunedan, it is not of a whole lot of consequence whether you like those posts or not--i object fundamentally to the politics behind right libertarian positions, some of which are embodied in militia people and it is my prerogative to go after the politics. if you object to the chararcterization of those politics, take it on--show how it is wrong, in your view.

where's the problem? that conservative liberatarians subscribe to a political worldview that is deeply shaped by a misreading of john locke? try to demonstrate how that is wrong, if you can: i think it obvious and everwhere. conservative liberatarians talk about democracy but they dont like what it brings with it, so they emphasize private property and when they make that last move, we are in lockeworld, pure and simple.

but let's not play silly games like trying to collapse what i write into an ad hominem as if there is no distinction between a general political logic and what individual people might think. i responded specifically to dk's nos.13 and 15 with a bit of escalating sarcasm directed at what he said. but my main post above (no. 12) is not an ad hominem. look at the pronouns for example. pronouns help to distinguish one mode of address from another. it is by looking at pronouns that we distinguish an ad hominem from other types of argument.
you can do it.
i have faith.

besides, i am sure that there are nice militia people--i dont doubt it--the folk i know who are of militia groups are variously nice i guess--but even if i knew no-one who participated in this bizarre-o political formation, i would assume that there are nice people involved, just as i do not doubt that there were nice brownshirts in the germany of the 1920s. i dont doubt that poujade was a nice fellow. i am sure that having a drink or two with jean-marie le pen would be fun. there are nice people everywhere, dont you find?

That's a good point. Those who win the revolution are not always the best suited to form a new government. When the failed government becomes so corrupted that overthrow is necessary one can only hope that the result is close to the following:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/im...ce-Posters.jpg

I don't know, i don't subscribe to the idea myself.

A significant number of people will probably only revolt when things become much worse then they are today. It will probably take some sort of economic collapse along with a corrupt government intent on suspending rights in an effort to stay in power.

Right...

If the US government nuked LA because of a separatist movement springing up there, you would see similar movements spring up in every state immediately afterwards -- not to mention the foreign aid those resistance movements would get from many countries you would not expect it to come from.

Will you still be our allies when we come to collect an intensely progressive income tax from those among you with top tier incomes?

....and....."Never say never"....it could get a lot of people needlessly killed:

Guns can't stop the government. That's silly and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

IEDs stop the government. It's really that simple. Untraceable, easy to create and implement, and you don't even need to be anywhere near the bomb when it goes off. I dare someone with a shotgun to do as much damage to and instill as much fear into the government as a man that can blow up a building. Even with 100 guns, you can't do that. Explosives are the way to keep a government in check through violence.

Here's the big thing: violence is fucking wrong. It fascinates me how many people think that fighting our own military or police people with guns or anything for that matter is a good thing. It's almost as if it was just an excuse to be John McClane or Rambo, which is childish and disgusting. The only way to control your government is by not allowing them to control you. Grow a pair and start a fucking movement if you feel you're not being represented. Gandhi was able to defeat the occupying Brits through totally nonviolent means. That's how you do it. You don't pull out your glock and walk into the White House.

I used to play with toy guns when I was younger. It was fun to pretend I was a sheriff or policeman or military officer. I know better now what guns can and cannot do. Not only that, but I understand what it's like to be shot by a member of my community.

Edit: Imagine that everyone in the US was few up with the Iraq war and wanted it to end tomorrow. Imagine that a very charismatic anti-war leader spoke up and was able to convince 60% of the population to stop paying taxes as a form of nonviolent civil disobedience until the government developed and passed a set of definite deadlines for pulling out. That's the best way to defend yourself from the government: use the power of the people. We are a big, big population and as much as the government would like us to think otherwise, they are almost completely dependent on us. We hold power over them.

No they aren't the only two options. My grandfather's eldest brother was killed in WWII after being found out as being a key to the resistence in the Philippines. He did not fight but provided intelligence and arms to those that would. But that particular war stripped our family of many of it's resources like land, cattle, property, and livelihood. I'm sure that there are similar stories in Iraq and other wartorn countries.

Well I don't know that I'm a good source for rational, practical thought, but I will say this: I have a plan. Myself and some close friends have a plan to deal with a situation that requires action (not necessarily armed). I myself don't own a gun, and I'd have to say I have limited experience firing one, though I wasn't half bad when I did.

No, our plans don't assume it will be the US government or anyother entity, but whatever it might be, Andorra invading, Aliens landing, the installation of an absolute monarchy... The plan would be to impede any efforts to subjugate the country, and the goal would be restoring a sovereign constitutional US government.

But there is nothing secret about it. I am very above board in standing by the oath I took to defend the country against all comers, foreign and domestic. I don't remember '...until my four years are up.' being part of it.

At the risk of romanticizing too much:

No one has illuminated for me how guns being easy to obtain and freely carried has any bearing on the need to perhaps, maybe, sometime, one day, fire them upon our own government.

Nor are any of those who support these ideas willing to elucidate on the idea that in overthrowing a tyrannical government, they run the risk of becoming tyrants themselves. You can find this in history books, as well.

But that's beside my point...I do digress.

You own guns because you want them. Because it's gratifying to know you have them, to hold them, to use them. Same as millions of other objects out there. For me, it's books and paper.

I've no interest in prohibiting people from buying and using guns (in a legal manner). I've even no particular problem with some people owning semi-automatic weapons. What I have a problem with is reactionary gun owners who don't believe that their hobby should be regulated in any manner being that guns are so often used in the commission of criminal acts. Reactionaries who insist that their hobby should be a (somehow) untouchable right. As if their guns were an extension of their own body.

I am an American I have rights, too. Reasonable gun control is the only reasonable solution in my estimation.

This is the most important and truest statement I have seen on this Politics forum in awhile.

People complain but they don't change anything except to take rights away (i.e. smoking in public, that's a business owners decision).

Somewhere, we decided to give the government the power to control our lives. We did so in the name of "for the good of the public". But what we have done in the long run is stolen rights from our children and named them "priveleges", taken choices away, played partisan politics, acted as selfish 2nd graders, sued and demanded government do things that we ourselves can do..... we don't have to demand Imus be fired, we don't need an FCC to step in and fine CBS for Janet Jackson's tit... we can just change the channel write letters to the stations, etc. But it is easier for us to sit on our asses and let the government do it for us.... or complain that the government is doing something instead of standing up and demanding government get the fuck out of it and let the people FREELY decide.

All the while we have truly ignored Rome burning.

If people put forth the effort to stop the war, to rebuild our educational system, to make this country great again, to close the economic gaps, to maintain a healthcare system that works, to demand the end of fossil fuel needs and to get things moving forward rather than stay the same and not so much as rebuild what is falling apart.... that they do in complaining over how others live, what rights they want to name as "priveleges" so they can regulate them and take them away because they offended ...... we would live in a much better, freer, happier country.

Aw well I ramble.... good post Will. :thumbsup:

TY, Pan.

This post reads as two posts. The first half, I agree with -- we are giving away our rights by meant of silent obedient consent. The second half, I disagree with -- we need not wrestle our rights back from the government only to give them away again for free healthcare, corn subsidies, and a socialized education system. You have the first part right, but I don't think you realize how the second leads to the failures in the first.

They can work in tandem if we are able to put a leash on them through step one. The idea is to scare them into serving the country's interests again, and then quickly set up good systems before they start treating us like crap again.

The second part is quite simple, we learn from our mistakes. We've tried a socialized/subsidized system.... it became corrupt and bureaucratized (is that a word), then we tried and are in the greed/everyone out for themself fuck everyone else system and it has led the way to poor schools, a healthcare system that is broken, huge gaps between classes with the middle class being squeezed into nothingness.

There has to be a middle ground where we can help farmers make a profit without having to charge $4.00 for a gallon of milk, the average household making roughly $35,000, college tuitions becoming outrageous with very little government help, and so on.

What do we pay taxes for, if not to build a social safety net so that others may succeed? However, one needs to be accountable.

I see at detox people coming in that could work but are on disability because they had good lawyers and families with money and I see people who need disability, that are truly fucked up and can't get a penny because they don't have the money for a lawyer.

I see tremendous waste and abuse in the college I go to, but then when the money is needed for the students who are truly there for the rights reasons, it's gone.

I believe we can have a slimmer more efficient government but we need to get rid of the abuse and waste and put in controls so those that need the services and can get them, not just the people who know how to play the game or have money somewhere to get the lawyers to abuse the system.

Those that abuse should be forced to pay back with heavy fines that which they took.

Give more money back to the community from which the taxes came and let THE PEOPLE in those communities decide what needs they want taken care of, where they want to put the money, who they believe needs the funds.... not an out of touch Congress and President bought and paid for by big business and special interests.

Give the power back to the people and let the people decide. I believe that the people can decide and will do so more efficiently and recieve better results.

Step one is getting enough people to want the power back and being informed enough.... which we gravely lack because we don't educate our kids to know they have voices and need to stand up and be heard. Instead we were given greed and nice toys and Anna Nicoles and Paris Hiltons to take our sights off that which we need to see.

Step two is demanding and getting the power back.

Step three is giving honest and open debates, trying to find compromise, tearing down what doesn't work and rebuilding a more responsible, responsive, system that gives back to the whole not to the few.

i like the thoreau idea, will....but i dont see why it requires a "leader" at all, much less a "charismatic" leader. all it would require really was a webpage with a coherent, clear message and a bit of tactical thinking about how to get that website out there into the virtual world. set the page up either as or with a flyer (a pdf) with interesting layout/graphics and encourage folk to print them and put em up. why not? a political action does not require a top-down structure. it does not require a unified voice: the action itself is all that is required. and an action like that one would bring the current system to its knees quite quickly. a decentered action would pose real response trouble for the state as well: who are you going to go after? everyone?

let the idea circulate and acquire a life of its own.

As host was pointing out in another thread, things like this work better with a figurehead. If you get an email, who do you ask if you have questions? The person who sent it probably only knows what was in the email before him or her. A figure head, who can go on Letterman and explain things in detail and maybe answer emails seems like it might be something people can relate to, and a better way to get information out.

Eventually, without a figurehead, information would crop up on website, but a website can't sit before congress and scream at them in their comfortable seats for not doing their jobs. I'm not sure if this is just a fantasy, where I get to call them all out on their BS, but it seems like it may be more likely to work.

Either way, the information has to get out there, and places like TFP are a great start.

This is actually very true. I don't know if its just a matter of human nature or what, but the majority of us need people to look to as an embodiment of the movement. Obviously there are a lot of dangers in this, but it is the reality. In a perfect world, if we really all believed in something we'd spontaneously act to enact that belief, but this is harly a perfect world.

We need leaders, for better or for worse, as a part of any movement that is going to get anywhere.

Right. Don Cheadle has been an amazing figurehead for Darfur lately, for example. He's used his stardom in order to bring attention to stopping genocide. He has earned my permanent respect. I don't think the Darfur peace/intervention movement would have anywhere near the exposure with Don Cheadle.

That's one reason I don't automatically attack celebrities who speak out, even when I disagree with them. Don is not the world's hugest movie star, but he's still a celebrity. Having gained some recognition in another field, far from disqualifying you from speaking on issues, I think is inherently noble, to use it to maybe make a difference for others, not just pad your own mansion.

I don't agree with a lot of things stars say when they speak out. Let's be frank, a lot of them make absolute fools of themselves. But a person like Cheadle is not one of those, and I do hope that people respect what he's doing raising awareness on issues such as Darfur and other similar situations in central and east Africa.

Josh

a spokesmodel/spokesperson (whatever) is not the same as a leader.
just saying.

I couldn't agree with you more, but I still think a figurehead might be better than nothing.

I disagree that guns would play much of a role in a domestic resistance. Look at Iraq and Palestine. Movements don't resist modern militaries on the militarys' terms. They wage guerilla ware, because it's the only remotely feasible option. The idea of groups of revolutionaries fighting against the military is absurd.

Besides, as soon as there was a credible armed resistance that could actually threaten the government, I bet we'd see UN Peacekeepers here in a hurry. Darfur is small potatos, but with our nuclear stockpiles and chemical/biological agent research it wouldn't take Don Cheadle to get people interested.

Rest assured, the hypothetical 2nd American Revolution wouldn't look anything like the first at all. It would be a battle of ideas, media, and money, backed by guerilla tactics. And when the dust settled, you'd have a hell of time getting any kind of agreement that resulted in a nation that remotely looked like the US. We'd be a bunch of nation-states, none of which would have a balanced enough economy to support themselves - ripe for the picking. Unable to hang together, we would assuredly die separately.

The real problem with any of this is getting a critical mass of the population to do ANYTHING. We can't get 60% to VOTE for all the candidates put together! The masses in this country would shit if they didn't have their DSL connections, air conditioning, gas stations, etc. Face it, we lack the collective spine to do anything by force or revolution, no matter how bad things get.

Recent (20th century) history might suggest that non-violent civil diobedience is a more effective way to seek redress for grievances against the government and the political establishment.

In the US, it worked for the womens suffragette movement in the 1910s, the labor movement in the 1930s, the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

In India, it worked for Ghandi....in South Africa, it worked for Mandela....in Poland, it worked for Lech Welesa and Solidarity.....

People Power Revolution (Yellow) in the Philippines for Cory Aquino in 1986, Czechoslovakia 1989, Singing Revolution in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania 1987-1991, Serbia in 2000, Philippines (again) 2001, Rose Revolution Georgia 2003, Orange Revolution Ukraine in 2004, Kyrgyzstan 2004.

But be reminded that it takes only someone like Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam, or the Taliban, to kill their citizens. History has proven that violence is more common than peaceful revolution. It is those types of oppression that the founding fathers cautioned and warned about, not the ones that were easily convinced to change their minds by everyone gathering together and singing Kumbaya.

well, you all have your notions of we're too weak and limited to face the government and military that the US has, that's fine. A whole lot of people thought the very same thing in the 1770s, but a few stood out as radical.

James Madison
Thomas Jefferson
George Washington
Alexander Hamilton
Thomas Paine
George Mason
Samuel Adams

I think Dunedan and I are in pretty good company.

See I don't think a violent revolution is what is needed, 1) too many lost lives for what? and 2) in today's world enemies of the US would destroy us all, secretly or perhaps openly fund sides and what we have now isn't bad, we just need to tweak people's cheeks, wake them up and get them to want change.

You get enough people wanting change, change will come, that's the great thing about our country, don't like the current government change it at the election booths.

Money may buy ads, but grassroots and starting from the bottom and working up makes it harder for those wanting the status quo to fight it.

Will there be a time to take arms? Perhaps, but I don't think we would stand a chance against the enemy we'd face and I fear what we would end up with would be far,far worse than anything we have now.

To my knowledge, only 3 (maybe 4) of those ever guys took up arms against the British. The rest wielded the pen. The only who you could argue made his most important contributions through violence is Washington. But that would be pretty flimsy given the other roles he played. Every one of those individuals (with the exception of Hamilton, due to age) spent years, if not decades, pursuing non-revolutionary resolutions of the colonial dispute.

So, how is the scenario which you fantasize about like that particular list of people? How do you see yourself in their company?

P.S. It's pretty disrespectful of you to leave John Adams off of that list.

I don't think people understand the fine line a government has to walk in order to carry on any kind of domestic war against gun owners or militas. You say firearms are no match for tanks? Regardless if they are or not, if people see tanks marching down the streets crushing sub divisions and apartments, then the governments cards are on the table. It is a pretty awesome display of power and authority to do something like that. They can't afford to try that without having an even greater resistance.

Nothing like a few dead children to get entire towns revolting.

The other key thing is, how many soldiers are going to ignore orders when they have to raid their own country?

There are many factors, including firearms, that could make defending ourselves against the government very successful. Face it even if only 1% of american's didn't hand in their weapons that is still a massive undertaking to go door to door looking for those needles in a haystack.

which i'm happy to do. non violent, non combative change and cooperation would be great, in my mind, but i'm not willing to be disarmed to work with it. Violence, or the threat of it, must always be on the table as a last resort if tyranny is attempted.

no disrespect intended towards Mr. Adams, I just made a quick list. If I wanted to post all of the people that should be there, it would be a long damn post.

Only trouble with that argument (aside from what uber's already pointed out) is that back then, it was much easier for the rebels to match military hardware. They had muzzle-loading rifles. So did you. Sure, they had cannons, but then they weren't overly effective considering their reload rate, and they counterbalanced the cannons for you by being stupid and marching around upright while wearing scarlet red coats. Pretty easy for you to run from tree to tree and pick 'em off.

Today, unless you've figured out how to buy missiles, bombers, tanks, howitzers, and all the other advanced and deadly toys the military has, you don't have a prayer of matching their hardware.

And since the military has wised up and figured out how to fight, unlike the Redcoats, you don't have a prayer of having a tactical advantage over them either.

You insist that it's possible for a poorly armed and trained bunch of rebels to defeat the world's most powerful and best trained military, but you never tell us how it can be done. You insist that it's being done in 3rd world countries, without acknowledging that 1) those countries don't have a military anything close to what we have and 2) the rebels are generally being propped up by much more powerful entities.

In short, you're making wild, baseless statements without ever having any intention of backing them up with anything approaching rationality.

read dunedans post on the subject, or not. choice is yours. your claim that we can't match the military equipment, of course. Not many can buy jets or tanks, etc., and the antigunners, such as yourself, have already limited the types of arms that the individual can own anyway. you've won. we have a potential dictatorship in the makings and thanks to you, americans have no chance of fighting back. congratulations, how do you feel about stripping away freedom?

#17?
Wait a second. You said people shouldn't be able to get tanks and nukes and such. Are you reversing your position?
You seem to lack the ability to read.

IEDs would be all we need to completely overthrow the military. I, myself could easily build hundreds of bombs based in simple, untraceable things you can get from your local supermarket. And I've not had one day of military or weapons training. Of course, I, personally, don't believe in violence, but how is my personal philosophy going to stop you or anyone else? This is like the 12th time I've said this. Longbough and several other pro gun people agreed, but you seem to think the only way is with guns. That's just silly. If you want to go start your insurgency, the lack of guns isn't going to stop you, and if it is, then you're not a good gun nut.

Excuse me? I never said I was an anti gunner. But if you want to argue for the pro-gun side, try to come up with something that makes just a teeny little bit of sense, and don't spout lies and half truths in an attempt to snare the stupid into joining your crusade.

OK, let's say you're allowed to get a machine gun. Still think you can beat a tank? No?

This is what I'm talking about when I say your arguments are full of crap.


Here's what's going on here folks. dksuddeth has been spouting off for over a year that we need guns to protect ourself from governmental tyranny. Now that it's finally pointed out that he's not exactly racing toward Washington with his pals and loaded rifles, he chooses to blame US for his inactivity.

That's bullshit.

Complete and total bullshit.

You want your gun to fight a tyrannical government? Fine. You have one. Knowing you, you have several. Go fight the tyrannical government. Right now. Otherwise, admit that your entire argument for owning a gun is BS.

The simple fact is, you want guns. That's fine. Have all the guns you want, but don't try to justify it with some patriotic sounding, falsely noble "higher cause" for having the guns. Just admit that you like them and you'd rather the government not take them away from you. But stop pretending you have a valid NEED for those guns, because you don't.

you're right shakran. you've always been right. you're a god among men. how could I have been so foolish and stupid. thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

I would try non-violence first, but if we are talking about how we need to fight the government, something is definitely wrong. So, assuming that the government is taking everyones money and making two classes of haves(5% + military), have nots(95%), implementing slavery again, imprisoning and killing entire races or religions, or other extreme things that won't likely happen, I would think this tactic would work best.

1. Possibly retreat. Get to a foreign country or the middle of nowhere in a foreign land. Wait for other foreign countries to help you.

2. Blend in. Steal uniforms and become a threat from the inside.

3. Become a lone gunman. Take out important officials.

4. Covert/guerilla warfare. Snipers, motars, IEDs, RPGs, tripwires, remote detonators...

5. Start your own government if you have large numbers.

6. And probably a few other tactics...

I would say an opposition force would have a 25% chance of success if the US military stays together. If the US military splits (civil war style), all bets are off.

Interesting list, ASU. I may send my family back with friends outside the country, but I wouldn't want to leave.

going back to the op for a minute....

the funny thing about dk's list of 18th century superheroes is that they fashioned something of an actual politics fitted to conditions in the 1760s-1770s...but even in that context, they were hardly alone--they benefitted from a pretty dense political context (read bernrd bailyn's book on the ideological origins of the american revolution sometime) that defined stuff like tyranny in ways that jefferson (for example) simply recycled--in other words, they operated within a real-time political context, which they faced as a real-time political context, within which the political issues that oriented them were defined, as were the political objectives they pursued. that context is what enabled paine's writing to have an impact, for example (the irony is that paine's later writing would probably be rejected by these libertarian heros as "socialist"---but whatever: here we are in a world of selective reading selective quotation and arbitrary assemblage, so it hardly matters)

referencing these 18th century figures is one thing: referencing them as if their 18th century politics of tax revolt tipping into something like a revolution were a plausible basis for a 21st century political movement is something else again--absurd is what it is. a revolutionary project needs to refer to some pre-established politics in order to frame itself tactically--but this is neither a political program or a strategy----it is an explanation for word choices. if you cant even distinguish these dimensions, then the idea that you are elaborating anything like a revolutionary politics seems silly.

and it is not enough to bypass the problem and cut to elaborating fantasies of heroic guerilla fighters shooting out tank periscopes. this is functionally responding to questions about what the politics of a revolutionary movement are by suggesting that the person posing that question join you in playing army.

the question is not how you would deal with a tank, but what politics would prompt you to put yourself in that position. on this, there is no coherent answer. pointing this out seems to me the point of the thread. but it has not been addressed.


here's what i have been able to figure out from all the vagueness above (except for 17, which is interesting as a fantasy war scenario and should be a computer game): conservative libertarians (cls from here out) do not like taxes: the american revolution was a tax revolt therefore the cls are simply looking to rerun the american revolution. to make this work, the federal government has to be positioned rhetorically as an 18th century england-based tyranny---so the state is distant, alien--it is non-representative in that the cls do not like taxes but there are taxes therefore no representation (in other words, no=one called you up to ask what you thought)--

but that doesnt work as an argument so well--so instead you get the gun issue, which functions in cl-world as a way of defining "us vs. them"---the evil alien federal government under king george 3 wants to take away our guns and in so doing blah blah blah. so the fact that there are taxes, or the fact that there is a modern state at all is understood as important features of a general Oppression.

the twist here is that if the modern state is a problem then so is capitalism, which REQUIRES continual state intervention in the management of what it produces as a system with great efficiency and regularity--crisis--and which would fall apart quickly and abruptly without that intervention, taking half the cl worldview down with it because it would demonstrate--as if a demonstration were needed, given the actual history of capitalism--that there is no ideal-typical capitalism of little self-regulating markets and heroic Entrepreneurs operating in conditions of perfect competition wholly outside the reach of the state...this is the other element of cl-politics--it simply repeats this goofball assumption that capitalism is a natural phenomenon made up of markets through which god expresses herself on this mortal coil via relations ot equilibrium blah blah blah and the Evil State stands opposed to this working of nature--so a "revolution" could be imagined that would destroy the state and allow for Nature to Take Its Course in the form of some independent capitalism. presumably, once that Natural Capitalism is in place, one's ayn rand fantasies of being an Exceptional Individual can express themselves, whereas now the Man keeps you down. but if you do not buy this assumption concerning some "organic" capitalism as over against the "artificial" state, then there's nothing left to cl politics at all. the retreads of locke simply repeat this central position: the heroic individual tends his abstract plot of land and enters into contract with other heroic individuals for the performance of certain services and there we have the ideal relation of heroic individuals to the state in the heroically individual state of nature. used in an anachronistic manner, locke becomes a gloss on the illusory image of capitalism as the cl-set understands it.

so there is nothing revolutionary in cl-politics from this viewpoint. they just want to move from capitalism in the form it has taken since the civil war back into some collage they assembled that they confuse with the state of nature, with a pre-heavy industry type of capitalism.

the same logic works behind the doctrine of original intent.
the same logic works behind all that follows in terms of objections to contemporary legal practices (the jury system)...

strangely---if you actually look at tocqueville's democracy in america (say), from the first page of the foreword you see the main feature of the social formation he was trying to outline: equality of condition. it is everywhere in the book--and much of his analysis is geared around locating tendencies that would reverse this equality of condition an which he judged dangerous for democracy in america--the sort of thing that would destroy it. capitalism was a form of social being that results in an uneven distribution of wealth and so for tocqueville is was ANTITHETICAL to democracy as a socio-political form. most of the cl-types would probably say that equality of condition is "socialism"....

so follows the emphasis on guns, taken in isolation: guns as signifiers of an entire politics, guns as an index of the distance that separates the evil state from the 18th century patriots who claim to be real amuricans to the exclusion of all others...maybe it makes some sense to emphasize having a gun as the equivalent of having a politics for these folk because it is the only coherent element of that politics.

it plays well in the press. it gets marginal political groups some traction. it is apparently functional in that it seems to reinforce the conflation of nostalgia and revolution that lay at the center of cl-politics in their more "radical" expressions. but it is incoherent as a signifier and has nothing to do with an actual politics. there is no vision. there is no strategy. there is not even any coherent critique of the existing order because the assumptions behind it prevent it from being so (see the stuff about capitalism above). there is nothing but nostalgia. heavily armed people playing army while dreaming about an eternal repetition of 1775.

Thank you, rb.

Your post is a pretty good summation of this thread.

The anti-gun control stance has been veiled with the aura of an almost mystical interpretation of patriotism and revolutionary heroism when really it is quite mundane. A stance that has, apparently, been swallowed hook, line and sinker by a lot of people. Either that or they just like the feeling they get when they think about it in those picturesque terms.

Some participants on this thread may not agree with that summation, yet no one really put forth much effort to enlighten me any differently. I am looking for evidence that there is some connection (in America) between gun ownership and an organized resistance to government tyranny...rather than just a bunch of people who really like guns. Not saying there's anything wrong with liking guns...just that that's all there is to it.

....The "answer", for me...roachboy...can be distilled to political reaction to the points made in this video....(<b>Watch it all</b>....tell me when, since....we've enjoyed a US Senator who has said anything even vaguely close to what you view on the video.....)
......supported by this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commiss...rial_Relations

It's 90 years later....and no improvement to the depth of wealth distribution in the US....maybe it's even worse....now, since the "have nots" had access to cheaper medical care and weren't able to obtain credit card debt and no downpayment mortgages on property plummeting in value......

.....and this:
.....and of course.....this:
....so "the politics" could be a reaction to a government bought off to do the bidding of the rich, suppress the popular vote, and totally corrupt the constitution and the system of checks and balances by refusing to provide legally mandated reports, executive directives, and correspondence of the executive branch, to congress......

Would all of that be any excuse for a willingness for bloodletting and bloodshedding.....?

First of all, I want to amend my statement above to assert that I understand that self-defense is a real and valid reason for wanting to own a gun. But, whether you are defending yourself from a criminal or your own government is irrelevant to the issue of reasonable gun control laws.

Me personally? No. And frankly, I think any American sitting in front of their computer who owns a car, had breakfast this morning, enjoys a nice, clean glass of water whenever they want it and can sleep at night reasonably sure that a gang of thugs with machetes isn't going to break into their house and kill them and their family who would consider killing people for the state of affairs in America today hasn't earned the "privelege" of those sorts of thoughts.

A-HA!!
See? You fell, right there, for their most devious of sinister plots.:paranoid:
First...they lure you in with the promise of clean water and relative safety.:eek:
Then...They make you fat and lazy with regular meals and a car.:oogle:
Oh...then the most dastardly of plots. They stupify you with the internet. :orly:
It's a conspiracy! Can't you see that?!? Oop...gotta go now. They know that I'm on to 'em.:paranoid:

There will not be much of a connection between the right to bear arms and organized resistence until things get much worse. I don't understand why you would expect to see one under today's conditions. Even when the government fails and the economic and money systems collapse, resistence will only come if the corrupt government goes all out to maintain power in a tyrannical manner.

Do you not believe those of us who think that the right to bear arms may be important someday since all governments on Earth eventually become corrupt and fail? Do you think armed resistence will be futile anyway so why even try? Having a healthy mistrust of our government does not seem like swallowing a mundane or mystical interpretation of patriotism to me. Many of us really believe that it may become necessary to forcefully resist a tyrannical government someday or at least have the ability to threaten to do so.

Do you not believe those of us who think that the right to bear arms may be important someday since all governments on Earth eventually become corrupt and fail?


I don't see how it trumps the need for reasonable gun control TODAY.


Do you think armed resistence will be futile anyway so why even try?

Basically, yes. I'm not one to believe in the "go down shooting" ethic.

Having a healthy mistrust of our government does not seem like swallowing a mundane or mystical interpretation of patriotism to me. Many of us really believe that it may become necessary to forcefully resist a tyrannical government someday or at least have the ability to threaten to do so.

Sure. We each have our own theories, our own takes on it...but why should your theory supercede your having to acquire your firearms under the requirements of reasonable gun control laws?

what is 'reasonable' gun control to you?

Basically nothing much more stringent than we have now in many places. Ideally, laws would be consistent from state to state...

Waiting periods.

Comprehensive background checks.

And I would support the national registration of some firearms. Of course, at least I can understand the adversity to that concept. The other two that only contribute to someone's inconvenience in the process of acquiring a gun I don't accept. Tough shit.

I read a lot arguments, more like whining, that criminals can get guns faster than upright citizens and I say...so what? Corporate crooks can amass millions of dollars in a bank in the Caribbean a lot faster than I can, it doesn't mean I should be able to, as well. Crooks do everything faster. That's why they're crooks!

I realize that a lot of gun owners are okay with waiting periods and background checks. It's not those gun owners I am referring to. It's those who oppose any manner of oversight in the acquiring of firearms that I simply do not understand. And who furthermore, regard any attempt to control their acquisition of firearms as a forecast of the removal of all of their rights to gun ownership. And no amount of claims of self-defense, my rights, government tyranny, etc. can explain it away. Not for me.

It is reactionary and dogmatic. Two characterizations I generally view as too far off the beaten path of practicality to be making claims on social codification. No matter which side of the path they've wandered off on.

*edit*
Granted, flstf gave me a sober and more reasonable approach to the idea of "defending ourselves from our government" than I had yet to hear. And he tapped me on the nose a bit without sounding shrill about it. That helped.

goddamn, dk, you're more predictable than the chord changes in a bluegrass song.

it seems to me that if the arguments that you like to make about the Fundamental Political Importance of being strapped at all times mean anything, they do so because the politics you reference are understood to make some sense. well, they dont. so rather than start another tiresome dust up over your pet issue of gun control, why not take a deep breath and maybe, for once, explain your politics--you know, the politics that informs you stance on gun control.
from what i see, there's really nothing to them--but i'd be interested in reading how you try to explain them.

but this--you give the one--mm responds, so there's the 4--and the 5 is coming.....it always fucking comes...there's no interest in it--noone who listens to bluegrass really focusses on the chord changes--it's more about the medolic lines and the way the group functions as a group than about the 1 4 5 sequence of repeated AND lame major fucking chords.

a melodic line can surprise you in a bluegrass tune--the structure will NEVER surprise you.

so make a line.
*do* something.
dont just keep playing the changes.

People still listen to bluegrass? That's interesting.

I love bluegrass as a matter of fact.

And roachboy is right...it's the spirit of synergy in the music and not necessarily the structure. :)

The only thing that I can say about states and same laws is that I'm glad that they are different. I can choose to live in a place where the laws reflect more or less the lifestyle I want to live. Texas and Florida have concealed carry permits for everyday individuals. That is great and it works in those states. I cannot see how it would work in the state of New York within the metropolitan tri-state area and NYC.

To also say that I didn't transport my guns from California to NYC because my grandfathered assault rifles would not survive the trip and reregistration. Now you'll say,"But you don't need them to sport shoot or to hunt!" Sure, I don't. But people don't need cars with over 300hp or that go faster than 75mph. It is still about responsible ownership. Those that speed get their car taken away and those that use it responsibly get to keep them.

Pot, kettle, black. I can always count on you to use some sort of argument by poetic language, especially in regards to any point I might make that you almost always disagree with.

mixedmedia, the sentiment against gun registration and control was exemplified in the '80's film "Red Dawn", which drew a "cult like" following:
"P" = one percent of US population and "$" = one percent of US assets:
US Wealth distribution in 2004:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=12

Top one percent of US population own more than 33 percent of US assets:
Next nine percent of US population own 36.1 percent of US assets:
Next forty percent of US population own 28.3 percent of US assets:
Bottom fifty percent of US population own 2.5 percent of US assets:
The bottom 50 percent own only five sixths of what is displayed in the preceding visual aid.....

...and that measly 2-1/2 percent is intentionally "chipped away":
The senate voted down a democratic amendment to protect the medically bankrupt from "reform":

Shortly after the article above was published, almost all republicans in congress voted to pass a "reform bill" resisted by congressional democrats for at least ten years, and a democratic president until 2001, and the republican president signed the bill into law.....

....none of the benefits to credit card holders, promised by the industry in exchange for passage of bankruptcy "reform", actually came to pass:
We are "fed" soothing messages like this from "think tanks" funded by multi millionaire right wingers:
Until recently, we could console ourselves by proudly believing that, "at least we're free !":
If you consider the supporting info in my last post, and the material in this one, it is quite obvious to me that all of the "reform" since the 1916 Industrial Relations Committee study and report, commissioned during the term of President Woodrow Wilson and described by Senator Huey P. Long in the video of his mid 1930's speech in the US senate.....the right of women to vote, the labor movement that resukted in the National Labor Relations Board and legal protections for union organizers and a means for mediated labor negotiations with management and enforcement of labor contracts via binding arnitration, and later passage of the civil rights act, desegregation, and equal opportunity employment protections, passage of SSI and of unemployment insurance, and protection and oversight of employer funded pension plans, <h3>none of it....has resulted in more equitable distribution of wealth in the U.S.</h3> The trend toward more equitable distribution peaked in the early 1960's before income taxes, formerly levied at a top rate of 90 percent on income above $400,000 annually, began to be adjusted down to less than 40 percent, today.

Some folks have posted that they will "know" when the circumstances justify taking up armed resistance agains the government or agains the establishment, The POTUS has acted to usurp our protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and against our habeas corpus protections, and he has reinterpreted the constitution and international treaty protections to redefine torture to mean whatever he and his lawyers decide that it is. There is overwhelming evidence that he, his party, and his attorney general deliberately reversed civil and voting rights protections and enforcement to suppress the vote of the political opposition.

The disparity of wealth distribution has never been more unequal, and our protections against government surveillance, arrest without trial or legal representation, and against unreasonable, search, seizure, and surveillance have never been so blatantly transferred from the public to the federal executive branch, and voter protections have not been this weak since 1964.

Still.....we say that now is not the time, it is not appropriate for organized and determined protest and resistance, by any means necessary to reverse these trends and restore the pre-Bush era constiution, and pre 1960's top rate income tax levels, at the least.

So we wait.....I guess until the bottom 50 percent have lost the 2-1/2 percent asset holdings that they now enjoy, and the next 40 percent, half of the 28.3 percent of total US wealth that they currently hold....and when our uncle or our neighbor is hustled away by DHS agents in the night, to indefinite detention in an undisclosed location.......is that it? What is your tolerance level? Would a warrantless, "sneak and peak", "visit" to your home, or your safe deposit box, by government investigators, assuming you even discovered their intrusion, be enough to move you ?

Oh....that's right.....you say you'll know when resistance is appropriate....and I say.....bullshit ! Your present complacency....while your bill of rights are stolen and half of your countrymen calmly settle for crumbs....gives your sheep like resignation, away. You ain't ever going to do nothing.....Bush and Cheney have known it since December 12, 2000, and the rich men at CNP have known it since Reagan took office, and took away progressive income taxation.

OK RB, here you go. You want our politics? You want to know what informs our positions? Here you go: for the umpteenth time (let's see you acknowledge it instead of giving an off-the-cuff dismissal, for once) are the basics of the politics of the movement and people you so plainly despise.

1: All human interactions which do not cause unprovoked, unwarranted, unsolicited, or unconsented-to harm to other people are permissible. This includes any and all forms of marriage, living arrangements, commerce, trade, barter, etc. As long as you cause no concrete harm, whether physical or financial, to another person, we believe you have the Right to do as you like in your daily life. We do not believe that anyone, not your neighbor nor -all- of your neighbors, has the right to attempt to control your life when you have done no harm.

2: No person, or group of people, has the right to initiate the use of force, fraud, or coercion against any other person or group of people: nor do they have the right to delegate such initiation to others.* In some circles this is known as the Zero Aggression or Non Aggression Principle, and was firt articulated by L. Neil Smith, one of modern anarcho-libertarianism's first proponents. Believe it or not, our entire philosophy is -not- derived from Locke.**

3: The anarchistic wing of the libertarian movement, to which I some days subscribe, believes that if, as Jefferson said, "that government is best which governs least," that the best government is not to have one of the damned things.

3a: Anarcho-Capitalists believe that the modern Coropratist*** system is composed of an interlocking system of market distortions; the two largest and most damaging being Corporations and fiat money. They believe in the abolition of such things. Yes I know; Capitalists who don't worship Corporations! Maybe if you'd bothered to read the last several explanations of this I potsed, I wouldn't be having to explain this -again.- Since laissez faire Capitalism demands a market totally free of distortions (which Corporations, fiat money, chartered monopolies, etc. all are), we work for the abolition of such things.

4: Libertarians, as a rule, believe in keeping politics simple. While we value education, eloquence, etc...we also know from personal experiance that our opponents are all too eager to use confusing, obfuscatory, and obscure language in an effort to "blind with brilliance and baffle with bullshit." We tend, therefore, to shy away from discussions in which it is demanded that we "provide a coherant critique" and other such easily misinterpreted (or re-interpreted as conditions require) requests. We've had the goalposts moved and the strawmen set up so often that we're rather shy about getting into all but the simplest debates, using the bluntest language.

5: We do not believe, for several reasons, in controlling the types of weapons people may posess.
a: To prevent someone from purchasing an inanimate object is to lay the force of the law upon someone who has harmed nobody, effectively punishing him for a crime which has not been, and may never be, committed.
b: We believe, and history shows, that every regime of State-imposed arms control leads in the end to confiscation. Furthermore, said confiscations have always preceeded genocides and forced re-location.**** In short, we believe that a Gov't which wants its' people disarmed, even by degrees, is pretty obviously worried about its' citizens getting pissed off at it for something it is doing or planning to do. We would rather they refrain from doing such things, and the knowledge that stepping too far might result in Washington DC suddenly becoming Sadr City is an excellent motivator of such restraint.
c: We believe that a significant corrolary of the Right to Life is that one has the Right to defend ones' Life by any and every means which are available, and that to deny this corrolary Right is to threaten the Right to Life itself.
d: We believe in equality of opportunity, including opportinity to defend onesself and continue living in the face of armed aggression. Since a firearm is the only means by which the physically weak or numerically inferior may reliably resist the stronger and more numerous, to deny a person this ability is to re-inforce the inequality of opportunity inherant in criminal violence.

6: We do not believe in coercive taxation, again for a number of reasons.

a: It is immoral. We do not make distinctions between actions taken by individuals and actions taken by groups. Since it is immoral for me to take someone else's money or posessions without their permission (theft), it is likewise wrong for a group to do the same. Even if I bought you dinner with a portion of the money I stole, it does not negate the fact that the money I used to buy you dinner was first expropriated at gunpoint. Benefits accrued do not negate the immorailty of the way in which they were paid for. We believe, in other words, that the ends do not justify the means.

b: It stifles voluntary charity. We believe that if people got to keep all of their paychecks, instead of losing a significant percentage off the top, that they would have more money to put into private charities, which we consider a good thing. Believe it or not, we're not a bunch of assholes who want to see people starving, although I'm sure that's a handy charicature. We encourage private charity and want people to be able to afford to donate more to such operations, instead of having 50% of they paycheck stolen to pay for wars in various unpleasant places where we have no buisiness.

c: It encourages waste. As things stand now, the Gov't has no incentive to be frugal, to watch the budget, or to in any way curb its' spending. Such an environment of "free money" encourages pork and gaurantees corruption, because after all, if more money is needed it can simply be stolen. Taxes can be raised or shifted and, of course, more money can always be simply borrowed, created out of nothing, and printed into existance. The deficit incurred as a result of this environment will never be paid off, and has resulting in the sale of American labour, financial solvency, and national treasure to a combine of vicious Corporate/Banking interests who are -not- acting in America's best interest.

7: We dislike democracy because while individuals are intelligent, reasonable, and shrewd, groups are only as smart as their dumbest member. Groups or mobs are easily led, easily decieved, easily directed, and most important, they provide a kind of "face in the crowd" anonymity which permits people acting in a group to do things they would never do as individuals: murder 15-ish million people, for instance. Furthermore, since we believe Rights are absolute and democracy presumes that they are not (being subject, on some level, to the whim of the group), we believe that democracy places the Rights of all its' individual members in great danger. When the 51%, 75%, or 99.9% can vote whatever fate they wish upon the 49%, the 25%, or the .1% (which, under a democratic system, they can), the Lives, Liberties, and Properties of everyone in the system (any of whom can find themselves in the minority on a given issue) are placed in direct, immidiate jeopardy.

8: We do not believe in entangling ourselves, as a nation, with the problems, wars, and intrigues of other countries. This is not isolationism. We believe in trading with other nations, having commerce with them, traveling to them, learning from them...but we do -not- believe in getting involved in their wars or fixing their problems, nor do we believe they should be allowed to do so in the US. We should not be attempting to dictate defensive positions to the Czech Republic and Poland, and the EU should keep their long noses out of our gun-laws, taxation, and Supreme Court.

9: We do not believe that any person or group of people has the right to force any other person or group of people to work against their will. We regard any such scheme as slavery, since work is being expropriated from the worker by threat of force. Payment is irrelevant; the force is what matters. No matter how kind his treatment, how luxurious their quarters, how rich their food, a man who forces others to work for him is enslaving them. Period.
9a: As a corrolary to this, we believe that to steal someone's money or posessions from him is to steal the working time required to obtain that money or the posessions purchased with it. Therefore, the victim is forced retroactively to work for the thief. Ergo the thief is, in a small or large way, attemping to enslave his victim. Involuntary taxation, therefore, is regarded as a form of slavery, although it could be more precisely described as latter-day Serfdom.
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The problem of communication here is paradigmatic. The paradigm of the militia/libertarian movement is Individualist, rights-based, and absolutist. The paradigm which we oppose is Collectivist, outcome-base, and utilitarian. One regards Rights as the absolute, pre-existing posessions***** of every human being, one regards them as mutable and subject to popular opinion.


There, I hope that helps. Try reading and responding to what was said this time, rather than responding to what Morris Dees -tells- you was said, or what you -wish- had been said. I'm not going to bash my head against a brick wall explaining these things again, so either respond to what was said and post some honest responses and questions, or don't bother. And no, questions such as "How are you -not- a bunch of crazies?" and "are you still beating your wife?" don't count. That sort of thing falls into the same catagory as "Do you still have those Weapons of Mass Destruction?"

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*This concept right here is why we haven't started shooting yet. Our ideology forbids us to attack, to initiate the use of force. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, we actually have a principle, as opposed to an approval rating, standing in the way of "pre-emptive warfare."

**You keep insisting that our movement is based solely upon a misreading of Locke, but have never shown how this is so. Indeed, you've conspicuously ignored the vast corpus of non-Locke works which inform modern libertarian thought. This is a hugely irritating pattern: you never show how our politics are supposedly invalid, unworkable, or untenable, you simply insist that they just are, and sweep them aside as inconsequential. We're wrong because you say so; brilliant debate, there. You insist that we have no pre-existing politio-ideological framework, but only after having made sure to conveniantly brush said framework which does, in fact, exist aside as absurd or inconsequential. Here's a reading list for you: L. Neil Smith, Claire Wolfe, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Lysander Spooner, H. L. Menken, Vin Suprynowitz, and Robert A. Heinlein (essays as well as fiction; a bit dry, but worth it). I personally was further influenced by the writings and lives of H. D. Thoreau, Simon de Montfort (the third one, not the first one), Robert Anton Wison (read as political satire, not as fact), Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis.

***NOT Capitalist, as I've attempted to explain to you many times. Kindly stop employing this very convincing (to the unread) but highly inaccurate strawman. The modern world economic system is Corporatist or Mercantilist, in some instances approaching Fascism. It is -not- Capitalist.

****Not ever confiscation presages a genocide. However, every genocide of the 20th Century and prior has been preceeded by some form of arms confiscation.

*****Man has the Rights which he may physically defend without initiating force. Therefore I enjoy a Right to Life, because I can defend my life physically without starting the fight; the other person could attack me. However, I do not have a similar right to free healthcare or a new TV, because for me to secure such things would require me to initiate the use of force, by stealing someone else's money(taxes) or goods (TV) to get it.

The_Dunedan, how enthusiastic do you think that the ten percent wealthiest in this country would be about your political platform, compared to this one?:
I can never embrace your philosophy and vision because it maintains a status quo that will only grow stronger and shift even more of the 30.8 percent of total US assets that ninety percent of us have ended up with, even after a century of social, gender and racial equality reform.

How could you ideas ever reverse the present inequality of the distribution of wealth and political influence, or compete with a present day equivalent of results anywhere approximating this.....it actually happened...and it's high tide was the passage of the Social Security Act....an Act that I believe was only accomplished under Roosevelt because of the influence and accomplishments of this man:

Checkmark, already law. Everyone must pass muster under federal rules to pass the background check. The federal guidelines are much more stringent than the state requirements in all the states but a couple.

Checkmark, already law. If your background isn't perfectly squeaky clean the federal government has up to 10 extra days to investigate you before you can walk out with any gun be it a long gun or handgun.

Checkmark, already law and thanks to the recent deal between the NRA and the Democrats more information will be available when you apply to purchase a handgun or long gun.

Checkmark, already law. When you purchase a firearm the make, model and serial number is recorded on a form that includes your name, address and other personal information. The gun dealer keeps his copy FOREVER. One copy is sent to the state and another is sent to the BATF. The state keeps their copy FOREVER. I'm not sure how long the BATF keeps their copy but you can bet it's probably FOREVER also. I've also personally heard the dealer tell the person he's talking to on the phone during my background check the make, model and serial number of the gun I'm purchasing so somewhere there is yet another record of my purchase.

Well my point about consistency pertains more to the acquisition of guns than the use and management of them. I think it would be ideal if someone living in a state with waiting periods who wants to buy a gun for "irresponsible" purposes weren't able to simply cross a state line and acquire one much easier. As I believe is the case now.

Host,
People could come up with scenarios for films that would make it seem quite urgent to make gun ownership totally prohibited. Fact is, we do not live in a mythical world where Russians are bad and Americans are good. I find the prospect of living under the tyranny of American militias just as frightening as the prospect of living under the tyranny of my own government or any other.

And I'm not at all comfortable with what you're advocating here. Who exactly are we supposed to be killing? Are we to go into wealthy neighborhoods and just start shooting rich people? Which ones? Corporate executives? Which ones? Politicians? Which ones?

And what then?

dunedan:

first thanks for post 74. i'm not sure that i've seen an overview like that from you or anyone else here, but who knows maybe i did and forgot about it.

let me address a few of the snippy side points first before going into the main thing.

1. i dont "despise" right libertarians. i oppose them politically. there's a difference.

2. i reference locke as a heuristic. the separations that run through your post can be found in the second treatise.
i dont remember saying that locke's is the ONLY text you or anyone involved with this politics has read--it just happens that it fits and is a text that a lot of folk have had to read and so i reference it.
this is a messageboard. arguments require certain tactical choices be made, and one of them is in the assumptions concerning what folk may have read so that if you are inclined to reference texts (it's a tick of mine from graduate school that i cant seem to get rid of) this tactical consideration shapes which texts you choose.

hell, if i thought that many folk had read the illuminatus trilogy, i'd use that.

ayn rand? come on, you cannot be serious.

3. it's kinda funny that you would reference morris dees in all this. what's the problem with the splc exactly? i assume you're still pissed off about the "false patriots" study? i read it when it came out--it was interesting enough, but was hardly a depth analysis.
sara diamond is much better.

anyway, that piece came out in the period just before oklahoma city. the cluster of micro-groups that dees outlines includes some of those fine fellows from the christian identity movement, and at the time there was little in the way of discontinuity between christian identity and much militia materials, particularly in their radio emanations. since ok city, i expect that things have changed--i know that there has been an attempt to distance militia groups from the racist zanies. fine: that's certainly preferable to the reverse.

anyway, here goes.
there are three basic areas of disagreement.

first thing is that it makes little sense to frame all positions through the question of "rights"---particularly as you do it---your positions seems to rely on a notion of "natural law" which i take to be little more than a christian fantasy. at best, it is a normative construct that enables a certain type of critique to unfold of existing legal systems. so its a critical device. but it does not exist. so claims that people are endowed naturally with certain rights is arbitrary. i think that human beings have dignity simply because they are human and that if there is a moral a priori it is that the socio-economic order should operate in a way that respects the dignity of all human beings. capitalism is not such an order.

2. i dont think you understand contemporary capitalism at all.
this:
and this

are mostly jibberish.
the term substitutions make no sense.
corporatism is a social order built around a conception of a "natural" division of labor. it was a big part of catholic social philosophy in the 1920s-1930s and is one of the reasons why the church was not at all an outspoken critic of fascism. it has nothing to do with the present state of affairs.
mercantilism is a description of the mode of exchange particular to the british empire of the late 17th-early 18th centuries.
fascism is a political form rooted in a version of radical nationalism. it is not an economic organization: it is a political ideology. some versions of fascism can be tied to corporatist ideology--mussolini's for example--and some were far more amenable to capitalist business as usual, so long as certain ideological conformities were put in place (hitler's)....some were more internally repressive and backward looking (franco)--the list can go on.

the present state of affairs is a mutation of capitalism. there have been a number of mutations in the overall organization of capitalism. what that means is that capitalism is an abstract term which encompasses a series of discrete forms. so it is a particular type of noun, one that designates a series rather than an object. we live under a form of capitalism. that you do not like it does not mean that it is not capitalism. i do not like it either, but not for the same reasons as you do--but at least i can call it what it is. you cant. this is not a tactical advantage for you: it makes much of what you say seem incoherent.

this is one of the central problems. in the interest of full disclosure, i dont know why, but whatever: i come out of a marxist background. while i am not in any strict sense still a marxist, i hold that certain claims developed either by marx or through the tradition are correct. one of them has to do with the relation of a coherent critique of the existing order to any possible radical politics--that the former gives the latter its orientation. that the types of social organization one can advocate will change as the overall situation within capitalism changes. most importantly, if you are incoherent about the critique your politics will necessarily follow suit.

because you do not understand contemporary capitalism at all, it is possible to advocate surreal positions--your hostility to "government"--which i assume means the state, the modern state. well, dunedan, if you oppose the modern state then you oppose modern capitalism. modern capitalism is only functional because of continuous state intervention, direct and indirect.
i could go into how this works, has worked since world war 2, but it'd make this too long. another post, if there is a debate about this.

another way:
when you say for example that you "oppose corporations" what exactly do you mean? that you oppose the curious american legal fiction of the corporate person? that you oppose firms that are organized bureaucratically? that you oppose firms that operate on a scale beyond point x (where is that?)....somewhere lurking it seems there is hayek--hayek opposed MONOPOLY because he understood monopolies as necessarily irrational. are you mapping that onto corporations in general?

fiat money as opposed to what? what money is not fiat money? gold? how is the value of gold not every bit as arbitrary as that of paper? money is a medium of exchange, a social expression. like any other, it is convention-based.

it seems to me that what anarcho-libertarians or right libertarians want really is a system of small producers engaged in face-to-face economic relations. small producers too small to require bureaucratic organization. producers which engage in types of production that do not require amounts of capital that exceed an individual or small group's capacity. i assume that you oppose stock.

i think the main question in thinking about a radical alternative to the existing order has to do with how various types of activities are controlled and who controls them. i think your understanding of democracy is wholly problematic, not only in itself, but more because excluding demoratic forms of control over production (say) leaves you with nothing coherent to propose as and alternative form of self-organization, no way of thinking about hierarchy (for example)--no way of imagining a coherent alternative social arrangement, in short--so you have no choice but to advocate a kind of neo-1790s system. if your natural law conceptions run in this direction (who knows, they could...) then this network of small producers would embody an organic division of labor...because that division of labor is organic, it woudl require no oversight....because it is organic, its outlines would probably have to be written into law--and so it turns out that your position could easily become corporatist, in the sense in which folk who are not of your political context understand the term (see above).

your position on taxation presupposes that it is not legitimate for a group to vote taxes onto itself because it is in itself immoral to redistribute wealth. the ONLY way that makes any sense is in the context of your corporatist shangri-la of little producers. but even that would depend on the far more complex system/situations within which these small producers operate. on that, there is nothing to say--if the division of labor is organic, then the consequences of it are necessary so as to uneven distribution of wealth, you;d have nothing so say. it wouldnt even be a problem. class stratification could easily exist in your fantasy alternative order: but the effects of this would be even harder to address than they are now, because you would assume--like the conventional populist conservative types today do--that the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, blah blah blah. on that basis alone, i hope that you folk never get anywhere near actual power. there's more to say on this, but i'd refer you to host's post above instead, which moves in this direction.

but you say that you oppose collective action. you oppose the idea of the collective. well, to my mind that is just a way of affirming powerlessness. and it is incoherent.

your critique of democracy seems to me absurd.

in general, i see in your position a dangerous alternative to the present order, one in which many of the worst features would be retained--not only that, but they would be transposed away from the political, into a hallucinated "natural order" and there would be no feedback loops that could address this because, well, there's no account made in your post of how such a system would work--only that democracy is bad.

that's a short version (believe it or not) os why i think your position problematic.

that said, though, thanks for taking the time to post an overview.
i'd be interested to see what you make of the response.

This thought is wrong. you cannot buy a handgun from out of state. What you CAN do, is say you found a good deal on a gun in virginia, but live in new mexico. What HAS to happen is that the seller ships the gun to a federally licensed dealer in new mexico, who then performs the NICS background check before you can pick up the gun.

I started to try to read your post, but then got lost, as usual, because it makes no sense to me. I see a roller coaster logic to your debate that I can't keep up with. You call this jibberish, at least with dunedans basic layout, so I'll call yours jibberish.

You've edited the post since I started to respond and I see that you removed the 'redistribution of wealth' part. May I ask why?

Thank you. That's a great and respectful reminder checkpoint for how we all can sit here and have respectful discussions. :thumbsup:

Here's the thing about "the politics" as dksuddeth and The_Dundan see them and how they relates to the thread topic.

The political order you guys seem to support isn't something that could be accomplished by a political party - it is so different from the history, intention, and reality of our government that creating it would necessarily entail a revolution. It's not that I think that all of the positions therein are bad, just that we should label them accurately.

If that political order is the motivation for wanting to have guns, then you aren't really looking to defend yourself at all, because defense implies that you are protecting a status, or trying to return to a former status. It never existed. What you're really talking about is reserving the ability to overthrow the government by force. Again, that's not defense, it's revolution.

And P.S., the posts between The_Dunedan and roachboy are fascinating. Thanks guys.

dk: i am not sure what to do about your inability to read my posts. i write them quite fast and try to be clear about how they work. given that this is a messageboard and that i, like everyone else, has to balance playing here with doing other things, i am dont see what i can really do about it.

but the term jibberish i used for specific reason and i explained those reasons--it referred specifically to the "this is not capitalism" argument. it did not mean "i do not understand your post" it meant "almost every word you use here you use in the sense of a private language--these words have meanings out there in the world--here are the meanings--here's what you seem to be doing with them--result: chaos. translation: jibberish"

there is a difference. maybe try reading harder, dk. i dont know what else to say about that.

as for the redistrubution of wealth thing--it was a fragment that was pushed down in the post as i wrote it...so i didnt see it until i posted the whole thing. the main point is still there, however, in the post as it stands. i just took down that sentence or two.

I have found both Dunedan and roachboy's posts to be very clear. And I concur with ubertuber that the exchange has been very informative and invigorating.

mixedmedia, I was simply sharing with you an illustration of the reasoning against providing government, or any known central location......ownership lists and addresses of those with guns...it makes it easy for an opponent to confiscate the weapons and to locate and harass those who resist a confiscation order, whether it comes internally from government, or externally from an invader/occupier. In the example from the movie "Red Dawn", I did not intend to link or compare details of the actual storyline to this discussion, other than as a way to share what I knew of the mindset of anti gun control advocates......

....and I am not advocating violence.....I am saying that it is well past the time, considering historical comparisons and the recent level of deterioration and it's pace....of wealth equality and executive branch enthusiasm for "preserving and protection the constitution", for there to at least be more talk of violent revolt. I am saying that the movement initiated by Huey P. Long in Louisiana in the late 1920's, and the "progress on the ground" that it made...people could see it, feel it, live in it, even ride on it....and it was all the more influential since it occurred during the depths of a depression....that Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" program and his growing national popularity, intimidated the patrician gate keeper FDR into backing SSI and the other social and economic recovery programs that FDR is credited or condemned for creating.

FDR, an advocate of "balancing the budget" as his top priority, even after the onset of depression and before the 1932 presidential election, adopted as little of Huey Long's platform as was required to keep his 1936 reelection prospects viable. He called Huey Long, "one of the two most dangerous men in America". It is Huey Long who has so many pages devoted to his ideas in the "History of the SSI administration" website, as I linked to, two posts back, not FDR's ideas.....

I am saying that we are a nation that has lost it's way....eulogizing Reagan upon his death....shutting down the capital and shutting out the media from all other subjects, for the entire week that included his 2004 funeral, as if he had done the things for us that Huey Long did for the quality of life in Louisiana.

In the last part of the article linked below, there is this:
<b>Consider how many of us admire the labor union busting and progressive income tax annihilating president who initiated, in 1981, our present course of declining labor union membership and economic inequality, Ronald Reagan.....</b>
I am saying that the blatant usurping of our bill of rights protections by the current executive branch is the icing on the cake....the breaking point, if there was to be one, and obviously.....there isn't one.

To argue seriously that the myth of the US as a "land of prosperity", vs. the reality that the bottom 150 million own only 2-1/2 percent of all US assets, along with the now 26 year old trend towards owning even less....I tried to provide a visual aid....is not a catalyst or justification for violent reaction....yet.....especially combined with the recent terrorizing of the citizenry to impress upon them the justification to gut their 4th amendment protections and transfer habeas corpus guarantees from the courts to the jailers, DOES NOT JUSTIFY OR EVEN REQUIRE A POPULAR, VIOLENT RESPONSE AS A REMEDY....just because there is no sign of one, is IMO, a mistake.

What we can say, reacting to our observations, is that claims that gun owners will "know when it is time" to take up their arms to protect their property and constitutional are false.....they have ample justification for having already done so. If it is "not bad enough yet"....with half the population reduced to owning next to nothing, and with key constitutional rights protections gone.....the right against unreasonable search and the right to a timely hearing of the evidence against you before an impartial magistrate, with an attorney at your side, even if you cannot afford an attorney....<b>what would further have to happen to make it "bad enough"?</b>

Even at the height of the Vietnam war, with involuntary US military conscription taking millions of young males off American streets and inserting them into a contrived (phony Gulf of Tonkin provocation) war that the government knew as far back as 1965 was "unwinnable", a US government campaign that failed even to persuade the South Vietnamese counterparts of young American draftees to fight and risk death for.....even when US deaths exceeded 50,000, <b>I am the only person that I have ever met or personally known of (not via media reports)....who resisted by refusing to register for selective service.</b>

My resistance at 18 years old was counter to everything that I had been taught. My logic included an opinion that anything other than a silent, stealth, resistance would probably result in being detained by the authorities who conscripted so many of my contemporaries to their deaths and who so emphatically resisted Cronkite's 1968 determination that the war could not be won, and the attempts by Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon papers.

My experience resisting confirmed to me that open public resistance results in a high probability that it will be a "one time" effort, and that he who resists in subtle "low key" ways will live to fight another day. Today, I see no resistance, at all, and no expectation that any significant number, especially gun owners will "know" when it is time.

I predict that the US, with it's growing wealth inequity, with the highest incarceration rate in the devloped world, and with it's erosion of protected rights, is past being ripe for violent resistance. I predict that it probably won't happen until the government and the wealthiest complete ongoing steps to "lock us down" to the point where violent resistance is not even a viable option.....which is the best argument for "if not now.....when"?

I predict that the best possible outcome is the rise to power of a leader similar to Huey Long, and the worst...... I'm hoping that we've already experienced it between 2000 and 2008.....