Back in April 2008, presidential aspirant Barack Obama had something to say about working-class voters living in industrial cities gutted by unemployment; Americans who’d lost faith in the federal government. “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” It was a “pay no attention to that elitist behind the curtain” moment that could have proven decisive. But didn’t. Even so, the future president’s remark set the tone for anti-Tea Party rhetoric to follow . . .
Left-leaning commentators tried to paint the Tea Party—and, by extension, the Republican party—as a bunch of home-grown, God-crazed, gun-clinging, proto-terrorists. What’s a terrorist? Anyone who’s armed who doesn’t agree with the Obama-led crusade to “progress America” through government policy, and felt free to say so whilst daring to mention the fact that they were armed against tyranny. Apparently. With the Patriot Act in play—complete with a secret, unaccountable terrorist watch list—the increased hysteria made it seem like America was teetering on the edge of “soft” martial law. Conveniently enough. For some.
The liberal media’s Tea Party smear campaign peaked when the feds arrested Hutaree militia members for a murder plot against local police. When the case disappeared down a rathole (something to do with the ATF and an FBI mole), the pro-gun control, anti-Tea Party fraternity began to lose interest in the whole militia thing. When spree killer Jared Lee Loughner turned out to be an incoherent nutcase (rather than a right-wing nutcase), the Tea Party-as-blood-thirsty-revolutionaries meme gradually faded into gray.
We’ve not heard much from the Tea Party of late. The liberals who sounded the alarm about allegedly traitorous Americans have also been silent. And yet the conflict between the two fundamentally different points of view has not been resolved. Nor will it be. On the one hand, a solid core of God-fearing gun-owning Americans see the federal government as an out-of-control bully whose endless extortion plot threatens to leave them destitute. On the other hand, an intellectual elite see Uncle Sam as the key to personal and social salvation.
The liberals and RINOs defending and extending federal power have enormous resources, and every reason to protect them. Not to go all Chance the gardener, the federal bureaucracy and its supporters can resist the Tea Party’s call for smaller government just by being there. But when push comes to shove, the feds and their growing army of acolytes rely on an entire alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies—from the Department of Education’s SWAT team (I kid you not) to the Department of Homeland Security—to make sure Uncle Sam’s will will be done.
By contrast, the Tea Partiers have . . . guns. As Martin Albright has pointed out many times, Red Dawn rhetoric isn’t strategically credible. There’s no way private citizens are going to defeat the coordinated efforts of Uncle Sam’s huge force of well-armed, well-trained agents. All that talk about Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves against government tyranny—an argument that gun control advocates use to paint average gun owners as dangerously paranoid extremists—is purely symbolic. Or is it?
What if the the Obama administration wins its battle for a health care mandate? Will Americans roll over for Uncle Sam’s directive that every single U.S. citizen must purchase health care (or have free health care from the people forced to pay for it)? Remember: under this new federal legislation, citizens who don’t buy health care face fines. If they don’t pay that fine, they’ll be arrested. By people with guns. Federal law enforcement officers. Which raises the all-important point: would Americans ever take up arms against their own government?
Yes, they would. Not over a federal directive to buy health insurance. But something. There’s a point at which the average American says, nope, that’s it, I’m done. The government will take no more from me. Or, I will take no more from it. I don’t give a damn that it’s “my” government. It doesn’t matter if I voted for the people in power or against them. It’s no longer about voting. It’s about freedom. And I will not surrender my freedom to the federal government. I will defend it. With a gun.
This is the “insurrection” that the liberals and the liberal media and yes the RINOs fear. Uncle Sam’s minions know that federal agents can kick the ass of any individual American, regardless of how good he or she is with an AR. But they also know that the ruthless suppression of a few dozen well-publicized “freedom fighters” could undermine the legitimacy of the entire federal government. What if the people at Waco hadn’t been so wacky?
Millions of “normal” Americans reserve the right to take up arms against their own government. They believe their constitutional right to keep and bear arms ensures a balance of power that keeps the federal government honest. Well, attentive. In this they are not wrong. In fact, whenever you hear liberals whining about the potential of an armed insurrection by gun-clinging Americans it’s an excellent indication that our flag still flies over The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave. Which is just as well, really.
York, PA – A statewide gun-violence-prevention group has taken issue with a recent public statement by State Rep. Scott Perry, R-Carroll Township, calling it “insurrectionist.”
But Perry said his remarks are being taken out of context, and he wasn’t referring to armed insurrection so much as to general gun-owners’ rights.
A May 30 story in the Allentown Morning Call states that Perry made the following statement in a “recent interview”:
“We must be able not only to hunt but to protect ourselves from an overbearing government that does not do the will of the people.”
Max Nacheman, director of CeaseFirePA, said that statement amounts to an implicit endorsement of armed action against the government.
Nacheman said his organization consists of 20,000 members statewide. He said CeaseFirePA doesn’t back any policy that further limits use or ownership of firearms in Pennsylvania. Rather, they campaign for effective enforcement of current law, as well as measures such as closing a perceived loophole in the state’s concealed-carry permit law and mandatory reporting of lost or stolen handguns.
He said Perry’s comments show his ideological sympathy with groups that advocate armed resistance as a legitimate recourse for government policy they disagree with.
“That’s what this insurrectionist movement is about,” Nacheman said “Instead of using a vote to make their voices heard, they’re talking about using a gun to make their voices heard. That’s the antithesis of what this country’s about.”
Perry said he made that statement at an annual Second Amendment rally in Harrisburg last month.
He said he wasn’t talking about any imminent plan to overthrow the existing government. He was referring to private gun ownership as a kind of insurance policy should there ever be a genuine need to resist ruling powers.
“What if there was a coup and the government wasn’t directly elected and it was taken over by a dictatorial power or something?” he said. “You need a means to defend yourself and your life and your liberty.”
That CeasfirePA dude reminds me of the Jedi mind tricks video of Obama, trying to convince use the American Revolution never happened.
Armed Insurrection is what America is about.
Dien Bien Phu.
I’m not complying with the mandate, should it survive. I guess I’m a goner.
“That’s the antithesis of what this country’s about.”
I think he needs a history lesson.
Notwithstanding the question whether National Guardsmen or the US military would fire on its own citizens, there is absolutely no way a citizen militia, no matter how well organized, could effectively defend against the best trained, equipped and motivated military in history. More heavily armed and battle-hardened insurgents and guerillas in Iraq and Afghanistan are easily dispatched in head-to-head firefights, even when the fight is initiated at the time and place of their choosing.
But what an armed citizenry has is a fighting chance. And if I have a fighting chance, I might choose to fight. If I am unarmed, I have no choice. I must submit.
Just ask the protestors in Damascus if they could only have a fighting chance.
I hear you Blammo, better to fight and die than live as a slave. (Actually better to fight and run away and live to fight another day) Now regarding the well motivated military, I’m not sure how well motivated everyone in our military would be to attack there fellow citizens. You would have military units that fall on both sides. Also regarding not being able to defeat the best trained and equipped military in the world, that’s what the British thought as well back during the revolutionary war.
Little know fact: some National Guard units refused to confiscate gun in post-Katrina Louisiana.
This is the bit that needs further exploration, says I. Ok, my buddies and I couldn’t pull out our collection of pawn shop Mosin Nagants and Minute-of-Bambi 30-06’s and take on the National Guard with any degree of success. But the National Guard is made from some of those very buddies, and it’s certainly plausible that they’ll refuse their orders when the guys in charge go overboard.
The leftist always said this and that we were losing in Iraq. I always got a kick out of that one.
When did mike vanderbough start posting at TTAG?
Time to bring out the well worn quotes…
“The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized.” Col. Jeff Cooper
“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” George Mason Co-author of the Second Amendment
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike especially when young, how to use them.” Senator Richard Henry Lee
And, we’ll close with the reason this discussion is necessary:
“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so”. Ronald Regan
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Mao Zedong, Little Red Book (1964).
Mao said alound what American politicians would never admit. Mao also said that “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Hey, I despised the fat Commie bastard, but he was right on both counts. Personally, I prefer war without bloodshed, and I guess that most people would. And let’s face facts, if it ever comes down to a war between the American people and our own government, not some phony Turner Diaries war imagined by the wacko militias but a real honest to God shooting match, then the whole world will be totally FUBAR.
Why does the battle of Athens come to mind…
Just as the various underground movements injured the nazis, if the time came guerrilla warfare would be the effective means of insurrection, bar none. I will refrain from further comment as it may incriminate me someday, the way “our” government is heading.
Typical canards used by those advocating a liberal agenda:
Illegal immigration: “You can’t deport 20 million people.”
Well, how do you know 20 million people can’t be deported? Ever tried to deport 20 million people? Better yet, illegals self-deport if they can’t get welfare or find work.
“There is no way an armed citizenry can take on the US military, the finest fighting machine in the world.”
I tend to think American soldiers would have problems shooting at their own citizens.
That aside, why would citizens take on the American military head on? The US army has a huge and very complicated logistical tail that would be impossible to protect from 20 million gun owners.
There is little chance that the tea party will move to armed inssurection. It’s the left that is mostly to engage in political violence. What will the left do when Obama gets defeated next year? I think you will violence in the core that will exceed the levels that occured after the MLK assisnation in 1968.
I have no concerns, paranoid or otherwise, that Obama will cancel the elections or ignore the result. He will take his defeat as an excuse to get out of the responsibilities of office.
Anyone who thinks that a guerilla movement cannot win doesn’t know much about warfare. Can the insurgency in Afghanistan stand toe to toe with the US military? Of course not, but it doesn’t have to.
What is the most tactically important intangible in warfare? Initiative. You either have it, and you’re winning, or you’re fighting to get it. The US has lost all initiative in Afghanistan and lost it at least eight years ago. We’re no closer to ‘winning’ now than we were in 2003.
The US and NATO forces in Central Asia are simply sitting in a force protective posture taking pot shots (and sometimes serious attacks) from an ever stronger opposition. The government in Kabul is a joke and it’s control barely extends beyond that city. Moral of US troops drops every day they sit in their FOBs taking mortar and HMG fire. Heavy, sustained ground offensives are off the table because of political reasons. This is the case under both administrations. The insurgency, meanwhile, captures more and more hearts and minds each day.
Why? Because they force the occupier to use tactics that inevitably will cause civilian casualties and drive them away from the occupation friendly government and into the arms of the people working to drive said occupier out.
War is ultimately a political enterprise. Tactical victory on the battlefield is just noise before defeat/withdrawl if the political machine that started the conflict cannot figure out a way to end it POLITICALLY. That’s the key word there, hence the capital letters. People get all caught up in weapons systems and tactical doctrine and they forget what war really is. War is a way of forcing a political settlement favorable to your country upon another people by force of arms. Seems people here have never heard of Carl von Clausewitz.
I love my country and am a true patriot. I also believe that our population is changing and with this change the ideals and mindset of the general population. Many view (I believe even Obama) the constitution as a relic that needs replacing. I disagree, we should hold to it more firmly now than ever. Our forefathers knew this day would one day come to our nation, you can hear it in every quote they made. They made sure the protections were in place to insure “we the people” would have a fighting chance against tyranny if the need ever became real. Slowly but steadily the Federal and State governments have eroded our 2cnd amendment rights. The National Firearms Act in my humble opinion is blatantly unconstitutional. Many of us who love this country and the constitution are military veterans who have also been trained. We have served in special forces and seen combat. We know how to train others and use hit and move tactics as needed to amplify the most damage possible. There will be a gun behind every blade of grass if that time ever comes, I pray it never does as should you.
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