A long time ago back at Eternity Road, in connection with the "McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act," I wrote:
In his fine 1967 book The American Tradition, Dr. Clarence Carson noted that liberal opinion about freedom had settled on a rather stunted view: that free speech plus a voting mechanism provided all the freedom the nation could ever require. Of course, that view leaves everything else to be legislated, regulated, and taxed to the hilt -- an electorally ratified totalitarianism in which everything not compulsory is forbidden -- but that's all right because we're still free to complain about it....Should our legislators ever presume to pass a law criminalizing "hate speech," and should a case under such a law reach the Supreme Court, would the Justices uphold the law, taking refuge once more in "international opinion"? Given recent developments, it's hard to be confident that they wouldn't.
Liberal attachment to free speech and open elections has always been shaky. Herbert Marcuse's famous essay "Repressive Tolerance" has beckoned to them from the ideological darkness for forty years. Considering how far they'll go to overturn an election in which they came out second best, just how much would it surprise anyone were they to use "evolving standards," "living document" and "clear and present danger" themes to attack what remains of the right of free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment? And given the demonstrated proclivities of supposedly conservative Republican legislators, who want to retain their power and perquisites quite as much as their liberal Democratic counterparts, how much resistance to the notion could we expect the GOP to mount?
Well, concerning that final question, now we know:
Last month during a town hall meeting in Phoenix, AZ, with Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a Marine by the name of Blaine Cooper voiced his disdain for the Senator, along with other Congressional leaders, and Barack Obama, in a patriotic and impassioned speech. Cooper stated that the aforementioned guilty parties have turned their back on the American people, values, and core beliefs, even so far as aiding terrorists. While McCain stood there grinning like an idiot and posturing like an impatient five year old, Cooper went on to state that while representatives like McCain were elected by their constituents to protect them from the enemy, they have, in fact, become the enemy.To finish off this truly admirable speech, Cooper said that if he were elected to office, he would try McCain and others for treason against the United States of America. With the exception of McCain grinning like the elitist RINO that he is and a few liberal trolls giving the thumbs down and booing, several of the town hall members erupted in applause at Cooper's speech. The Senator responded to Cooper’s speech with the same condescending demeanor he displayed during the possible Syrian intervention.
While his town hall speech in Phoenix is earning him widespread support and recognition among Conservatives, the Leftist regime we are all ruled under has certainly kept its eye on Cooper. According to Police State USA, Cooper was contacted by local police and interrogated by the FBI for remarks made on Facebook referring to the federal government as being a "police state." During his 45 minute interrogation with the FBI regarding his "questionable" Facebook comments, they informed him that the alternative to him not coming down to the local police station was for them to raid his home. In addition, the FBI pulled up a file of every known Facebook post Cooper has made, as well as information about his wife and parents.
So, what the FBI does to address comments about them operating as a police state -- is to act like a police state! Makes perfect sense. Luckily for Cooper, once he was deemed not a "threat," he was released. Who gave the directive to investigate Blaine Cooper? And why?
But of course.
I keep saying it louder and louder, but it sometimes seems that no one is listening:
Your rights are insignificant,
If not antithetical to that desire.
Indeed, the whole of the federal machine is behind the consolidation of total power in Washington. This morning's news could hardly provide more evidence:
- Using a disconnected warrant, Maryland state police seized a reporter's notes on corruption in the Department of Homeland Security.
- A prominent Democrat Congressman has called for Obama to usurp the power of the border from Congress.
- Yet another Congressional Democrat has called Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act sedition. He's echoing or being echoed by numerous "private citizens," several major Websites, and a cable-TV news outlet.
- Forget voting our way out of our current mess: the Census Bureau has just announced that we're outnumbered.
Does any Gentle Reader of Liberty's Torch think any of that was coincidental?
It's all out in the open now, Gentle Reader. The forces of totalitarianism are advancing swiftly. The Democrats are the mobile army in the field; with a few honorable exceptions, the Republicans provide the mere appearance of an opposition. The two groups share a single agenda: more power for each and for all.
Partisan commentators who claim that we should support all Republican candidates unquestioningly as the only hope for the defense of freedom are either unable to admit that the GOP has sold its soul for a piece of the action, or are in on the game. There are a few nonpartisan commentators clear-eyed enough to see what's happening before us all, but their influence pales before that of the heavily promoted partisans. At any rate, what with there now being more recipients of government largesse than non-recipients, and the treasuries of the state governments having become dependent upon revenue from the federal coffers, the vote has been effectively neutered.
What, then, must we do?
It's a grim question for a Saturday morning in October. Only three paths forward remain:
- Fight,
- Flight,
- Submission.
I don't much like any of them. Indeed, I'm too old and infirm to fight. Fleeing to some chaotic Third World refuge seems to me to be just a form of surrender. But just sitting here and continuing to orate is like asking to become the next Blaine Cooper. I have no smallest doubt that his experience is merely better publicized than many others.
What, then, must I do?
I write fiction as well as these op-ed essays. My most popular stories are about heroes of freedom and justice and a uniquely, completely free society. In aggregate, they've sold about 100,000 copies. Their readers write to me from all the corners of the globe, mainly to express their yearning for persons like my protagonists and to ask if I know of anyone like that in real life. I can't tell them that this or that public figure was the model for Louis Redmond, or Christine D'Alessandro, or Armand or Althea Morelon. I can only commiserate with them.
At least such stories provide a temporary escape, and a vision of something better. But such visions are of the fantastic. There's nothing like them in the here and now; should the United States fall into open, outright totalitarianism, no one alive today will live to see anything like them.
Free speech is being squelched by intimidation.
The vote has been rendered ineffective by government largesse.
We're steadily being deprived of the chance of success by force of arms.
The masks are off.
The walls are closing in.
Someone please tell me differently.
I'll be waiting patiently.
Hopefully sober.
20 comments:
We are headed for societal collapse based upon our insane fiscal policies.
The government will not be able to afford the very basics, not to mention the trillions in wealth redistribution.
In fact, Levin's 'Liberty Amendments' addresses such a situation. That is a potential way out, perhaps the only one.
The masks are off.
The walls are closing in.
Someone please tell me differently.
I'll be waiting patiently.
Hopefully sober.
I could tell you the sky is green and you would look outside and know that I was not telling the truth. There is a basic part of human nature that makes it inevitable that when people (in general) have the opportunity to get something they want for little or no effort, they will. One could look at it as a hangover of evolution. Most (if not all) of human progress has been by people wanting something for less effort than current methods allow.
This society has passed the tipping point. We have more debt than we could hope to pay off, the parasites outnumber the produces, and the one thing that gave this society a chance (the ethics, morals, ideas), The Constitution has been overturned by those in power. Truly, the Constitution HAS been overturned. If you look at all of the excesses we have today, they are ALL in contravention of the Constitution.
There is only one possible outcome. This society must collapse. One of the great things though is that information is so widely spread that we are unlikely to lose knowledge of what we had and what went wrong. It is possible, that in the rebuilding of society, we will be able to shake the dust off of the constitution, fix the parts that let it be pushed aside by those whose only desire is power and end up with something better than we had before.
That is until the next time.
Resist.
However you can.
No matter what.
The game has been rigged since at least Wilson and the Federal Reserve Act.
We are now reaping what was sown.
The Republicans and the Democrats slowly merged into one party with two faces. The idea of America as a land of liberty died a while ago, we've just been coasting on the remains of the massive engine of human creatively.
It'll end. All political empires end, especially one as moribund as ours. And make no mistake, it is an empire, composed of 50 states ruled by the Imperial power of Washington.
Indeed, I'm too old and infirm to fight.
Who is Samuel Whittemore?
Samuel Whittemore (July 27, 1694 - February 3, 1793) was an English-American farmer and soldier. He was eighty years of age when he became the oldest known colonial combatant in the American Revolutionary War (1775-83).
Well, good for Samuel Whittemore. Not all of us are able to do any such thing.
It is a plurality that changes the world. The tyrants are very afraid of we who will never bend a knee. We all have to stick together, never say die, never give up.
The instant you understand your sovereignty, believe, you become more powerful than any tyrant or system of tyranny.
Fight.
Fight.
The herald sent by Xerxes, the Persian king, to the Greek camp entreated: "Deliver up your arms. If you resist, his host of archers will release upon you missiles in numbers sufficient to blot out the sun”. To which Διηνέκης (Dienekes) a Spartan hoplite remarked: “Then we shall fight in the shade”.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!
Dook to the example of the Russia Dissidents - Sibnyavsky and Daniil, Andrei Amalrik, Vladimir Bukovsky, Shcharansky, and most of all Solzhenitsyn. Also a few dogged Christians. Such men showed us how to speak the truth and defy even established totalitarian power. Why should we blanch before speaking back to wannabe-totalitarians not yet established? Amalrik told us it is harder for them to disappear the public dissenter than the unknown. And it taken, make a noise. Solzhenitsyn's Oak and the Calf has much practical experience on this problem.
-Rurik
Fight - Resist - Expose - in all ways possible
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace.
The war is actually begun!(as stated above)
The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!
Our brethren are already in the field!(items noted in the post)
Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, ......" I will continue to pray for the best while prepping for the worst. My position is close akin to those few yet faithful Jewish expatriates who, from captivity, returned to rebuild Jerusalem - one hand building while one hand on their sword.
As King George became ever more abusive of the American colonists, those who would oppose him spent their energies preparing. Not preparing in the sense of stocking food, but preparing to defend themselves. They created local militias to defend against Indian attack and the King's troops. You want to be proactive? Build your local defensive community. None of us has much chance in the coming maelstrom if we stand alone. But if our neighbors come to our aid when the Federals send their jack-booted thugs (JBT), we have great hope. Remember that the JBT are not used to having opposing forces behind them. If your local defensive committee can make that happen, everything will change. As patriots, our objective is not to start the fight, but to guarantee we finish it. If the maelstrom takes the form of societal collapse, we still need to defend ourselves in numbers. The local defensive committee will be ready to do that too. These groups take time to build, so start now. As a writer, you persuade people for a living, so make this your mission. The maelstrom may come or the JBT may appear in your neighborhood, but you will have been responsible for saving your self, your community and our nation (as the Founders intended).
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace²but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry
March 1775
My patriot friends the shooting part of the second revolutionary war has not yet begun, and like the first revolutionary war, the liberty can only be saved by force of arms.
@Porretto: you can keep writing. The pen is not mightier than the sword, but it - and yours in particular - is extremely useful.
More on the masks coming off and our taxpayer-paid public servants turning into vicious masters here:
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE PROF THREATENS ONLINE CRITICS WITH FBI/NCIS
http://xxtwitterwarcommittee.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/nwcprofthreatenscriticswithfbi/
Resist like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? No. You had better resist like Chris Dorner.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lamented that those around him did not resist Enough! Exact Quote:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Solzhenitsyn had it exactly right.
And even the old and infirm can play a part. In Northern Ireland I saw old people and children carrying communications, bomb parts and ammunition for the IRA. They were a nightmare for the security forces.
As was the widely distributed "civilian" intelligence gathering arm of the IRA.
We need to get away from this picture of the resistance being young, fit guys in camo toting semi-automatic weapons.
They may well be the least important component in an uprising.
Over weekend, I thought about this article and what I would do if contacted by the Fibbies to talk to them or else. I decided it would be or else. Send the wife and dogs down the road to her relitives. Get "liberty or Death" and set up in the treeline I share with the neighbors, which gives good line of sight to my house, and wait for the orcs to show up. One day is as good as the next to live or die on my feet.
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