Friday, February 27, 2015

Knowings Part 2: Suspicious Bulges

Persons who carry a handgun in their daily travels will sometimes be heard to comment on the difficulty of concealing it completely. It’s a formidable problem, for good clothing that fits properly will often suggest the presence of the gun via a “bulge” that’s visible to an onlooker. In several jurisdictions that prohibit open carry, police have been authorized to detain on the basis of such “suspicious bulges” and to arrest the detainee should he prove to be armed, regardless of whether he has a concealed-carry permit. The logic, of course, is that the gun isn’t completely concealed – that the bulge gives it away, thus creating a prima facie violation of the law.

To a Second Amendment absolutist – for the record, that includes your humble blogmeister – that’s quite bad enough. What makes it worse is the presumption involved, which is wrapped up in the doctrine of “reasonable suspicion.” The Fourth Amendment apparently doesn’t protect those of us who’ve had such bulges conferred upon us by diet or genetics.

To permit the police to infer a crime based on a suspicious bulge probably strikes some as reasonable enough. Indeed, it can be a tough thing to argue against...but I don’t take the easy cases. At any rate, today’s tirade isn’t about the infringement of Second Amendment rights because of such bulges. It’s about a bulge in plain sight that ought to have the entire nation locked, loaded, and storming Washington.


For quite some time, I and other commentators have discussed the thresholds for an open revolution against the regime. Some have drawn the line at the destruction of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Others have insisted that our Second Amendment rights are the last bastion – that once we’ve been reaved of our guns, our ability to resist tyranny will be gone, so a move in that direction should trigger revolt. A few have focused on the possible abrogation of an electoral outcome, as if vote fraud were irrelevant to the issue, or the outcome of an election has changed anything substantive this century past.

Well, Gentle Reader, in case you’ve been paying insufficient attention to the news, we’ve just had a quinella:

  1. The Federal Communications Commission has just claimed wholly unConstitutional powers over the Internet, imposing a 300-page-plus book of regulations upon ISPs that no one outside the federal government has yet seen.
  2. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, another wholly unConstitutional agency, has declared its intention to ban 5.56 NATO / .223 Remington rifle ammunition as “armor piercing,” despite the plain fact that that round does not meet the legal definition of armor-piercing ammunition.

What are the implications of those actions? What further measures against Americans’ rights to free expression and the possession of arms seem likely to follow?

Is that enough of a suspicious bulge for you? Combine it with the nationwide militarization of local police forces, Obama’s open obstruction of the enforcement of the immigration laws, and the vote fraud that was rampant in the 2012 elections. What verdict pops out of the slot?

Are we being reduced to helpless subjugation or not?


I’m growing tired. I’ve been writing op-ed for the Web since 1997, nearly always to the same effect: that America as it was designed – “conceived in liberty,” as the classic phrase goes – is being reduced to tyranny. Hundreds of other commentators have been shouting the same warning. Yet nothing has changed for the better. No effective resistance to our ongoing subjugation has been mounted. The closest we’ve come have been the popular resistance to the seizure of Cliven Bundy’s ranch and the Oath Keepers’ defense of legitimate Ferguson, Missouri businesses against looters and rioters.

Now we’re looking down the barrel of the State’s gun: the removal of the last wholly free means of expression and organization remaining to private citizens, plus the ongoing destruction of our potential means of resistance.

In the name of God, people, when will it be enough?

It’s no longer sufficient to protest. Those who hold the levers of power have decided that they can ignore our voices. Worse, we can’t even mobilize ourselves for effective resistance. There’s no point in standing on a street corner and crying out a warning if those who hear are unwilling to act.

Some say we need a leader that has not yet arisen. Others demur that we’re too comfortable – that the spirit of liberty has been enervated by prosperity. There’s some justice to both assessments, but a third is uppermost on my mind this morning: that we’ve become cowards, none of us willing to risk our own lives and possessions, all of us happy to “let you and him fight.”

Mind you, I don’t exempt myself.


Just yesterday, I wrote about the difference between facts and inferences as categories of knowledge. It might have been too abstruse to capture your interest. All the same, it’s an important subject, directly relevant to the situation we face today.

Abraham Lincoln once spoke thus:

"When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen...and when we see those timbers joined together, and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few...in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that...all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck."— Abraham Lincoln, deducing from objective evidence the blueprint of a political plot to save the institution of slavery. [Quoted in Garet Garrett's essay "The Revolution Was"]

Lincoln’s concern was the ongoing enslavement of tens of thousands of American Negroes. He was willing to start a war that divided the nation and ultimately claimed 800,000 American lives to put an end to the practice. It hardly matters whether other means to bring an end to slavery were available, for the greater part of the nation deemed the price acceptable.

What about the enslavement of 300,000,000 Americans? What price are we willing to pay to prevent that?

The process has been in train for more than a century. Its completion, as implied by the assaults on the Internet and our firearms rights, looms before us. Could any bulge in the Omnipotent State’s garb be more suspicious?

Patrick Henry warned us against “the illusions of hope:”

"Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to treaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.

"There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained; we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

We, too, have tried argument.
We have also tried electoral measures.
We have tried everything except open revolt.
What, then, must we do?

I await your thoughts.


I’m scheduled for more oral surgery today, so please excuse me if I’m unable to write for a day or two. Of course, if I’m “unable” to write for some other reason, I exhort you to become outraged...if nothing else.

14 comments:

Ron Olson said...

Was a time tyrants lined in red coats and matched n straight lines. Now they're school admin personnel or BLM biologists or veterans affair staff. They are or own family, our friends,our neighbors. We sleep with our enemy and not just a few look at the enemy in the mirror.

The bulge is a radicalized government seeking to radicalize the remaining backbone of the former USA.

The powers need active shooters before the money tree dies and time grows short.

I've always hated the close game in chess almost always ended in stalemate. This game would be over if the players were gentlemen.

The missing violent response speaks more of courageous restraint than cowardly indifference.

I'm praying for good health, Mr P.

WalkingHorse said...

Excellent piece, Fran. I took the liberty of referencing your piece i a comment I made on NRO in response to a piece by Jonah Goldberg, "Is Liberalism Exhausted?":

There is another viewpoint worth considering - liberalism as a chrysalis, now being shed to reveal something else. Following this hypothesis, there is ample evidence that the thing growing under the decaying protective cover is inimical to our interests, liberty, and safety. Behold a government that is concurrently

* attempting to seize control of the most liberating communications medium in human history
* engaged in sustained measures designed to frustrate and inhibit the ability of the people to defend themselves
* facilitating an invasion of the United States through our southern borders, using taxpayer money to fund the invasion force
* facilitating the creation of militarized police forces in the continental United States
* weaponizing bureaucracies comprised largely of clerks and minders for no legitimate purpose within their legal charters
* operating the mechanisms of a domestic surveillance state that far exceeds the capabilities envisioned in the wildest fantasies of the East German Stazi

Much more could be added to the list, but the pattern is unmistakable - a Putsch whose momentum is rapidly growing. A reader with open eyes cannot honestly dismiss such a construction out of hand. At this juncture action deferred may well be opportunity forever lost - tick, tock. I recommend to you a piece by Francis W. Poretto on the topic: "Suspicious Bulges":

http://bastionofliberty.blogsp...

Place a different light upon this evidence if you can. I would be delighted to see this invalidated, but have no hope that it is an unwarranted concern.

v/r,

WH

Anonymous said...

Re: oral surgery - wash that Vicodin down with beer. Makes it work better. Use caution when operating machinery and do not sign any contracts for a while.
_revjen45

Anonymous said...

Great post, great question: what to do? What makes a differnce? From The Crisis of the Modern World, Guenon makes a point about being anti-modern, (something of a suggestion) but that this didn't mean being anti-West, but rather the effort to remove the confusions of the West. His views reach high level critique of the West, of anti-traditionalism, of modern 'self-sovereignty of man'. Some resources that may be of interest to you:
'The Crisis of the Modern World' by R. Guenon online, pdf
'The Essential Rene Guenon', online in pdf
'Liberty, Equality, Nobility: Aurel Kolnai and the Moral Foundations of Democracy' by Daniel Mahoney
'The Meaning of the "CommonMan"' (1949) by Aurel Kolnai in his 'Privilege and Liberty and Othe Essays in Political Philosophy'. See all of Aurel Kolnai's and Pierre Manent's works. Essential reading.

Anonymous said...

If you really want to increase the effects of vicoden..... drink grapefruit juice not alcohol....Im serious....its a known "drug interaction" as identified by the manufacturer. Besides, vicoden has a tendency to lower respiratory rates, alcohol also lowers respiratory rates...could be a bad thing for a individual having O2 saturation issues.

Manu said...

I'm supposed to be staying away from the political for a little while... but this one cannot wait.

I've had a tenant, an older woman, in my rental property for some years now, and of late she has been exceedingly terrible. I needed to get her out immediately. She pleaded ignorance, circumstance and a number of excuses. Finally, when I asked her point-blank what it would take to get her out, all pretenses dropped. No more kindly old lady, instead I got a cold, evil voice saying "I want $2500, cash only, then I will leave." Legal circumstances are such that I have no choice but to grant her demand.

The government is just like this right now. It is pleading this circumstance or that. It doesn't know what you're talking about. It has excuses for why it does these things, and they almost sound plausible. The FedGov is like this supposedly kindly old woman. Let's work it out, they say.

But there will come a time when they will come clean with their real demands. The kindly voice of government will be replaced with the open demands of the tyrant that has always lurked beneath. Only the bill is likely to be much higher than $2500. The demanded payment is likely to fall someplace in between your freedom and your life.

Anonymous said...

I am going to say something that might sound crazy. It sounds crazy to me too, but it might be the truth. The early Americans who came here, came here to get away from their tyrannical leaders. When the tyrannical leaders overreached into the new frontier, the founders revolted, and formed a new country. Here we are, in our "new" "old" country. Now, as in revolutionary times, a majority seem to be hypnotized by the promises of "representation" by our leaders, and a minority, US, specifically, are disgusted by the lies and tyranny. And yet, we are IN the land of the tyrannical leaders now. This is not a frontier, this is an established country.

We are avowed to not take the "first shot", and so we sit, waiting for a critical mass. That critical mass will never come. The only thing we can hope for is a Cliven Bundy on mass scale, the iron fist emerging from the velvet glove. Until such a time as that happens, the true remaining patriots will continue to age and die off of natural causes, while the face of the country changes, into a mass conglomeration of balkanized immigrants, feminized males, and angry, ugly-faced lesbians and militant, self-righteous minorities, all content with or bent on "social justice" in the form of prostration to the all-powerful government.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying that this is how it's going to happen. The government is smart enough to continue performing their wicked acts in a hypnotic, semi-friendly-appearing fashion, so as not to touch off a firestorm, at least not until the percentage of true patriots remaining has dwindled to small enough numbers to be dealt with easily. There will be no unprovoked "first shot" from our side. There will be no obvious provocation (beyond what we, as true patriots, have already seen and recognized) by the government. Just a slow, silent fading of the light.

The government has plausible deniability. What have they done that's tyrannical? No one action. Lots of small actions of course add up to tyranny, but they didn't perform ONE act. They've performed many. If questioned, of COURSE they didn't MEAN to be tyrannical, they only had our best interest in mind, with the EPA, and the ATF, and the TSA, and the IRS, and the NSA, and the FCC. It just so HAPPENS that they've done nothing to HELP us with any of their measures, and only things that HURT us. But they didn't MEAN to hurt us.

So where do we draw the line, when the government only comes half again as close with each evil action? If they continue to take half of our liberty with each blow, they will NEVER take all of our liberty, although it feels like they already have. So when is enough enough? You tell me. I'm ready to stand up for my country, I have been for a long time, but I too have no idea when enough is enough, when I've taken all I can take and will take no more. If we were to all band together into small groups, these groups would be infiltrated, and we'd all be arrested for some trumped up charge of sedition. We'd be trotted out as examples of right-wing kooks, bent on anarchy, and then locked up forever.

So the hypnotism of the masses continues, and we watch and churn, knowing full well what's happening, and having not a thing we can do about it, except watch and churn some more. To me, the answer has become to resist, and to prepare. I will fight it in every small way I'm able. I will prepare for the inevitable day when it all falls apart, and then for the dawn of something new, once the riots have burned themselves out. You may say I'm crazy, but I don't see anyone else standing up either. God have mercy on the United States of America.

RichJ said...

There is no question that the central governments have attracted the worst sorts of miscreants.

What has helped me keep from losing it is this:

Romans 12:16
Being of one mind one towards another. Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble. 17 Be not wise in your own conceits. To no man rendering evil for evil. Providing good things, not 18 only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as is in you, 19
have peace with all men. Revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but give place unto wrath, 20 for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. But if thy enemy be hungry, give him to eat; if he thirst, give him to drink. For, doing this, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. 21 Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good.

It hangs on the "if it be possible" caveat for me. If someone is intent on killing you, you have no choice as I see it to do what ever it take to "stay alive".

Ominous Cowherd said...

Keep preaching the truth. Don't expect folks to hear it before they awaken. As folks awaken they'll hear what you're saying. If no-one is preaching it when they awaken, they won't have any idea what they have awakened to.

If enough awaken soon enough, your labor will have done some good.

Reg T said...

Fran,

It doesn't detract from the meaning or intent of your post, but Lincoln did not go to war over slavery. He went to war to force the South to pay tariffs that benefitted the industrial North while they damaged the economy of the South. Thomas Di Lorenzo explains it quite clearly in several posts he has made on Lew Rockwell's site and at Mises.org:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo206.html

http://mises.org/article.aspx?control=952

I'm not a leader, and I'm not much of a joiner, either, but if others joined together to take up arms, as happened at the Bundy Ranch, as old and as infirm as I am, I would grab the .308, my load-out vest, and join the fray.

As one man on his own I could certainly head to the nearest BATFE or EPA office, or even fly a "borrowed" light aircraft and visit the IRS. But as soul-satisfying as that might be, the media and .gov would simply spin it as a crazed "clinger" and deny it had any meaning.

When health and age rob me of much desire to continue shuffling around, I might choose such an exit anyway, but it wouldn't change a thing. "Don't mean nuthin'" as some of our friends used to say about what went on in the Nam.

I'm really hoping someone does find a means to draw us out and into action, armed and ready to address the problem. It would sure beat the hel l out of dying in bed. Introducing the el ite and arrogant scum - who choose to wipe their besmirched buttocks with the Constitution - to a bit of reality in the way of lead poisoning would make my day. Even my _last_ day.




Wombat said...

"The logic, of course, is that the gun isn’t completely concealed..."

Let's round up every lycra-clad cyclist smuggling sausages because their junk is "outlined" and they're thereby guilty of public indecency.

Yet another instance where a law is read through a mirror while wearing goggles and standing on their head in order to reach a motive-driven conclusion, all because it involves a dreaded gun.

Reg T said...

On the "bulge" issue, I usually carry in a waist/belly/fanny pack. The one I use is called a HawkePak Micro. http://www.hawkepaks.com/prod.itml/icOid/133

The barrel of the pistol (currently a full-sized G20) slips neatly into part of the belting, while the center of the pack appears to be too small to be concealing a full-sized gun. A 1911A fits as neatly as a G21 or G20, XD, etc.

Here in Montana, you can carry concealed without a permit everywhere except in cities and towns. What is unique, I believe, to Montana is that the wording of the law states "concealed by clothing". So, remembering that IANAL, it is apparent y legal (there is precedent) to carry inside of a purse, backpack, fanny pack, suitcase, etc. without a permit, even in the cities and towns. I purchased a permit on ly to keep me legal in other states, although I no longer travel as much as I used to.

Ronbo said...

I see so many parallels between what’s happening today and the run-up to the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War that I’ve lost count – OMINOUS PARALLELS – is the best I can do.

My best educated guess is that the insurrection will not breakout until the Government goes one “Intolerable Act” too many – it could be a “gun grab” like the one the British did on April 19, 1775 – or maybe there will be an economic collapse that leads to anarchy and civil war….any number of things….but it will be BLOODY and there will be bodies all over the place.

I predict the coming insurrection will come as a COMPLETE SURPRISE to all parties involved, including old revolutionists like me.

BANG!!! SURPRISE!!! Lights! Cameras! Action!

The truth is that revolutionaries like Sam Adams can plot and dream for years, but it takes a critical mass to be reached before the explosion.

ALSO, there is this: Those who dreamed and plotted American Revolution 2.0 for years - for instance, those twisted sisters in the Obama Regime - will have no standing when the BEAST finally appears.

Many people cry for a leader; a REVOLUTIONARY leader. Where is HE? Who is HE? American eyes search the darkness for another Washington, Lincoln or Reagan to save the Republic and see nothing but fog and night.

RELAX!

HE walks among us now and does not know HE is the elect.

DAN III said...

Mr. P....organization. That has been and is the key to resolving the fedgov tyranny.

Read of Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He started by joining a small political party in 1919. Spent countless days, weeks, months AND years forming, planning, developing and organizing the party. He had a goal. A relentless goal. He WORKED at finding like-minded men who declared opposition to Marxism. And these men were willing to, and did use, violence to further their goals, toppling Weimer.

Adolf Hitler and his compatriots DID over a period from 1919 - 1931, the things needed to form a new government. It wasn't easy. They were but a very small group of men who had a goal. They WORKED to further their goal.

One man alone cannot impact a nation. Who amongst us who considers himself a "patriot", is willing to give up one's life of normalcy to do the work required, as Adolf Hitler did ?

Mr. P, you've spent more years blogging and bemoaning the demise of America, than Adolf Hitler did joining a small political party in a beer hall in Munich to his rise to German Chancellor, in 1933.

Barry barack hussein soetoro obama's growth from some obscure citizen of Indonesia clearly parallels that of Adolf Hitler, a citizen of Austria, rise to unfettered power. They both have worked hard to organize, infiltrate and impose on their citizens tyranny.

We have refused to learn from Adolf Hitler's history. Who amongst us is willing to do the work Hitler did to change the nation for the better ? Soetoro-obama did. And the dupes we call fellow ctizens stood right behind him.

We ain't seen nothing yet.