Topic: Political Literature
John McCain vs. Ron Paul, The Media, And The Wasted Second Amendment The second Amendment may just be a wasted ideal, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...by Scott from Oregon
(libertarian)
Friday, February 8, 2008
As an aging liberal itinerant carpenter, well versed in the reality of the world- having seen much of it by virtue of growing up in an Air Force home and then under the roof of a Pan Am pilot, and then as a traveling handyman for fifteen years- I find it odd that I am sitting in a Republican camp, breaking bread with very conservative folks, watching the goings on of the conservative political movement as an insider.
And as a Republican newly-signed, I am trying on some of the uniforms of the conservative belief system, to see how they feel, to see how I feel, and I find the whole process rather illuminating.
The road to the conservative viewpoint was not long and tortured, but short and instantaneous. I've long understood from a liberal viewpoint how our government was not near ideal, and had listened to people complaining with a nod of tacit understanding and a decent level of concern, and then, one day, I realized that the problem and the solution were the same- too much power collected in Washington.
The only candidate who talked about this problem was Ron Paul, which led me to sign up as a Republican, which led me to be inside the conservative mindset even though I find it foreign territory.
So now I am contemplating the Second Amendment, and the right to bear arms, as I watch my fellow conservatives raise their fists in unison and cheer whenever a conservative candidate mentions his support for this Constitutional right.
OK. I'll go along. Americans have a right to arm themselves to defend themselves against tyranny. OK. We keep lots of guns and stuff around in case tyranny rears its ugly head. Got it. (I am going to purposefully ignore hunting, target shooting and self-defense in my thinking, because, even as a liberal, I see the virtue of firearms in these cases.)
But back to tyranny and an armed populace. Does this even make sense? Does it even gel with modern societal American norms? Are Americans likely to gather into militias and combat the tyranny that may befall them by shooting and killing others in a kind of civil war? Does this kind of thing even seem plausible anymore? I have a hard time imagining a society as civil as America has become heading down this road. It just doesn't seem to fit the feel of the American personality anymore. Does it to you?
As John McCain gets anointed the GOP candidate by the media, and as Ron Paul gets further shunned and ignored by the media, my American core knows that tyranny is upon us. The media is wilfully oppressing the thoughts and desires of one segment of America, in order to propigate its own interests. I know that the American ideals of Democracy and government "by the people" has been taken away, to some large degree, by Corporations who control the media and who have their own agendas. This is the "soft fascism" that Ron Paul mentioned in an interview not long ago.
And as this tyranny is inflicted upon us, I can't help but muse about the Second Amendment. About militias and guns and fighting for our liberty. About our developed civility and our willingness to be cordial in spite of the fact that we covet the Second Amendment in order to prevent tyranny in the first place. It feels like America as a unit has either outgrown or lost the spirit that created the notion that we needed the Second Amendment to begin with. It seems like we have lost our revolutionary, freedom loving souls.
It feels like the Second Amendment and the feelings behind it are as irrelevant as the rest of the ideals that were born by our founders back in the good old days.
It seems like the Constitution is becoming nothing more than a document we give lip service to, every once in awhile...
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I had a long typed up response and decided to ditch it for something a little more short and sweet.
#1 We cannot depend on the government to protect us. They can not do so reliably or realistically. And are not held accountable if they do not do so.
#2 Since we cannot count on them to do so we must be able to protect ourselves. The most effective way to defend oneself is with a weapon, firearms being the most realistically effective way to do so.
#3 The need to defend oneself rather than submitting to the intolerable or evil should not need to be argued.
#4 We do live in civil society, but society can effectively breakdown. When society breaks down the necessity of defending oneself may become obvious. In the aftermath of Katrina, or any other natural disasters Law Enforcement often fails to react in an effective manner, sometimes they completely refuse to act as in during the Rodney King Riots.
#5 We already effectively have militias all over this country. They are called neighborhood watches. They are effectively a mutual defense pact.
#6 Our government is more and more adopting the tactics of totalitarianism. Whether or not its citizenry can correct its course and act to defend individual liberty is still to be seen. If the citizenry fail it may become necessary to defend ourselves from the excesses of totalitarianism. If you don't believe its happening then you haven't been paying attention to how our Law Enforcement officers are being trained, you haven't been paying attention to the fact that "our" SWAT teams are more and more becoming federally funded, and increasingly do not answer to anyone.
#7 A truly civil society should not need weapons between themselves, but such a society is somewhere between rare and non-existent. While I would like to live in a kinder gentler society
I KNOW there are those who mean to do me and mine harm.
I KNOW that I am in many cases the first and only line of defense for me and mine.
And I KNOW that I am willing to do whatever it takes to protect me and mine.
Although I hope the day never comes when I am forced to draw-down on another human being, I can comfortably say that I am far more happy to live with the rights and responsibilities of being prepared for self-defense than for the negative consequences of not being prepared.
As one wise lady once said, "I'd rather by tried by twelve, than carried out by six."
You're right. Too much power and curruption in whahington. McCain is one of the leaders of that pack and if he gets the nomination, the Clintons are back in office.
Check this link out and feel free to inform america on this blatant cover-up compliments of John McCain.
if mccain becomes president, i'm either taking up arms or moving far far away. I too am a liberal "republican" and struggle communicating with my newfound conservative partymates. good luck to you
We are already faced with the violent backlash of a government that answers to no one. The IRS is a good example of this, being that it is unconstitutional and enforced merely through fear tactics. The tax code explicitly calls income tax "voluntary", but it results in a prison sentence if you don't comply. IRS agents were first intended to be accountants who checked "the books" and told local officials of your infractions and gave you notice. Somewhere, they became an armed group pushing compliance by fear and force. They can freeze all of your assets, confiscate all of your possessions and put you in prison before even giving you notice or giving you a chance to explain that you were trying to comply or that they made a mistake. Audits are not always required before such measures are taken.
This is just the first step. It doesn't take much imagination to picture where it could go from here. Perhaps local militias will be necessary again.
I agree with your assessment...it is difficult to imagine Americans actually picking up guns and fighting against Tyranny. Our spines have effectively been removed by group think/media/bad health/feminization of male culture, etc. But you better be sure there are many strong, proud, intelligent, and very capable individuals taking notice of what is really going on. Don't know the future, but I will die for freedom if necessary...no doubt about that.
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries. (David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991)
Again I say, many American spines have been removed....how many is still in question.
What you have to remember about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is that they were greatly affected by what the British did to the American colonists. For example, the British quartered soldiers in American homes, confiscated their firearms, and regulated their right to assembly amongst other things.
As baby boomers, we have been fortunate to live in an almost idyllic state of economic bliss. Wait until thing get rough; maybe the dollar drops in value to something like zero, there's no bread in the stores and gasoline is next to impossible to come by. You'll be glad you've got a gun then and will probably wish you had another one plus more ammo.
Some legal analysis says that the issue of gun possession currently in the Supreme Court is likely NOT about the second amendment. Decisions about our ability to possess a firearm may be based on property rights instead. The fact that we do not own our property, car and houses specifically, may allow the court to state that we are unable to posses weapons on their land. We as citizens only hold color of title to our property, thus we merely rent the land, car etc. This control is already exercised in cars, where carrying guns is strictly controlled in many states.
I'm a Ron Paul supporter and a conservative (and a supporter of the second amendment). I know this is a complicated issue and I don't want to make it sound simple but you ask a fundamental question - are Americans willing to take up arms against other Americans to defend themselves against centralized authority?
The answer is yes - I think of the example of the miners who fought against the company men and the National Guard earlier last century. I think of the steel workers who fought against Andrew Carnegie's pinkertons.
The reason this is a complicated issue is that the freedom to bear arms does not just mean *your* freedom to bear arms. It means your neighbor has that right as well. The reason our society has been willing to give up this basic right is not our civility - I think it has been our fear of our neighbor (sometimes justified). We hope that by disarming all we will protect ourselves from the evil ones among us.
The trouble with this reasoning is that once disarmed we are at the mercy of any person who controls state-sanctioned force. History tells us that relying upon the mercy of an autocrat in order maintain your liberty is not the brightest choice.
The gun is just a physical manifestation of a general idea - the idea of the people maintaining the capability of rising up against repressive authority. The Ron Paul Revolution is a non-violent way of trying to prevent the creation of a grossly repressive authority before it can take serious root. But first we have to shake our neighbors out of their state of perpetual state of fear before we can expect them to join us.
I think Americans are still capable of fighting for liberty ... but first they have to understand that they no longer have much. I think a thumping financial crisis along the lines of a good solid depression might provide enough trauma for Boobus Americanus to look away from the tube and give his position some thought. When we have his attention we must be there to provide some calm, reasoned answers to his questions.
I don't know what Dr. Paul's plans are now that a brokered convention seems impossible. But we have forged bonds among ourselves and awakened some new people to the call of liberty. What if we remained in contact and echoed Ron Paul's thoughts on each bill he is considering in congress to our representatives. It might multiply his influence. It took years for the US to lose its liberty and it would be naive to think we can restore freedom with a single stroke even if Dr. Paul were elected.
It is the Internet that provided fertile ground for Dr. Paul's candidacy and the expression of his ideas unfiltered by traditional media and it is this new technology that will eventually allow us to be better heard. Let's use it, defend it and multiply ourselves using it. The revolution is just beginning. This is how it starts.
Don't know what happened to my last comment but I'll try again.
When the founders said "Give me Liberty or Give me death" it didn't mean they planned to blow their own brains out if the Brits didn't leave them alone. It meant they were going to blow Brit brains out. If you don't have it in your heart and mind to blow "Liberal" brains out when it becomes necessary just go to Lowes and buy yourself a pair of those cheap knee pads and prepare to kiss and fondle whatever they put in your face because there is no limit ot their insanity or their evil. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. — Robert Heinlein in his novel "Starship Troopers" "How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests 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 to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago.
I think it quite profound your use of the 2nd Amendment as an example of how far most American's have abandoned the basic principle (that America is strictly defined by its Constitution) and that such a basic principle is worth protecting via an armed revolt. Their apathy and laziness made them vulnerable to propaganda and fear mongering - both used to strip them of their spines and their intellect. The loss of the latter was demonstrated by their vote for the neocon puppets.
While some will find their spines when the proverbial ship hits the sand, most I fear will be content to mimic the citizens of the past Soviet Union. I remember seeing them standing in long lines literally waiving their communist flags while waiting four hours for the privilege to buy a half-rotten chicken.
In the "doomsday" scenario, the minority who actually demonstrate courage and commitment to the concept of freedom and liberty by taking up arms will be labled terrorists. The current loss of privacy will enable the jack-booted thugs to easily eradicate them. Those remaining will exist as intellectual and physical slaves to the elite monarchs who have already achieved their goals as the cards they have dealt themselves assures their victory. When pondering the question of which fate will be worse, Patrick Henry's words "give me liberty or give me death" makes the answer clear.
And so will end that great experiment of freedom and liberty.
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