The Four Boxes

The Four Boxes

The saying goes, we have four boxes with which to defend our liberty: the Soap Box, the Ballot Box, the Jury Box, and the Cartridge Box.

There's been a recent excrement storm over someone using Box #1 to threaten the use of Box #4. If you follow the threads and especially the comments, there is much sturm und drang over how counterproductive it is to threaten lethal force in a letter-to-the-editor of a local paper over licensing and registration. This then transitions to essentially two positions: One - our right to arms is slowly but surely being won back by people who have been fighting the good fight, within the system, for decades. Thirty-seven "shall-issue" states, the Heller Supreme Court decision, politicians avoiding gun control like it's the proverbial "third rail" all indicate that our side is winning, and throwing verbal hand-grenades is not helpful to the cause. Two - our right to arms is still being eroded daily, as a right should not require us to petition the State for a license to exercise it, the Heller decision didn't go far enough, and regardless the government is still persecuting gun owners without penalty, the State has overreached its limited powers, and TEOTWAWKI is rapidly approaching, or worse, it's already over and we just refuse to take notice of it. The second side also points out that the right to arms isn't the only right that's been folded, spindled, mutilated and defecated upon - not by a long shot.

Side one argues that the system works for those who show up. Side two points out that the overwhelming majority of those "showing up" support ever-larger, more intrusive government. Side one counters "then get involved!" Side two ripostes that threatening violence is "getting involved." Side one argues that violent revolution hardly ever results in an improvement of conditions, and that ours succeeded only because of the extraordinary selflessness of the men who led it.

Side two doesn't have much of a response to that.

Side one argues that nobody really wants what violent revolution would result in. That trying to work within the system is, by far, preferable to rooftop snipers, IEDs, and the possibility of our own military dropping cluster-bombs on our neighborhoods (or, per Vanderboegh, suicide pilots and fuel-air explosions), just to name a few of the cheerier scenarios. Side two remains mostly mum, but I hear echoes of Patrick Henry.

What this whole thing illustrates for me is, again, that humanity has a strong self-destructive streak. Now that the surface of the earth has been explored, and humans have settled everywhere that they can raise enough food to survive, we no longer have frontiers for the disaffected to go to in order to escape the restraints of societies that they cannot fit into. There's nowhere left to go. And there aren't enough of the misfits to alter those societies enough to make them even marginally comfortable. Even worse, the misfits cannot form their own societies - they can't get along with each other.

I'm not saying that Mike Vanderboegh is one of the misfits. Hell, he didn't say anything I haven't thought or written myself. Hell, maybe I'm a misfit, too, just a bit closer to the middle of the bell curve. After all, I have my own bright shining lines.

But I think one thing is certain: There's tough history coming.

UPDATE: I strongly recommend that you read The Myth of the Clean Revolution.

This too: Thoughts on a revolution