Vanderboegh Speaks Sense:

We are not ready. Not politically, not militarily. I don't know about you, Anonymous. Are YOU ready to take on an even greater military force than the British Empire of the Eighteenth Century? I'm not. No one I know is. Well, there ARE a few folks up in Winston County. ;-) Anyway, FEW people I know are. The Minutemen and common militia at Lexington and Concord and long road back into Boston had been preparing for YEARS. Read General Galvin's book, The Minutemen. The ability to blunt and harry a British column was not an accident. I tell you plainly, WE ARE NOT READY. The military groundwork has not been laid. The political groundwork has not been laid. We are not ready and you want to start something that will make our defeat easy?

"A long train of abuses and usurpations." When did Jefferson write those words? MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER LEXINGTON. Olofson's case certainly falls into that category. But it is not yet time. This fight, if all else fails politically to prevent it, MUST be undertaken reluctantly. We must accept the burden of the abuses and usurpations as long as they can be borne, so that when we round on the whipmaster and feed him his whip it will be seen as justice by as many onlookers as possible. The Regulars MUST march out of Boston of their own accord. They MUST fire the first shot. Or the second. Or the third. THEN, and ONLY then, we will finish them and their tyranny. If they pass laws to accomplish this (they think) without direct confrontation, we will defy the laws and goad them into attempting to force us to comply. Think Boston Tea Party. Their whole system depends upon willing subjects. They don't react well to defiance. They WILL give us the moral high ground. Their appetites will demand it.

Because what happens the moment after that shot is fired is so horrible than any sane person would do anything to avoid it. I have NO patience for someone who WANTS A FIGHT. It usually means they've never been in one. Do you understand what horrors await us all after that terrible moment? Have you ever seen the bloated bodies of children on the road? Entire neighborhoods in flames? Heard screams of dying innocents in the night? Smelled roasting flesh of men, women and children, people, innocent people, even as you, or me, or our loved ones?

I doubt it. But you know what? Neither have I. My son has. But I have not. Still, I am smart enough to understand that that's what happens when you open up the Pandora's box of civil war. Why wouldn't you do everything in your power to put that off as long as possible, until you could not delay a second longer this side of defeat and slavery?

There's a lot more, before and after.

The only real difference that exists between me and Mike in this case is that I don't believe the Republic and the Constitution can be restored. As Ambrose Bierce put it, revolution will resort - at most - only in "an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment." My choice, and the choice of people like me, will be whether to live in servitude or die resisting it. As Mostly Cajun put it, "Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution." And the reason for that is illustrated by JD of Ballistic Deanimation and many others (including yours truly) in posts like Dumbing Down and The George Orwell Daycare Center. We've been outmaneuvered, and now we're overwhelmingly outnumbered. The Founders could at least depend on a third of their countrymen to support them. We cannot. And I don't think we'll ever again be able to, because Leviathan can Olofson anyone, at any time, (or worse) and we'll never be ready. Remember Atlas Shrugged:

There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking the law. Create a nation of lawbreakers and then you can cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system!

So people like Mike and like me are considered "anti-government extremists." No we're not. We're Constitutionalists, who think that our elected and appointed officials ought to mean it when they swear their oaths to "uphold and defend the Constitution." They ought to at least be somewhat familiar with the thing. But that time has passed, sometime around FDR's first term. The next "shot heard 'round the world" will never be fired. There will just be a few more Carl Dregas, a few more Marvin Heemeyers, and probably a Timothy McVeigh or two. And the screws will tighten further, and the long train of abuses and usurpations will continue. Eventually a breaking point will be reached, and we still won't be ready.

And we'll lose.

And that's why my line-in-the-sand is my front door, but not, necessarily, yours.

On that happy, note: Sleep tight.