Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The super-patriot militia types who fantasize about fighting a war with the United States government that they deem to be tyrannical have really lost it. Josh Marshall posts at Talking Points Memo, The Disneyland of Gun Paranoia:
In a reductio ad absurdum of gun and ‘patriot’ paranoia, a group of right-wing patriots are planning a ‘fortress’ planned community
in Idaho, done up with the full list of defensive walls, turrets and
plenty of defensive positions to use when the feds finally come to
confiscate your guns.
The best part is the map of the planned gun/fortress community.
In addition to the defensive perimeter it also has “Interior Defensive
Walls & Towers” so that if the Obama forces make a successful
incursion into one part of the town patriots can still defend the parts
of the town that remain free. Sort of like bulkheads in a ship.
So let me get this straight. These f#%king geniuses think that building a medieval fort is their bulwark against the "tyrannical" military forces of the U.S. government that could quite literally vaporize these insurrectionists with cruise missiles from thousands of miles away, without ever resorting to a nuke. Have they not been paying attention to Obama's UAV drone warfare program? Are they completely unaware of the existence of the U.S. Air Force?
The people who harbor these Neo-Confederate fantasies about fighting a war with the United States government are proving that they are not mentally stable enough to own a gun. They are a threat to themselves and to society. They don't need a fort. They need a straight-jacket and rubber room.
UPDATE: Stephen Colbert mocked these gun nuts in an episode last week.
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Thane,
Too bad that 1% seems to run the NRA.
Bill Astle
I don’t worry all that much about the 99% in the US military but I sure do think it is foolish to ignore the 1% that believes that might makes right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here#Huey_Long
The fact that government agents can put down rebels (or rural property owners and developers) and get away with it doesn’t mean it is a good idea to do so.
“The Whiskey Rebellion by Murray N. Rothbard”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
I’ll take that as an admission that you have not done the research.
See what I mean!
The premise of your question is bullshit. These are people who harbor revolutionary fantasies against the U.S. government. The U.S. Government has exercised constitutional authority to put down insurrections and rebellions since George Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791.
I seriously doubt that you have read the full documents or statements from which you quote a selective line, or know much of anything about the speaker and the historical context for which the statement was made. I have done extensive research over many years into the collective writings of the Founding Fathers and their lives and times. You do not impress me as an historian with your typical troll rants here.
I am taking your response as a YES to the premise “that these particular voluntary communitarians should give up because the US military could easily murder them all so they should just suck it up and follow orders no matter what?”.
All but two of the quotes referenced the original document. It is, therefore, very easy to explore the context Blue.
That is your habit, throwing out mindless drivel when you are unable to refute evidence that undermines you pretext!
Ah, the favorite sport of wingnuts: quotations which support their preconceived beliefs, often taken out of context, but with no knowledge of the full document or statement or the historical circumstances which it references.
“On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322)
“I ask, Sir, what is the malitia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” George Mason
“What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty…. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.” (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [ I Annals of Congress at 750 {August 17, 1789}])
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States” (Noah Webster in `An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution’, 1787, a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888))
“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms….The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants” Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787.
“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” — (Thomas Jefferson)
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
To top off their paranoia they insult the U.S. military too. Do they really believe that our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen would follow an order to oppress fellow citizens? Military personnel take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to blindly follow an order from a commander bent on oppression.
Speaking of the Constitution, have they noticed the phrase “well regulated” in the Second Amendment? It’s the NRA and their fellow travelers who do not support the Second Amendment.
Bill Astle
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” – General George S. Patton.
Seriously? Star Trek fantasies too? See previous post http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2013/01/rebutting-second-amendment-insurrection.html and President Abraham Lincoln:
In his first message to Congress, July 4, 1861, the sixteenth president explained:
“Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled,–the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains,–its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
Our system of government provides peaceful means for citizens to air grievances and change policy, from the ballot box to the jury box to the right to peaceably assemble. The Second Amendment was NOT intended to protect the right of Americans to rise up against a tyrannical government.
“This canard is repeated with disturbing frequency. The Constitution, in Article I, allows armed citizens in militias to “suppress Insurrections,” not cause them. The Constitution defines treason as “levying War” against the government in Article III, and the states can ask the federal government for assistance “against domestic Violence” under Article IV.”
Get professional help.
Are you really using the Borgian argument that these particular voluntary communitarians should give up because the US military could easily murder them all so they should just suck it up and follow orders no matter what?
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
Unfortunately, the gun nut’s fantasies are having the desired, yet predictable, effect.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/01/harry-reid-assault-weapons-ban.php
Just trot out La Pierre, Yeager, and the fortress community plan, and watch Reid buckle. It really didn’t take much.
These people are building the castle to keep the brown hordes out, not fight off the tyrannical military.
Perhaps they are unaware of the ability of hordes to defeat walled cities. CF G. Khan…