Tactical Simulation and Mil-Sim Paintball.

When you draw down on the "bad guy" with your spiffy new 10mm autopistol - will you hit them, or will they cut YOU down with the dirty old .38 they have long known and loved?

Worse yet, will the "bad guy" turn out to be a "good guy?" Do you know when NOT to shoot, and even better, when to duck, when to run, and when to run like holy hell?

I'm a second-amendment fetishist, But I am a realist - if you cannot reliably use your chosen weapon in a real, tactical situation under stress, we would ALL be better off if you just shirked your constitutional duty, thanks very much anyhow. If you want to pad your crotch, use a sock. It's far more comfortable.

And keep that gun locked up. Call yourself a collector, if you like, but if you cannot reliably use a handgun or rifle in combat, don't pretend to be willing to answer the call.

But if you ARE willing to answer the call - if and when - then you need to get together with friends and practice. Obviously, you cannot mix tactical training with live ammo, so you need an effective training system. That is why paintball has become a military simulation standard.

The paintball store has got to be my pick for guns, gear, parts, equipment and of course... paint balls. The prices seem reasonable, and everything is in one place; the site is easy to navigate, and they take PayPal. That covers the basics.

Oh, it's an awful lot of fun, I'm told. But to me, it's about developing skills - indeed, RE-developing skills our forebears took for granted. From a sport viewpoint, it's certainly both more ethical and less messy than hunting, even while it develops all the same skills, and it can be a genuine family activity.

I firmly believe that citizens should at least understand the reality of those who choose to serve in the armed force - and in the worst case, understand it well enough so that if they are ordered into action to suppress your right to dissent, that you can make that action prohibitively expensive.

There are other things you can do to practice needed skills. Second Life and other MMORPG's offer the chance to develop your leadership (and followership) skills in a forgiving context - games like this are to strategy and Grand Strategy what paintball is to small unit and individual tactics. A "well regulated milita" is one where every member knows their best weapon - and can use it to further the group goals. My favored weapon is the pen, and my "Militia" is those who think that unless we show our government that we are serious about it serving us, rather than vice versa, the end of this nation as what it was and is meant to be is at hand.

Cafepress T-shirt sale reminds me, I need at least 4 new shirts!

The timing on this sale could not be better - I've worn my favorite designs to death. My "No Whining" shirts are especially threadbare and stained, and I really want to get one of my cool new metallic versions on black or dark colors.

Now, you might think of this as a commercial post. I'll admit, there's an overlap, but this post is what I am gonna buy. This is actually sparked by something Randi Rhodes said some months back, talking to people who felt that they "couldn't do anything" about the way things are going in this country. They either couldn't afford to donate to a cause, or didn't have the time to get involved, or really didn't see how either thing could make a difference.

She said, at the very least, you can wear a t-shirt! If you are a social sort of person, if you like shopping, if you go to the mall or the movies, put on a shirt that takes a stand and wear it. Yes, it takes some guts. You might endure some rude stares, maybe even rude questions about your patriotism. But that's the whole idea. Have some answers ready to go. Remember, if you are wearing your message to a mall during peak hours, it could be seen by hundreds, even thousands of people. That, folks, is something. It's something very important, because it said you, personally find this message important enough to be seen in public.

This design is one that I have had some real success with: On the back, it says "surefire exit strategy: send chickenhawks, not body armor."

This speaks to my strongest reason to not support the war; the loudest supporters are the farthest behind the lines.

I'm absolutely sick of the obvious fact that those who stand to gain the most from this illegal, immoral and misrepresented "war on terror" are the last ones to go and put their pink butts on the line for it. Could it be because they know how little such sacrifices matter, in the end? Could it be that they understand that it's intent is to cripple the ability of the states to defend themselves from the Federal government? The fed can hire endless numbers of mercenaries using a bottomless purse filled with debt-based currency, while the states cannot, and currently rely on the Pentagon for rcrutment and pay. Hm. There might be a problem there...

Or could it be that they are just fine with it because it's a Republican war, they have Republican connections, so "rocking the boat" is bad for business - but sending off the second son isn't any good for it, either.

Anyway, it's some combination of greed, evil and complacency, and I won't stand for it. The only people I will suffer to tell me about my duty to "support the troops" or argue the merits of the war on terror have an Iraq Combat Ribbon.

Now, I like to create shirts that support my views from the moral and political high ground. When it comes to high ground on both fronts, it's hard to argue with Thomas Jefferson, at least when he's speaking of the Constitution and the duties of the citizenry.

This shirt combines an elegant design with some very pointed words:

I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical.

I intend to wear this proudly, as a patriot who is deadly serious about his duty to question authority with the annoying persistence of a three-year-old.

Or you might prefer the version that says this:

When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson

I'm too old, too fat and too slow to even bother to arm myself against the eventuality of joining a militia, as defined under the Second Amendment. But when it comes to the First Amendment, I can snipe with the best. And in a very direct way, these shirts are ammunition in what the "other side" has branded a "Culture War" with the intent of imposing a theocracy that will literally outlaw everything even vaguely fun, and any and all speech that's critical of our new churchstate, it's leadership and Prophets. Or is that Profits?

Ok, this one is a zazzle shirt - so I only have two for the Cafepress sale. But this one can be customized with your own blog url on either front, back or both; you can even upload your own graphics. So I really wanted to mention that, in context. If you do that, please link to this post AND upload an image to Zazzle showing your cool new shirt!

I'm seriously thinking of turning it into a graphic for a blogroll if there's any interest.

Ok, well, lets see, what else do I want. Well, I want one of these.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities." Albert Einstein.

You might not think of that as political, but it defines my politics. My views of social justice and ethics are not dependant upon who my frends are, where I go to church or what party I'm affiliated with. I have Asperger's syndrome, and in as an innofensive way as possible, I'd like you to know that your views on these matters don't matter a tinker's damn to me.

It's not you, really. It's my own unique mental wiring.

I damn well adore this feature of my mind. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to be ethical. For instance, it doesn't bother me a bit to shed a friendship over a point of principle. I don't need to "belong" to a group or a cause to feel complete, so I don't have any problem dissociating myself when they go sour.

You won't ever find ME changing my principles to fit my audience and the fortunes of political correctness, unlike Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton - just off the top of my head. One in 166? Only? Clearly we need to breed...

Ok, well, there's the Aspergers keyword for the day, so on to the next shirt. I desperately need a new "no whining" shirt. This one has a newer design and it's BLACK! Woot!
Best of all, it's something everyone agrees on. (Even those who whine incessently themselves.)

Me, when I think of "wining," I think of Bill O'Rielly, and the sort of "Christian" who feels "persecuted" by "happy holidays" signs at Wal-Mart, or grumblings about restrictions on hate speech directed at gays, single mothers and people who believe in abortion choice. Apparently, within the tiny little abscesses they call "brains," they consider it to be a religious right to say that "faggots should be killed" or that "abortion doctors should be hunted down and killed" or that "godless liberals" should be "hung."

This is whining. Aside from hate speech, it's whining, and an admission that none of these "Core Christian Values" are gaining any ground in the marketplace of ideas - even with mainstream Christians. Nope, when you start trying to intimidate and terrorize people into compliance, it means your rational arguements - well, maybe they aren't as rational as you thought. So resorting to hate speech is whining and winging. It's a childish temper tantrum, really. It's a demand of "If you don't let me win, I'm going to hit you/"

I won't let children get away with this, and I've no reason to let grown up, so-called Christians get away with it either. The only difference is that children really don't expect to get away with that tactic if there are any grownups around.

tag: cafepress, t-shirts, sales, black t-shirts, dark t-shirts, activism, political, rude, anti-bush, anti-dominionist

O'Rielly promotes idea that "liberals are more dangeous than terrorists."

I blogged earliler about this,working just from a bare description. I still haven't found a transcript, but the reaction and outrage continues to spread.

The article linked below points out that Bill'O is very fond of Hate Speech, Nazi-style eliminationist rhetoric and conspiracy theories himself.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bill O'Reilly Compares Progressive Bloggers to Nazis and KKK: "O'Reilly Promotes Violence and Conspiracy, But Condemns Deliberative Debate

In this quote from the end of the book, D'Souza sent his 9/11 conspiracy theory a careening over the cliff of violent language and logic, making an argument plain and simple enough for even Bill O'Reilly to understand (emphasis mine):

In reality, the left already has a foreign policy and a strategy, and it is called working in tandem with bin Laden to defeat Bush. As we have seen, the left and the Islamic radicals operate like the two sides of a scissors, each prong working separately, but toward the same end. Conservatives need to identify the enemy at home and show its tacit relationship with the foreign enemy. Not only is there a close parallel between the rhetoric of the two groups, but they have the same goal of defeating Bush in Iraq, and they need each other to accomplish this goal. In short the left is the domestic insurgency that provides a counterpart to the Iraq insurgency. It is at least as dangerous as any of bin Laden's American sleeper cells.

(Dinesh D'Souza, The Enemy at Home, p. 269)

Now, at this point--most Americans would read this passage and think: Oh, my, god. This book accuses the "cultural left" of being "at least as dangerous" as terrorists plotting to kill Americans with poison gas and nuclear bombs. Yep. That is exactly what D'Souza argued in the book. Not satisfied with floating a crackpot theory about liberals causing 9/11, D'Souza drives right into crazy town--redefining liberals as terrorists. The result, for those who actually take D'Souza seriously, is the idea that America should be hunting down liberals in the same way that they are hunting down terrorists--to be a liberal is to be a violent enemy of America, the only rightful end for which is death. Although wrapped up in the niceties of academic language, D'Souza's book is essentially a 300-page call for the death penalty against anyone identified with the left in America.

I have already blogged about this sort of hate speech - and what needs to be done about it.

Graphictruth: "Why Do You Hate America, Mr. King?": "We don't 'hate America,' Willhelm. There are certain people who claim to be patriotic Americans, while disparaging the values expressed by our Constitution and the Inalienable Rights recognized by it, that we could frankly do without.

Yourself, for example. [There's more...] You are not representative of core American values, as expressed in the Federalist Papers, the letters of Franklin, the writings of Adams, or worthy of citizenship when you can speak about 'knowing our place.'

Sir, 'our place' is in the Militia, defending the Constitution against all threats, foreign and domestic. You - and your self-deluded, authoritarian ilk - are precisely such a threat.

THIS - right here - IS such a 'well regulated militia,' using the power of the press under the aegis of the First Amendment. But if need be, we citizens are charged to do the same under the Second, should it come to pass that our government is suborned and becomes indistinguishable from any other Tyranny.

A Militia is any group of citizens coming together with their skills , talents and ability in common cause and without need to be told by some self-styled 'Commander in Chief' what to do or how to do it.

However, I do not actually hate you. Strong emotion can spoil your aim."

Resign, Sir!

A belated Fourth of July post from me, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, via digg. Keith Olbermann delivers arguably his most pointed and most powerful Special Comment yet on the ramifications of Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence. The video is also on YouTube and is embedded above, but C&L has a transcript.

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison –at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder:

To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens — the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.

The Comments on Digg, C&L and YouTube are worth reading. Even the Usual Idiots seem to have lost heart for their mindless apologeas, with a few "dead ender" exceptions. There is a literal flood of video responses on YouTube, too. The following is from a Ron Paul fan - a truly devastating bit of Bush-Bashing.

I took the time to include a response to one such dead ender, by the name of asknotaxe , who's comment was so astonishing that it demanded a reply beyond the limits imposed by YouTube.

Keith Olberman seemingly has forgotten the 211 presidential pardons Clinton granted in the last 9 weeks in office, and thew 121 on his final day of office? Olberman is a windbag. Listening to him wax philosophic about democracy and war makes me puke. I am a US soldier, and don't need some liberal toad eulogizing my service....we are volunteers. So just shut the fuck up and sleep quietly under the blanket of freedom and security provided by better men than yourselves, non serving liberals.

What makes you think "people here" approve of those pardons? I don't recall the details of all of them, but a few - even several - stuck in my craw.

But as I recall, none were pardons of people that had been convicted of crimes committed directly on Clinton's behalf.

Meanwhile, Sir, your unwillingness to consider the evidence; your mockery and contempt for those who do, your self-definition as being "better than" those who do not blindly follow the Leader does not ring freedom's bells in MY ear.

No, Sir, what I hear is the tramp of jackboots and knocks on the door at midnight.

You, Sir, have managed to capture the sheer arrogance of the Redcoat, the unthinking tone of superiority of - not then Nazis, but of an Italian fascist soldier.

Worse yet for you, you sound something like a cross between an Italian Fascist and a Vietnam-Era Helicopter General.

Where, sir, is my Habius Corpus? Where, Sir, is my guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure, or a fair and speedy trial by a jury of my peers? Where, Sir, does the Constitution define "Free Speech Zones?" What happened to the Posse Comatatus act - and for what reason?

And for what reason did Haliburton get a no-bid contract to build internment camps? Should I believe they are really intended just for uppity brown people, or as "relocation camps" in case of emergency?

The guard towers and razor wire argue against that "explanation," Sir.

So, you see, us "liberals" - that is to say, those of us with various political views who have not been seduced by the warming tickle of smoke being blown up our asses - do not find the "blanket" you refer to as being either warm, comfortable, or having anything whatsoever to do with "freedom."

When an armed and enthusiastic thug tells me to "shut the fuck up" and be quiet in the NAME of freedom, something is terribly wrong.

But I rather think that when you get your marching orders to try and impose martial law upon us "spineless liberals" who "never had the guts to serve," you may find yourself in for a bit of a surprise.

First, I think you may be astonished at how many of us are armed and who take defending the Constitution very seriously indeed, despite a very realistic view of the outcome for us in a personal sense. Second, I believe you will be stunned at how many of us ARE veterans, unlike myself and Third, the embarrassing holes in your own ranks as many take the higher path of honor blazed by Gen. Robert E. Lee.

An interesting further question - one of some professional concern for those such as yourself, I should imagine - is what cause will appeal to all the competent military leaders who's careers foundered upon the rocks of unwelcome candor? Come the day you are led into battle against the American People - as you may well be, given the history and nature of this viciously stupid administration - are you entirely sanguine about the competence of your chain of command and it's ability to anticipate emerging threats and respond effectively? Given it's track record in the "Cakewalk," I mean.

Nah, I suspect you to be just another Redcoat who doesn't believe that a bunch of rag-tag ruffians can achieve anything against the might of the Empire, a fetishist drone of the National Security State, and until the last moment, I suspect you will be unable to comprehend the fact that the individual Citizen - not the CINC - is the intended sovereign agency in this nation. Those of us who understand that - well, you've probably bunked with a lot of them.

So, if you do not respect MY potential ability to fuck you up at range - respect theirs.

Redcoats learned to fear "The Widowmaker," the deadly accurate Pennsylvania rifle. capable of reliably putting a 50 caliber slug into a man's head at 200 yards.

Well, sir, it's descendants are here, and rather a lot of them are in the hands of Citizens. And for those of us who cannot scrape up the ten grand needed for weapon and optics - well, there's always Home Depot, sporting goods stores, and various things dismissed as "wacky" by those who've not considered the immutable laws of physics, such as spud guns. Anything that can shoot a potato 1000 yards and crack the sound barrier in the process has some potential for elemental mischief.

The bottom line is this: George Bush will not be able to steal this nation from it's Citizens. He may be able to screw it up, fragment it, balkanize it, kill thousands upon thousands of us, but ultimately, you cannot enslave free citizens. Killing us is your only option - and we have you outnumbered.

I certainly do not advocate civil war. I'm horrified at the prospect. But the ultimate outcome, given the forces at the command of Bush,, even assuming only "scattered resistance" and complete willingness to bear arms against the citizens of this nation, the outcome will come down to the numbers. And that's a damn graphic truth.

For The Well-Regulated Militia Member

ADVERTISMENT

Constitutionally , if you are an American Citizen between the ages of 14 and 41 (I believe), you are a member of your local militia. It's a custom that has lapsed, in favor of the National Guard, the Reserves and other Federal and State agencies, but it's almost impossible to overstate how deeply suspicious our founders were of centralized authorities with standing forces.

And, considering the headlines - and more importantly, the blogs - it's becoming difficult to push the idea that every citizen is responsible for "National Security" on a house to house level.

These days, the term "militia" is confused with scary camoflage-wearing nutcases preaching the "end times" or the ulitmate collapse of Civilization As We Know It, and so we tend to ignore the concept of confident preparedness. But, really, that's all being part of a "well-regulated militia" is all about; ensuring that enough people with the right training and with the right tools exist so that wherever an emergency exists, it can be dealt with in the most rapid manner possible.

A volunteer Fire Department is a perfect example of a "well-regulated militia." Now, it's comforting to think that dealing with actual outbreaks of violence, or attempted oppression on the part of an overweening state or national government is a threat long past - but some of us are starting to wonder if it might not be a good idea to have some practical experience with small infantry tactics as well.

And that's where the sponsor of this post, Tippmann paintball guns, comes in. Tippmann paintball is an affordable and enjoyable way to build skills that, God help us, will never be called upon. But if you do need to pick up an assault weapon in defense of you and yours, in company with your fellow citizens - you will have a good idea of how to use it effectively.

This is something that does not automatically come with the purchase of an AK47. Ask any dead Iraqi insurgent.

In this case, practice makes perfect - without being a bother or a chore.

Rational Paranoia

When They Come for Your Guns...
by
critter183

Get this custom t-shirt at Zazzle

Despite my overall optimism about the eventual futility of trying to impose a totalitarian state upon us, it's clear that that for whatever reasons (and I frankly abstain from speculation, as I simply do not care what their alleged reasoning might be) it is becoming prudent to consider taking individual and collective actions to forestall such tragic foolishness.

Call Me Paranoid. Pentagon Creating Red State Officer Corps: "When I get really paranoid, and I look at how the Pentagon enabled Bush to deceive and defraud the US into the Iraq war, when I see how the military is happily helping Bush and company destroy constitutional freedoms, like right to a trial, habeus corpus and privacy... I wonder what advantage there might be to have an army intentionally recruited from the most conservative states. It's not healthy. It counters the American way of diversity. When I'm really paranoid, I think that, like the book, Can't Happen Here, an army of handpicked conservatives from conservative territories would be much easier to manage, much easier to command to get to do things that you and I might find intolerable.

I add to this the recent change in the law eroding Posse Comitatus restrictions in the US and it adds up to some more evidence that the US could be tottering on the brink of totalitarianism. These are just pieces, parts of a big puzzle. But I think it's important to talk about these. I wonder if the German people talked about the ominous developments that happened in Germany before it metamorphosized into a thing of horror. "

Clearly, not enough. And clearly, there are those who think that a general miasma of fear, coupled with intense religious indoctrination can duplicate the remarkably desperate conditions that made Hitler's rise to power possible. But let us also consider what happened to Hitler, militarily, when he tried to invade and control the Soviet Union - a swath of territory of the same approximate size as the United States and Canada.

Consider also that Hitler's war machine hit Russia at the peak of it's capability, with overwhelming individual superiority, superior weapons, superior tactics, against a demoralized and decapitated military and a population that had no love for their government.

It should have been a "cakewalk." And it was. Until they reached Stalingrad - possibly the most comprehensive "fuck you" delivered in military history.

Our military has been sharply reduced in effectiveness, and clearly it's leaders betray no great competence or grasp of either military or social realities. This may well be due to a general exodus of liberal and nonpolitical officers and enlisted personnel - accelerated by purges of officers resistant to the Bush White House line.

The first to be pushed to the door was Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East who suddenly announced that he was accelerating his retirement which would take effect in March. Abizaid, who speaks fluent Arabic, was criticized by some in Washington for being too concerned about Arab sensibilities.

Getting the bum’s rush with Abizaid will be Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq who had called the idea of a troop escalation unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. The New York Times reported that Casey would be replaced in February or March, several months ahead of schedule.

Fred Reed, writing at Lewrockwell.com, predicts that this increasingly delusional officer corps will interact with enlisted personnel who are in full and bloody contact with an unforgiving and futile reality to produce open rebellions.

Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.

The standard response of the officer corps is that the troops cannot see the Big Picture. (Unless of course the enlisteds say what the officers want to hear, in which case their experience on the ground lends irresistible authority). But the Big Picture rests on the Little Picture. If a soldier sees slow disaster where he is, and hears the same thing from guys he meets from everywhere else in the country, his conclusions will not be without weight. Sooner or later, on his third tour with a pregnant wife at home and seven friends killed by bombs, he will say, in the crude but expressive language of soldiers, “f___ this shit.”

By contrast, officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?

There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.

Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.

Of course, that's why God issues sidearms to Sargents - to ensure that when reality fails to impress a butterbar, he may be promoted to Hero, First Class (posthumously.) The author continues, with this trenchant and accurate observation:

Officers remind me of armed Moonies. There is the same earnestness, the same deliberate optimism-by-policy. Things are going well because doctrine says they are. An officer is as ideologically upbeat as Reader’s Digest, and as unreflective. This is the why they don’t learn, why the US is again flailing about, trying to fight hornets with elephant guns. “Yessir, can do, sir.” Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. It is not arrogance, more like a belief in gravitation.

The date for the article is given as Oct. 2, 2006. We wonder aloud why this and many other clues are not being added up by the average American. Karen Kwiatkowski of Military Week provides a chilling insight in her essay, Dead Man Walking.

To imagine freedom from our current foreign policy imbroglio, we step into dangerous territory. It is estimated that 60 million American voters have a financial stake in the military-industrial complex, not counting those who invest in the many American companies that rely on militarism abroad and at home to provide shareholder dividends. As we contemplate a draft, we forget that we really and truly don't need one. Undereducated and underemployed young people may complain, but they don't really count. Increasingly, college students are willing to take any paying job, including one offered in the name of “service' and patriotism. Their parents and grandparents will accept the draft as well, in the name of that societal restructure that Eisenhower warned against, and has now become the norm.

Thus, the dead man walking is not just our increasingly confused and cartoonish Mr. Bush. We see dead men walking in the discredited Republican party, once valued for both fiscal restraint and political seriousness. We find them in the United States Army, and in nearly every office of the E-ring of the Pentagon. We see dead men walking as we watch the young men and women who have been sent to the Middle East to spread “democracy' at the point of the gun, to occupy in a land that will never accept our occupation, and doesn't need it. Finally, here at home, many Americans who otherwise would stand up and act to reject their government instead cower. Because for all of our understanding of the farce, and our recognition of the cure -- leaving Iraq immediately -- too many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, burdened by personal and national debt -- to the tune of $440,000 for every American household. At least 60 million of us truly believe we need that Department of Defense paycheck, that military contract, that service-sector job that sucks greedily at the military-industrial teat.

Thus, Americans of all parties seem to be nastily cheering George W. Bush as he marches into the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil and intending even more murder, more destruction, more breaking of banks and breaking of hearts. Better him than us, we mutter. But we are all dead men walking.

My conclusion is still one of guarded optimism, in part because I do not believe that our military-industrial complex is composed entirely of stupid people. At some point, the gravy train has to end, the smart people take what they have and what they know to get a new train rolling. So very much of that "shock and awe" technology apples to space and energy applications - which are an astonishing opportunity sector - and yet lose none of their inherent defense applications.

This can happen quickly and dramatically - if sixty million Americans realize the power of the retirement portfolio. And that is simply one potential check. Another is even more obvious; that whatever provisions Bush has made to impose his will on the American people by force, that imposition will require the obedience of a cohesive force that is willing to fire on American Citizens. I think that it's not all that likely that there will be such a cohesive response. But in the unlikely event there is an attempt by this administration to suppress increasing public unrest and opposition to his impeachable lunacies, there is this.

The Second Amendment.

TOWARDS A MEEK MILITIA

by Peter J. Mancus, Attorney at Law

12. What is the point of all this? People who will not communicate with like-minded, concerned citizens, those who will not use the First Amendment because they are afraid government monitors their communications and they will be tagged as being a troublesome maverick, to me, do not act prudently.

13. If you ever bought a hunting license, bought reloading equipment or any firearm related product mail order or on a credit card; if you ever wrote a check to a place that sells such equipment; if you received a gun magazine at home; if you ever wrote a politician about a gun or right issue; if you ever wrote a letter to an editor on a related issue; if you ever wrote anything on the Internet; if you ever sent anything via email; or if you ever wore a T-shirt that carried a pro-right message, you have already broken "radio silence". In that sense, you are no longer "incommunicado". Your idea of being discreet so that government cannot detect you, therefore, is to me, at best, non-persuasive.

14. Instead, I submit it is best to adopt SAC's approach: develop the capability to inflict an unacceptable retaliatory blow, flaunt it, show it off, demonstrate it without actually firing anything off. I also think it is best to adopt the Corps' approach: think deeply about developing new tactics and test them. To do that, however, people who fancy themselves to be freedom fighters--leaders or followers or both--have to communicate with one another. Without communication, if you believe in a poor tactic, until you know better, you will try to implement that poor tactic. If you have a great tactic, but will not share it, if and when you die of old age, disease, in a car wreck or are killed by a criminal or a SWAT team, your good idea dies with you.

Mancus's overriding point is that the essence of a civilian militia composed of armed citizens of EVERY state, region, color, and political persuasion is that it is a credible deterrent to those who - like many supporters of George Bush - seem quite willing to participate in a domestic Kristalnacht. The clear intent of the 2nd Amendment is to empower armed citizens to band together in "well regulated militias." The meaning of "well-regulated" was, at the time of the writing - trained, drilled and prepared to use their weapons in both individual and collective self-defense. It did NOT mean "under patent of authority" or some-such. The framers saw such "authorities" as being as potentially dangerous as outlaws and pirates.

An armed society is, I suggest, a courteous society. Like many of my fellow bloggers, I decry the lack of civility and contempt for the rights of the individual that has been displayed both by our government and by the "nattering nabobs" of the Chickenhawk Right.

I believe it's time for those who do not romanticize the gun as a magic penis nonetheless take up the rationalizations of the Armed Right, for those rationalizations and justifications - for that is all the NRA is reduced to - are nonetheless absolutely correct.

Consider, if you will, the potential of a force drawn from the Red States being dispatched to suppress "insurrection" in a Blue State such as California, where "insurrection" might be defined as, say, a Governor taking steps to ensure the security of that state without reliance on National Guard troops who can be redeployed at the whim of the President.

Now let us consider the fact that California is about the size of Iraq, even more urbanized and replete with weapons sources for materials capable of being transformed into weapons and held by those who understand the meaning of the words "I Swear to Uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, Foreign and Domestic."

I SWEAR
by
webcarve

Get this Custom Trucker Hat at Zazzle

tag: 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, a well-regulated militia, self-defense, liberty, freedom, culture war, terrorism, war on terror, clash of civilization, oath of office, bill of rights, uphold and defend the constitution, impeach george bush