Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:
Question: Can you conceive of any set of circumstances under which you would take up arms against your own government?
Your answer determines your stance on the Second Amendment.
If you answer “Yes,” then logically you should insist on being able to possess weapons at least as good as the police and military will be using to suppress your rebellion, including ugly rifles and standard-capacity magazines, else your resistance is doomed before it begins and you might as well change your answer to “No.”
Because if you answer “No” – if you would never rebel against your own government but instead are willing to put up with any intrusion, any oppression, confiscation of property and beatings and rape rooms and even death squads – then you have no need of the Second Amendment. Nor of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth . . . you’re a willing slave to whomever holds power at the moment, no different from the lowest peon in any Third World Country.
May 29th is Patrick Henry’s birthday. How many Americans today would echo his most famous line? Or even recall what it was?
The relationship between people and government is one of the big gulfs between liberals and conservatives.
Conservatives believe government is, like the people that run it, imperfect and not fundamentally good. It, like they, need to be kept on a short leash. The Second Amendment is the choker chain in that philosophy.
Liberals believe people are fundamentally good. Government, they believe, is people. QED, government is good; attacking government is bad, since its not only people, it’s the Will of The People. In their world, that Will can never get so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it.
And conservatives believe that if it never becomes so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it, you can thank the Second Amendment, along with the First and Tenth.
Was Patrick Henry the guy who said “Give me a better Virginia, I’m willing to pay for it…as long as it is for the children!”?
“Liberals believe people are fundamentally good.”
Not the liberals I know.
“Government, they believe, is people.”
Can we put that old saw to rest?
Eric Holder believes in justice for “his people.” Liberals believe that “our people” are fundamentally useful and “their people” are crazy. Just ask Michelle Bachman.
Can we put that old
yes…’nuf said.
60 years ago, the withered old nimrods claiming “the government is the people” were squirting tears because the government was “the man” and he was keeping them down.
What they are really saying is “the government is ‘us'”. They’re wrong, but too stupid to realize it.
You can kill an armed man, you can’t enslave an armed man.
The practical purpose of the 2nd amendment isn’t to foster rebellion against the federal government, it is to define the relationship between the People and the federal government. This is why the libs hate it, it limits the ability of the federal government to define its own power. Nothing to do with ‘public safety’ at all.
Liberals believe people are fundamentally good. Government, they believe, is people. QED, government is good; attacking government is bad, since its not only people, it’s the Will of The People. In their world, that Will can never get so corrupted that a judge can’t fix it.
In other words, Triumph of the Will.
I am not sure why one’s stance on the second amendment is measured by conceiving of a circumstance where one would take up arms against the government.
One thing simply does not follow the other.
The question is how best to throw off oppression. It is a matter of strategy and tactics rather than ordinance.
If I lived in an oppressive land, like the former Soviet Union, the last thing I would contemplate is taking up arms. Armed insurrection simply entrenches the oppressors. We see that with Assad.
In fact, most insurrections fail miserably because we all know what happens when insurgencies win. See France, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, etc.
If one is looking for the best model to cast off oppression, why not look to the civil rights movement? It is about as American as you can get and it’s damned effective.
I say we start it today!
How about a million Minnesotans lighting up cigarettes in bars just to make the point that we don’t like being colonized?
It is a small step but when a lot of people take small steps, governments feel their credibility threatened and back off.
@ Greg: Under some circumstances, massive civil disobedience works. Like, when you are opposing a (at least nominal) liberal democracy, a la Ghandi. But, as has been said (and i’m too lazy to look up the original quote for attribution), if Ghandi had been opposing the Third Reich, he’d be a lampshade. The second amendment is basically what stands between us and the camps or ovens “progressives” would put us in, had they the power to do so.
Disarmament of the victims is an early stage in a developing tyranny. It isn’t done to keep the victims from overthrowing the state, it’s done to keep the victims from protecting themselves. It puts them not just at the mercy of the state, but whoever the state has allowed to remain armed.
The reason blacks weren’t allowed guns in some areas after the Civil War wasn’t to keep them from overthrowing the government, it was to keep them at the mercy of the dominant whites.
People on the left believe that the government should decide what it’s responsibilities and powers are, not the people. Disarming the people is very much an early step to tyranny by them.
“Conservatives believe government is, like the people that run it, imperfect and not fundamentally good.”
A small government Republican at the federal level needs to thread the needle between American’s desire for less government (and taxes) but all of their benefits.
No argument there but again, the iron curtain fell without firing a shot.
My point is that there are a lot of ways to fight oppression and arms are the least effective. Having said that, I am all for defending the furthest reaches of the second amendment. I think it is only fair. If the left can push the first and fourteenth amendments to extremes, why can’t the right push the second half as far? If liberals don’t like it, just tell them it is the “new normal”. 🙂
On the other hand, stuffing one’s closet with ammo for fear of the left is a waste of effort, there are better more effective ways to deal with them.
Greg, I hope you’re right but I fear you’re over-optimistic.
Civil disobedience works if conditions are exactly right. It requires a democracy with lots of broad-minded liberals: USA in the civil rights era responded to Martin Luther King in a way he wouldn’t have been in, say, USSR at the same time period. England in the end-of-colonial era responded to Mohandas Ghandi for the same reason, as did South Africa respond to Nelson Mandela. Even Lysistrada depended on a liberal democracy to put up with her antics.
In contrast, civil protest did not produce lasting change in Tiananmen Square, Occupy Wall Street, the Confederate States or Warsaw Ghetto; it was crushed as tyrants have crushed protests throughout history.
The Founding Fathers wrote letters and gave speeches explaining why they wanted the Ten Amendments. They rarely mentioned people keeping arms for hunting or home defense, they repeatedly said people needed arms to defend against their own government, should it turn on them. The Founders had little faith in the power of civil disobedience, having seen first hand its futility.
Greg, if you answer NO to the question, that’s your right. Good luck with the protest when they come for you.
Joe, I think you are confusing “broad-minded liberals” for popular support. At least in the case of Egypt, no one would claim the Muslim Brotherhood is broad-minded. 🙂
Ask yourself, can any group achieve its aims without substantial support? Even oppression requires popular support, as does throwing off the shackles of oppression.
Occupy failed because it wasn’t a popular movement. The same sadly can be said of the Warsaw Ghetto, in contrast to Denmark where the story was very different, where even the King wore a yellow star.
Don’t confuse protest with civil disobedience. The two are not the same at all. The cornerstone of Henry David Thoreau’s development of civil disobedience was the tax protest. The same can be said of Ghandi, who acted against economic targets by gathering salt from the sea and boycotting English cloth. Martin Luther King did the same with carefully orchestrated boycotts. He achieved more by economic leverage then by singing Kumbaya.
As for the Founding Fathers, they knew knew the force of arms well which is why they crushed The Whiskey Rebellion with force of arms. And to tell you the truth, if the rebellion had gotten out of hand, they would have used drones if they had them.
They were clever politicians…they knew that counting votes was more effective than counting muskets.
It is simple calculus. Movements with popular support eventually triumph (most often without firing a shot) and movements without popular support die out, no matter how violent they are. Case in point, the IRA, ETA, FARC and our very own SLA,
Do not get me wrong, I support the furthest reaches of the second amendment but equating the amendment with armed resistance to the government is the fastest way to lose the fundamental right to bear arms.
Keep in mind, the constitution has provisions for canceling one amendment with another. Sadly, all it could take to lose the second amendment is for too many second amendment activists to believe they are being oppressed and act out….
Well said, Greg. The fundamental question really is; who decides when such use is appropriate? Moreover, can/should the principle that has been established by Second Amendment court decisions be expanded to all weapons – like modified pressure cookers? If not, why not?
Example: Do frac sand mining opponents in SE Minnesota (a minority of the citizens) have a right to “bare arms” at the next County Board Meeting? If frac sand opponents were a clear majority of the citizens in SE Minnesota does THIS give them the right to show up at County Board meetings with weapons in hand?
Or do these “rights” extend only to issues with the federal government?
When are we talking about rights and when are we talking about terrorism?
Does the Second Amendment give us the individual “right” to use violence when we think the law and power of the government is unjust?
How “unjust” must the government be before we invoke that right? Who makes the call?
Indeed, these are serious questions. The right to bare arms as individuals is not the same as a well regulated militia. And the concept is not trivial.
I don’t think we have an individual right to insurrection with weapons. We only have the right to bare arms against authority as a part of a well regulated militia.
The question we need to ask is: What constitutes a well regulated militia? The answer to that question can lead us to the answer to my first question.
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The short answer is: each individual decides for themselves.
A better question is what comes next?
Without popular support, individuals get arrested. With popular support, it becomes more like The Battle of Athens where an armed population stood up to a violent and corrupt local government after the state and federal authorities refused to act.
It is the way it has always been, a handful of people can be dismissed as “wing-nuts”, a crowd comprises “an incident” and a majority makes for a “popular uprising”.