[politics] Just me ragegasming - not funny, probably inflammatory
Words have meaning.
And with Rights come Responsibilities.
I have been quietly raging on a political issue, and I invite you to ignore it.
So, I've been angry about the assassination attempt, the shooting in Arizona a week ago. I am partially angry with the media for concentrating on some sensational aspects of the shooting and engaging in finger-pointing on superficial issues. The ridiculous responses from Palin and some of the other Conservatives are even more enraging, but I don't think I'm angry for the same reasons as most people.
First of all, I'm a pro Second Amendment guy. It is part of the US Constitution, just as much as the First Amendment. Listening to people trying to second-guess the shooter on the basis of his choice of tools is just as stupid as the TSA concentrating on three ounce bottles of liquid or underwear bombs. Whether an attack is against a politician, a school, or a MacDonald's someone who intends to murder random people always has the initiative and all the time in the world to consider their actions and select their lethal tools to carry out their murderous intentions. A thirty round magazine, a pistol, or any other tool does not cause a man to kill people, and the methods and tactics he chooses to carry out his act wouldn't change anything given some new magic prohibition. Prohibition on guns will stop murders just like prohibition on drugs stops drug abuse. We want a simple answer, but a simple answer will not solve the problem at hand.
I will talk a bit more about my pro-Second Amendment position in a moment.
I will say that American bystanders acting together to intervene is the only effective defense to limit spree shooters. This is a good thing, and it is the one positive message that every American should hear. No more hijackings, no more submitting to gunman, no more standing by and letting it happen. Cowards, bullies, terrorists, and their entire ilk get power because we as a group relinquish it to them. The more people that are willing to act assertively in any random group of Americans reduces the harm any one person can cause.
Second, conjectures about the motives of the shooter are kind of irrelevant. The press points out that this was clearly an assassination attempt on a Democratic Congresswoman, who won an election in a battleground district targeted for Republican takeover. She had already received death threats and her campaign office had been vandalized a few times. In an interview just prior to her being shot, it was pointed out that Palin had targeted her district with a crosshair, like from a rifle sight, and she was asked if she was afraid. After the shooting, Palin got blamed.
The Conservative response was that the crosshairs were surveyor marks and since the shooter had read Mein Kamf and The Communist Manifesto, obviously he is a Liberal (which makes no sense on so many levels I can't even begin to address such a preposterous claim, but it was said by Aaron Klien of World Net Daily and was repeated in the Mainstream news as a newsworthy statement).
Anyway, I am prepared to accept that he just shot random people at a grocery store for no reason for the sake of argument. I also think that the cross-hairs canard is flimsy. Using military metaphors (let's just say they were gun-sights) when discussing non-military strategy is entirely normal in our culture, top to bottom, without any intent of violence. So, let's drop that whole issue of the gunman being motivated by rhetoric for the sake of my argument. I don't need him to believe anything at all for what I have to say. He is a crazy person and a random murderer. Besides, I don't give a fuck what murderers that randomly shoot bystanders and children think or have to say.
Third, Palin's response: "Blood Libel." Okay, I'm just going to skip how incredibly infuriatingly stupid that is, because there are more important matters at hand. Let us just say "fuck her."
Given that for the sake of argument:
- The shooters motives are irrelevant. Let's even say he had no idea who he shot.
- Palin's crosshairs were obviously not a call to violence.
Even given those statements I still have a long list of motherfuckers I am infuriated with. Words have meaning, and with Rights come Responsibilities.
I absolutely support The First Amendment, just as I support the Second. The God Hates Fags guy gets to shout awful shit at grieving families from public property. White Power groups get to shout shit about Aryan superiority. Anti-War protesters get to call politicians murderers for supporting wars. PETA gets to cage hot naked chicks (although not nearly often enough) in an attempt to make us all vegans*. And, idiots in tri-corner hats get to talk about the founding fathers and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
I even agree that the point of the Second Amendment includes the ability for citizens to defy tyranny, not just home defense within one's home. It does say "keep and bear arms" after all, bearing being the part where people carry them ready for use. And, on that issue I probably lose a lot of people. That's fine, read on to the end if you've already read this much.
So here is the part where I get frothing mad.
Every motherfucker that stood in front of a crowd waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags, carrying "We came unarmed this time" signs, and wearing "Water the Tree of Liberty" t-shirts that shouted "You are the real American Patriots" and joined protests of people that called for Secession and armed revolution - every one of you fucks - that isn't dancing in the streets over this shooting, I name you the lowest of filthy cowards.
This is what you advocated.
I don't care if the shooter mistook the Congresswoman for his ex-girlfriend, this is what armed revolution looks like. And if you stand in front of people calling for revolution, and egg them on, saying shit like "people will turn to Second Amendment remedies" (Sharron Angle) and mention the "bullet box" as the option after the "ballot box," you had better own your goddamn words.
It's one thing to wank over the Revolutionary War over a beer or over the counter in a gun store, but organizing a demonstration, tri-corner hats and all, isn't the same thing as telling your buddy we would be better off killing off Congress and starting over. With your buddy you are bullshitting and blowing off steam, but the public protest is a deliberate act.
At least the God Hates Fags guys really believe what they are saying. The White Power people at least have the balls to own their ideology. But if you are such a fucking child that you think calling for armed insurrection is cool because they had great hats in the 18th Century, fuck you.
This is just a tiny taste of what armed insurrection would look like. The rest of it would look a lot like downtown Baghdad in 2004. There would be murders, assassinations, reprisals, bombings, mortar attacks, burnings, military checkpoints, infantry and marine home invasions against insurgents, harsh interrogations of separatists as Habeas Corpus is Constitutionally suspended, and a shitload of American nine-year-old girls bleeding out in the street.
If that is your honest heart's desire; if that is your vision of what America must become because of what you hear on the news; I encourage you to break out your tri-corner hat and say so. That's fine.
The motherfuckers that exploited your vision of a cool future of shooting redcoats and now want to back away, feign outrage over being held accountable for their words, cast blame on Liberals, and play like their hands are clean; you should hate those motherfuckers first above all people. They betrayed you. They are cowards that won't accept responsibility for claiming to understand your cause.
Sarah Palin and the cast of Fox News [sic] have punked you to get your votes.
I have no doubt that there are those who have measured the state of our nation and have decided that the sad state of current affairs does indeed call for armed insurrection.
Guys like Rick Barber think that The Revolution was about a Tea Tax.
I am sure that there are others that agree. They are fucking wrong.***
The Declaration of Independence is a beautiful document. It will take you 15 minutes to read. Go read it, right now. If you've read this much drivel from me, then you can spare the time to read what was written by men much smarter than me.
Fine, you didn't read it. I'll point out a salient bit.
Everyone loves some of the first paragraphs of this document. How could anyone not love "we hold these truths to be self-evident?" Come on, that's fucking awesome.
There is a bit there, however, that seems to get boring and most people just gloss over it. That is the list of complaints by which it became "necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."
Let me just summarize some of the complaints this English colony had against their King George III.
- He suspended representative government for resisting his will, repeatedly
- He obstructed the administration of justice
- He made judges dependant on his will alone
- He kept armies among us in peacetime, making the military independent and superior to civil authority
- He quartered large bodies of armed troops in our homes
- He protected soldiers that murdered American civilians via mock trials
- He cut off trade with other parts of the world
- He imposed taxes on us without our consent (that means no elected officials, not "I don't like it")
- He suspended trial by jury and practiced extraordinary rendition on Americans
- He took away our Charters, abolished our governments, and abolished laws we held dear
- He abolished Common Law and created an arbitrary set of laws to fit into our colonies
- He abdicated rule by withdrawing his protection and making war on the colonies
- He has plundered the seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people
- He used large forces of foreign mercenaries to bring death and destruction to the colonies
- He pressed Americans into service to fight against their countrymen against their will
- He incited Indian revolts against us
So, I've heard some of the most extreme arguments for secession and revolution in our country. I've heard it from those who claim to be Patriots.
Personally, I don't see "Obama's socialist agenda" of required Health Insurance to be quite the same as hiring foreign mercenaries, suspending Congress, making law arbitrary, coercing all judges, protecting random murdering soldiers from prosecution, and suspending trial by jury, but I have heard conspiracy theories that try really hard to make events from decades ago into Big Government(tm) being exactly the same as an arbitrary Monarch.
Fine. I understand the desire that every generation has to make the events of their own life as important as those from some golden past. The Roman Republic had legends of its own Founding Fathers that Senators and Consuls competed with. The Greeks all wanted to be Leonidas or Alexander. It is very human to view one's betters as peers and our perceived troubles of the day the equal of challenges in the past. I understand.
So if a 2% tax increase to pay debts for unfunded unending foreign wars that were paid for by deficit spending is exactly the same thing in one's mind as suspending the legislature, property rights, and due process, I support your First Amendment Right to voice that viewpoint. I suppose hats with three corners are kind of cool and the footwear is schnazzy.
Here is the part where I call bullshit: patriots.
There is another document that is kind of important. You may have heard of it. It is called the US Constitution and it turns out that there is text around the Second Amendment that kind of matters.
It will take 30 minutes to read. Do so now.
Hey remember that part where Glenn Beck said the right to secede in there****? Oh, is that the 10th Amendment? Wrong motherfucker. Article I Section 10: Powers prohibited to States. States are prohibited from becoming nations. In fact, there are two other very specific clauses in Article I on the matter of making war against The United States. Congress can suspend Habeas Corpus due to insurrection and the only specific crime listed in the Constitution is treason, which includes making war on the United States.
The founding fathers didn't fight the Revolution because Revolutions are cool. They didn't fight it over a tea tax either. They fought to restore order, law, and a representative form of government with due process.
They didn't draft The Constitution to prevent Socialism or reserve Health Care to those with corporate jobs. They empowered the Congress in Article I Section 8 to (among other powers) borrow money, to regulate commerce, to promote science and art, and to lay and collect taxes to pay debts and provide for defense and the common welfare.
Our system includes checks and balances, some of which are painfully slow, by which laws that violate The Constitution can be repealed by The Supreme Court and Presidents can be impeached. It does not guarantee that you will like the outcome, just that there is due process of law. Nor does it say that if you think a law is Unconstitutional that you get to shoot people.
Nowhere in there is a guarantee that policies you like will be enacted by the representatives you elect. Anti-war protestors didn't get their way, and their tax money still goes to buy bombs we are dropping abroad.
Hell, there are Americans who in living memory didn't have the right to drink from the same water fountain as me, and those people marched and suffered in peaceful protest, suffering beatings and jail time for redress of their grievances. They fought for basic human dignity, not slippery-slope inflexible intellectual ideology on particular bills, and they succeeded through peaceful protest - no matter how they were antagonized.
By comparison, the MacVeighs and Rudolfs of the world are childish cowards. Sure, they had lots to say once they were caught, but they didn't have the balls to bring their grievances to the public square and suffer for their cause peacefully. No, they just murdered people with bombs and hid out until they were caught like naughty children pouting over not getting their way.
Even our Founding Fathers took the time to petition for redress: "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."
If you consider a tax you don't like to be repeated injury, I had better not see you using any of the socialist roads our parents and grandparents paid for with their taxes. And what the hell are you doing on the Internet which was developed with DARPA tax dollars? Fuck you free-rider, log off.
My point is this:
Those who are ready to exercise their First Amendment Rights to peaceably assemble and espouse your Right to use force to overthrow the government outlined by The Constitution, you don't get to call yourselves patriots. You have the Right to say what you want to say and believe what you want to believe, but if you want to go to war with the United States, you are no patriot. You are a traitor. I'm not talking a Fox News commentator loose-tongued over-the-top attention-grabbing use of the word traitor, I mean the real deal; it's right there in black and white.
If you want to wank to the founding fathers and to guns, rock on. Get down with your bad self.
If you want to shout from the rooftops that everyone should grab their guns and tri-cornered hats, then you had better own your words.
If assassinations, bombings, shooting sprees, burnings, the suspension of law and order, killing Americans, and dead little girls is the only option you see for whatever it is you need, then bring it.
But you are no patriot, not of these United States you aren't. As soon as you commit one overt act of war, you are the enemy - a traitor.
What you stand for isn't The United States or what the Founding Fathers fought for. You are imitating your betters, not to restore law, order, and due process, but because you want to get your way when our Constitution is inconvenient.
Back when I joined the military, I made an oath to support and defend The Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign and domestic, and those that bring war here are not patriots, they are enemies. Fuck them.
Own your words.
If you don't mean that your fantasies of shooting Americans are to be taken seriously, then say what you do mean or shut the fuck up.
With Rights come Responsibilities.
* - I hereby promise that if enough hot naked chicks come to my house and get in a cage for me, I will eat a vegetable. I will spring for the cage.
** - Isn't it amazing how such a prescient super-ninja all-powerful cabal has an overly complex sinister plan which ends in "and then we will ineffectively attempt to pass Republican proposals through Congressional due process! Somehow this will cause the slippery slope towards our ultimate destruction of the United States (presumably with more ineffective due process at some later time) HAhahahahah!" It sounds a lot like Doctor Evil demanding "One million dollars!" to me.
*** - These same people probably believe that the Civil War was about "state's rights" and that slavery was an incidental issue to the entire conflict. Interestingly, the Confederate Founding Fathers had no problem stating exactly why they seceded, and they even wrote it down, just like the Founding Fathers of the United States: Declaration of Causes. They had a Constitution too, go ahead and look at the changes and tell me if they went to war over interstate bridges and canals and a five year term of President, or if they went to war over slavery: Confederate Constitution
**** - Under the power of Congress to try any case whatever, that does include Congress' Right to choose to permit a state to secede, but not for a state to make war on the United States. Nor does it in any way compell Congress to grant such permission.
And with Rights come Responsibilities.
I have been quietly raging on a political issue, and I invite you to ignore it.
So, I've been angry about the assassination attempt, the shooting in Arizona a week ago. I am partially angry with the media for concentrating on some sensational aspects of the shooting and engaging in finger-pointing on superficial issues. The ridiculous responses from Palin and some of the other Conservatives are even more enraging, but I don't think I'm angry for the same reasons as most people.
First of all, I'm a pro Second Amendment guy. It is part of the US Constitution, just as much as the First Amendment. Listening to people trying to second-guess the shooter on the basis of his choice of tools is just as stupid as the TSA concentrating on three ounce bottles of liquid or underwear bombs. Whether an attack is against a politician, a school, or a MacDonald's someone who intends to murder random people always has the initiative and all the time in the world to consider their actions and select their lethal tools to carry out their murderous intentions. A thirty round magazine, a pistol, or any other tool does not cause a man to kill people, and the methods and tactics he chooses to carry out his act wouldn't change anything given some new magic prohibition. Prohibition on guns will stop murders just like prohibition on drugs stops drug abuse. We want a simple answer, but a simple answer will not solve the problem at hand.
I will talk a bit more about my pro-Second Amendment position in a moment.
I will say that American bystanders acting together to intervene is the only effective defense to limit spree shooters. This is a good thing, and it is the one positive message that every American should hear. No more hijackings, no more submitting to gunman, no more standing by and letting it happen. Cowards, bullies, terrorists, and their entire ilk get power because we as a group relinquish it to them. The more people that are willing to act assertively in any random group of Americans reduces the harm any one person can cause.
Second, conjectures about the motives of the shooter are kind of irrelevant. The press points out that this was clearly an assassination attempt on a Democratic Congresswoman, who won an election in a battleground district targeted for Republican takeover. She had already received death threats and her campaign office had been vandalized a few times. In an interview just prior to her being shot, it was pointed out that Palin had targeted her district with a crosshair, like from a rifle sight, and she was asked if she was afraid. After the shooting, Palin got blamed.
The Conservative response was that the crosshairs were surveyor marks and since the shooter had read Mein Kamf and The Communist Manifesto, obviously he is a Liberal (which makes no sense on so many levels I can't even begin to address such a preposterous claim, but it was said by Aaron Klien of World Net Daily and was repeated in the Mainstream news as a newsworthy statement).
Anyway, I am prepared to accept that he just shot random people at a grocery store for no reason for the sake of argument. I also think that the cross-hairs canard is flimsy. Using military metaphors (let's just say they were gun-sights) when discussing non-military strategy is entirely normal in our culture, top to bottom, without any intent of violence. So, let's drop that whole issue of the gunman being motivated by rhetoric for the sake of my argument. I don't need him to believe anything at all for what I have to say. He is a crazy person and a random murderer. Besides, I don't give a fuck what murderers that randomly shoot bystanders and children think or have to say.
Third, Palin's response: "Blood Libel." Okay, I'm just going to skip how incredibly infuriatingly stupid that is, because there are more important matters at hand. Let us just say "fuck her."
Given that for the sake of argument:
- The shooters motives are irrelevant. Let's even say he had no idea who he shot.
- Palin's crosshairs were obviously not a call to violence.
Even given those statements I still have a long list of motherfuckers I am infuriated with. Words have meaning, and with Rights come Responsibilities.
I absolutely support The First Amendment, just as I support the Second. The God Hates Fags guy gets to shout awful shit at grieving families from public property. White Power groups get to shout shit about Aryan superiority. Anti-War protesters get to call politicians murderers for supporting wars. PETA gets to cage hot naked chicks (although not nearly often enough) in an attempt to make us all vegans*. And, idiots in tri-corner hats get to talk about the founding fathers and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
I even agree that the point of the Second Amendment includes the ability for citizens to defy tyranny, not just home defense within one's home. It does say "keep and bear arms" after all, bearing being the part where people carry them ready for use. And, on that issue I probably lose a lot of people. That's fine, read on to the end if you've already read this much.
So here is the part where I get frothing mad.
Every motherfucker that stood in front of a crowd waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags, carrying "We came unarmed this time" signs, and wearing "Water the Tree of Liberty" t-shirts that shouted "You are the real American Patriots" and joined protests of people that called for Secession and armed revolution - every one of you fucks - that isn't dancing in the streets over this shooting, I name you the lowest of filthy cowards.
This is what you advocated.
I don't care if the shooter mistook the Congresswoman for his ex-girlfriend, this is what armed revolution looks like. And if you stand in front of people calling for revolution, and egg them on, saying shit like "people will turn to Second Amendment remedies" (Sharron Angle) and mention the "bullet box" as the option after the "ballot box," you had better own your goddamn words.
It's one thing to wank over the Revolutionary War over a beer or over the counter in a gun store, but organizing a demonstration, tri-corner hats and all, isn't the same thing as telling your buddy we would be better off killing off Congress and starting over. With your buddy you are bullshitting and blowing off steam, but the public protest is a deliberate act.
At least the God Hates Fags guys really believe what they are saying. The White Power people at least have the balls to own their ideology. But if you are such a fucking child that you think calling for armed insurrection is cool because they had great hats in the 18th Century, fuck you.
This is just a tiny taste of what armed insurrection would look like. The rest of it would look a lot like downtown Baghdad in 2004. There would be murders, assassinations, reprisals, bombings, mortar attacks, burnings, military checkpoints, infantry and marine home invasions against insurgents, harsh interrogations of separatists as Habeas Corpus is Constitutionally suspended, and a shitload of American nine-year-old girls bleeding out in the street.
If that is your honest heart's desire; if that is your vision of what America must become because of what you hear on the news; I encourage you to break out your tri-corner hat and say so. That's fine.
The motherfuckers that exploited your vision of a cool future of shooting redcoats and now want to back away, feign outrage over being held accountable for their words, cast blame on Liberals, and play like their hands are clean; you should hate those motherfuckers first above all people. They betrayed you. They are cowards that won't accept responsibility for claiming to understand your cause.
Sarah Palin and the cast of Fox News [sic] have punked you to get your votes.
I have no doubt that there are those who have measured the state of our nation and have decided that the sad state of current affairs does indeed call for armed insurrection.
Guys like Rick Barber think that The Revolution was about a Tea Tax.
Click to viewI am sure that there are others that agree. They are fucking wrong.***
The Declaration of Independence is a beautiful document. It will take you 15 minutes to read. Go read it, right now. If you've read this much drivel from me, then you can spare the time to read what was written by men much smarter than me.
Fine, you didn't read it. I'll point out a salient bit.
Everyone loves some of the first paragraphs of this document. How could anyone not love "we hold these truths to be self-evident?" Come on, that's fucking awesome.
There is a bit there, however, that seems to get boring and most people just gloss over it. That is the list of complaints by which it became "necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."
Let me just summarize some of the complaints this English colony had against their King George III.
- He suspended representative government for resisting his will, repeatedly
- He obstructed the administration of justice
- He made judges dependant on his will alone
- He kept armies among us in peacetime, making the military independent and superior to civil authority
- He quartered large bodies of armed troops in our homes
- He protected soldiers that murdered American civilians via mock trials
- He cut off trade with other parts of the world
- He imposed taxes on us without our consent (that means no elected officials, not "I don't like it")
- He suspended trial by jury and practiced extraordinary rendition on Americans
- He took away our Charters, abolished our governments, and abolished laws we held dear
- He abolished Common Law and created an arbitrary set of laws to fit into our colonies
- He abdicated rule by withdrawing his protection and making war on the colonies
- He has plundered the seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people
- He used large forces of foreign mercenaries to bring death and destruction to the colonies
- He pressed Americans into service to fight against their countrymen against their will
- He incited Indian revolts against us
So, I've heard some of the most extreme arguments for secession and revolution in our country. I've heard it from those who claim to be Patriots.
Personally, I don't see "Obama's socialist agenda" of required Health Insurance to be quite the same as hiring foreign mercenaries, suspending Congress, making law arbitrary, coercing all judges, protecting random murdering soldiers from prosecution, and suspending trial by jury, but I have heard conspiracy theories that try really hard to make events from decades ago into Big Government(tm) being exactly the same as an arbitrary Monarch.
Fine. I understand the desire that every generation has to make the events of their own life as important as those from some golden past. The Roman Republic had legends of its own Founding Fathers that Senators and Consuls competed with. The Greeks all wanted to be Leonidas or Alexander. It is very human to view one's betters as peers and our perceived troubles of the day the equal of challenges in the past. I understand.
So if a 2% tax increase to pay debts for unfunded unending foreign wars that were paid for by deficit spending is exactly the same thing in one's mind as suspending the legislature, property rights, and due process, I support your First Amendment Right to voice that viewpoint. I suppose hats with three corners are kind of cool and the footwear is schnazzy.
Here is the part where I call bullshit: patriots.
There is another document that is kind of important. You may have heard of it. It is called the US Constitution and it turns out that there is text around the Second Amendment that kind of matters.
It will take 30 minutes to read. Do so now.
Hey remember that part where Glenn Beck said the right to secede in there****? Oh, is that the 10th Amendment? Wrong motherfucker. Article I Section 10: Powers prohibited to States. States are prohibited from becoming nations. In fact, there are two other very specific clauses in Article I on the matter of making war against The United States. Congress can suspend Habeas Corpus due to insurrection and the only specific crime listed in the Constitution is treason, which includes making war on the United States.
The founding fathers didn't fight the Revolution because Revolutions are cool. They didn't fight it over a tea tax either. They fought to restore order, law, and a representative form of government with due process.
They didn't draft The Constitution to prevent Socialism or reserve Health Care to those with corporate jobs. They empowered the Congress in Article I Section 8 to (among other powers) borrow money, to regulate commerce, to promote science and art, and to lay and collect taxes to pay debts and provide for defense and the common welfare.
Our system includes checks and balances, some of which are painfully slow, by which laws that violate The Constitution can be repealed by The Supreme Court and Presidents can be impeached. It does not guarantee that you will like the outcome, just that there is due process of law. Nor does it say that if you think a law is Unconstitutional that you get to shoot people.
Nowhere in there is a guarantee that policies you like will be enacted by the representatives you elect. Anti-war protestors didn't get their way, and their tax money still goes to buy bombs we are dropping abroad.
Hell, there are Americans who in living memory didn't have the right to drink from the same water fountain as me, and those people marched and suffered in peaceful protest, suffering beatings and jail time for redress of their grievances. They fought for basic human dignity, not slippery-slope inflexible intellectual ideology on particular bills, and they succeeded through peaceful protest - no matter how they were antagonized.
By comparison, the MacVeighs and Rudolfs of the world are childish cowards. Sure, they had lots to say once they were caught, but they didn't have the balls to bring their grievances to the public square and suffer for their cause peacefully. No, they just murdered people with bombs and hid out until they were caught like naughty children pouting over not getting their way.
Even our Founding Fathers took the time to petition for redress: "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."
If you consider a tax you don't like to be repeated injury, I had better not see you using any of the socialist roads our parents and grandparents paid for with their taxes. And what the hell are you doing on the Internet which was developed with DARPA tax dollars? Fuck you free-rider, log off.
My point is this:
Those who are ready to exercise their First Amendment Rights to peaceably assemble and espouse your Right to use force to overthrow the government outlined by The Constitution, you don't get to call yourselves patriots. You have the Right to say what you want to say and believe what you want to believe, but if you want to go to war with the United States, you are no patriot. You are a traitor. I'm not talking a Fox News commentator loose-tongued over-the-top attention-grabbing use of the word traitor, I mean the real deal; it's right there in black and white.
If you want to wank to the founding fathers and to guns, rock on. Get down with your bad self.
If you want to shout from the rooftops that everyone should grab their guns and tri-cornered hats, then you had better own your words.
If assassinations, bombings, shooting sprees, burnings, the suspension of law and order, killing Americans, and dead little girls is the only option you see for whatever it is you need, then bring it.
But you are no patriot, not of these United States you aren't. As soon as you commit one overt act of war, you are the enemy - a traitor.
What you stand for isn't The United States or what the Founding Fathers fought for. You are imitating your betters, not to restore law, order, and due process, but because you want to get your way when our Constitution is inconvenient.
Back when I joined the military, I made an oath to support and defend The Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign and domestic, and those that bring war here are not patriots, they are enemies. Fuck them.
Own your words.
If you don't mean that your fantasies of shooting Americans are to be taken seriously, then say what you do mean or shut the fuck up.
With Rights come Responsibilities.
* - I hereby promise that if enough hot naked chicks come to my house and get in a cage for me, I will eat a vegetable. I will spring for the cage.
** - Isn't it amazing how such a prescient super-ninja all-powerful cabal has an overly complex sinister plan which ends in "and then we will ineffectively attempt to pass Republican proposals through Congressional due process! Somehow this will cause the slippery slope towards our ultimate destruction of the United States (presumably with more ineffective due process at some later time) HAhahahahah!" It sounds a lot like Doctor Evil demanding "One million dollars!" to me.
*** - These same people probably believe that the Civil War was about "state's rights" and that slavery was an incidental issue to the entire conflict. Interestingly, the Confederate Founding Fathers had no problem stating exactly why they seceded, and they even wrote it down, just like the Founding Fathers of the United States: Declaration of Causes. They had a Constitution too, go ahead and look at the changes and tell me if they went to war over interstate bridges and canals and a five year term of President, or if they went to war over slavery: Confederate Constitution
**** - Under the power of Congress to try any case whatever, that does include Congress' Right to choose to permit a state to secede, but not for a state to make war on the United States. Nor does it in any way compell Congress to grant such permission.