The sixth installment of “How to Save America.”
Welcome to the sixth installment of “How to Save America.” Last time I talked about what I called an “active defense” of our rights. We need to talk about what that means and we need to establish the moral basis for defending our rights by any means necessary. This will make some of you uncomfortable. Going beyond protests, marches, blogs or legal defenses to lack of compliance is beyond the bounds of some. Engaging in actual violence is another because we have been conditioned to believe that non-violence is the only moral response to tyranny and injustice. It certainly didn’t work for the Jews in Germany in the 30s and the founders didn’t believe it either.
What we need to do is put conflict and violence in its proper moral context. First of all, conflict and violence are part of the world we live in, always has been, always will be. We may desire it not to be so, we may try to insulate ourselves from it but the fact is, evil and violence exist. So where is the moral line drawn? It is really very simple. The one who threatens or uses violence to infringe on the individual rights of another is acting immorally. The one who responds in defense of their rights, even violently, is acting morally. We have a moral right, actually I would go so far as to say we have a moral duty, to defend our individual natural rights, our life, liberty and property, by whatever means necessary.
Look at it this way. If a mugger pulls a knife on you and demands your property, he is threatening to take your life if you don’t hand over your property. Whether you would do so or not, can we agree that you have a right to protect your life and property under such a threat by whatever means necessary, including the use of lethal force? If life is the highest value, the preservation of life can have no limits. I have no right to take the life of another but I do have the right to use lethal force if he or she is trying to take mine. Any means of self defense is acceptable for self-preservation in the face of aggression.
Now let’s elevate this from personal interactions to the relationship between the government and the governed. This is crucial to understand, it is no different. An assault on our lives and property by a criminal is no different than an assault on our lives and property by the government. The criminal breaks the laws on theft or murder, the criminal government violates constitutional limits. They both use force, or the threat of it, to accomplish their criminal ends. Make no mistake, government is force. Men establish governments to restrict the use of force among men-revenge or retaliation, and put it within an agreed upon set of laws and a system of administering justice. Any time government uses that force outside the defense of rights, it is acting immorally and criminally. When the government threatens to lock you up, take away your liberty, if you don’t turn over the fruits of your labor, that is immoral, it is theft. When the government threatens to take your property because it objects to how you exercise your right to freely contract or associate, or not contract or associate, is theft, it is immoral. When the government prohibits you from exercising your fundamental rights to speech or self protection, it is stealing your humanity. Each and every one of us has the moral and, as Americans, constitutional right to resist such actions by any means necessary.
While violent resistance should not be our first choice, it must be on the table. A government that does not fear the people and a people who refuse to resist are easily led to the ovens. So let’s bring it back to the proper use of force. As I said, it is moral and proper to use force against an aggressor whether that aggressor is an individual criminal or a criminal government. In the case of the government, the focus of our defense should be the politicians and bureaucrats who are actually responsible for the systemic violation of our rights. From the politician who writes and votes for a bill that takes away our freedom and property to the bureaucrat who applies it to the judge and prosecutor who enforce it, they are all guilty. At the very least they deserve social ostracization. Our forefathers tarred and feathered officials who tried to enforce immoral laws and taxes.
I imagine some of you are not yet seeing the equivalence between a criminal and a criminal government. Most of you would have no problem defending your family or property by any means necessary against an intruder in the middle of the night. Yet when the government bureaucrat comes to the door and demands your property, you ask if there’s a payment plan! You wouldn’t ask the guy in the ski mask that question yet both are there placing an illegitimate claim on your property. When the government official demands the minds of your children by forcing them into a public school, are you just going to turn them over? Will the ATF really have to pry your gun out of your cold dead hands? Or are your really mentally and physically prepared to treat these government bureaucrats like the criminals they are?
Oh, that is terrible, you say. That bureaucrat is just doing his job, he’s not responsible. Really? He was not forced to take a job as an IRS agent stealing people’s money. She wasn’t forced to take a job distributing stolen money. He wasn’t forced to take a job putting businesses into a regulatory straightjacket. The bureaucrat in the department of veterans wasn’t forced to cook the books and deny our brave veterans medical care, directly leading to their deaths. Are they any less culpable than the thousands of bureaucrats who kept the Nazi killing machine going? Was the man who drove the trains full of Jews to Auchwitz any less responsible for their deaths than the guard who herded them into the gas chambers? No. Either everyone in the immoral system shares responsibility or no one does. If we believe no one does, if we aren’t willing to point a finger and say “he did it, he stole my money, he took my liberty,” we will soon find ourselves with nothing and wondering how it happened.
.Government is not some amorphous blob devouring everything in its path. We must stop looking at government in the abstract and realize that it is made up of real people who have chosen a career in which they prey on the rest of us. They are the other side, they are the enemy. They are the subject of our opposition, the object of our righteous indignation and the legitimate target of our active defense; or perhaps it might be better described as counterterrorism.
Until next time may God be with us and may we always act with honor and justice.
What we need to do is put conflict and violence in its proper moral context. First of all, conflict and violence are part of the world we live in, always has been, always will be. We may desire it not to be so, we may try to insulate ourselves from it but the fact is, evil and violence exist. So where is the moral line drawn? It is really very simple. The one who threatens or uses violence to infringe on the individual rights of another is acting immorally. The one who responds in defense of their rights, even violently, is acting morally. We have a moral right, actually I would go so far as to say we have a moral duty, to defend our individual natural rights, our life, liberty and property, by whatever means necessary.
Look at it this way. If a mugger pulls a knife on you and demands your property, he is threatening to take your life if you don’t hand over your property. Whether you would do so or not, can we agree that you have a right to protect your life and property under such a threat by whatever means necessary, including the use of lethal force? If life is the highest value, the preservation of life can have no limits. I have no right to take the life of another but I do have the right to use lethal force if he or she is trying to take mine. Any means of self defense is acceptable for self-preservation in the face of aggression.
Now let’s elevate this from personal interactions to the relationship between the government and the governed. This is crucial to understand, it is no different. An assault on our lives and property by a criminal is no different than an assault on our lives and property by the government. The criminal breaks the laws on theft or murder, the criminal government violates constitutional limits. They both use force, or the threat of it, to accomplish their criminal ends. Make no mistake, government is force. Men establish governments to restrict the use of force among men-revenge or retaliation, and put it within an agreed upon set of laws and a system of administering justice. Any time government uses that force outside the defense of rights, it is acting immorally and criminally. When the government threatens to lock you up, take away your liberty, if you don’t turn over the fruits of your labor, that is immoral, it is theft. When the government threatens to take your property because it objects to how you exercise your right to freely contract or associate, or not contract or associate, is theft, it is immoral. When the government prohibits you from exercising your fundamental rights to speech or self protection, it is stealing your humanity. Each and every one of us has the moral and, as Americans, constitutional right to resist such actions by any means necessary.
While violent resistance should not be our first choice, it must be on the table. A government that does not fear the people and a people who refuse to resist are easily led to the ovens. So let’s bring it back to the proper use of force. As I said, it is moral and proper to use force against an aggressor whether that aggressor is an individual criminal or a criminal government. In the case of the government, the focus of our defense should be the politicians and bureaucrats who are actually responsible for the systemic violation of our rights. From the politician who writes and votes for a bill that takes away our freedom and property to the bureaucrat who applies it to the judge and prosecutor who enforce it, they are all guilty. At the very least they deserve social ostracization. Our forefathers tarred and feathered officials who tried to enforce immoral laws and taxes.
I imagine some of you are not yet seeing the equivalence between a criminal and a criminal government. Most of you would have no problem defending your family or property by any means necessary against an intruder in the middle of the night. Yet when the government bureaucrat comes to the door and demands your property, you ask if there’s a payment plan! You wouldn’t ask the guy in the ski mask that question yet both are there placing an illegitimate claim on your property. When the government official demands the minds of your children by forcing them into a public school, are you just going to turn them over? Will the ATF really have to pry your gun out of your cold dead hands? Or are your really mentally and physically prepared to treat these government bureaucrats like the criminals they are?
Oh, that is terrible, you say. That bureaucrat is just doing his job, he’s not responsible. Really? He was not forced to take a job as an IRS agent stealing people’s money. She wasn’t forced to take a job distributing stolen money. He wasn’t forced to take a job putting businesses into a regulatory straightjacket. The bureaucrat in the department of veterans wasn’t forced to cook the books and deny our brave veterans medical care, directly leading to their deaths. Are they any less culpable than the thousands of bureaucrats who kept the Nazi killing machine going? Was the man who drove the trains full of Jews to Auchwitz any less responsible for their deaths than the guard who herded them into the gas chambers? No. Either everyone in the immoral system shares responsibility or no one does. If we believe no one does, if we aren’t willing to point a finger and say “he did it, he stole my money, he took my liberty,” we will soon find ourselves with nothing and wondering how it happened.
.Government is not some amorphous blob devouring everything in its path. We must stop looking at government in the abstract and realize that it is made up of real people who have chosen a career in which they prey on the rest of us. They are the other side, they are the enemy. They are the subject of our opposition, the object of our righteous indignation and the legitimate target of our active defense; or perhaps it might be better described as counterterrorism.
Until next time may God be with us and may we always act with honor and justice.
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