A discussion over at [url=www.rachellucas.com]Rachel Lucas's blog [/url] spawned 240 comments.  Among them were the comments that made up this essay.  Read it on her site [url=www.rachellucas.com/archives/000218.html#000218]here[/url], or below (author gave unconditional right to republish for non-commercial purposes.)  I'm not going to use the quote bracket to make it more readable.  And it's long, so pack a lunch.  Begin Part I:

[blue]When I was a little kid, I asked my dad (who had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer) about images I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being marched off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, [i]what did they have to lose?[/i]

I was six. My dad looked at me. He'd been to the camps, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or pride or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."

Now before the combined military might of the European Union unites against me with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, [i]Americans like the ones he knew.[/i] Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!). Likewise, it's impossible to imagine thousands of Brits (circa 1944) or Norwegians.

Freedom is preserved by [i]free people[/i]. Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back to the idea of an unarmed, culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile.

Addison and David Gulliver have it exactly right. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.

That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.

Because gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than by Hollywood celebrities, precisely becuase a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

I truthfully can say I can't remember hearing of a registered gun owner committing a crime against strangers. Not to say that doesn't happen, but look at the behavior of the average NRA member and I'll bet you there are fewer criminals then there are in, say, the Screen Actors Guild.

To Phillipe and other genuinely interested and open-minded Europeans, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased, uncorruptible teacher: History. Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam. If you hate America so much, then ask yourself why no one fucks with Switzerland.

And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.

Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in a place as "civilized" as Germany. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

Try and understand this about Americans like Rachel and me and most of the rest here: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, not when it comes time to fight us, because that day will not come, but rather when you once again need the help of people like Rachel and me and my late father, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.

One last thing, regarding David Gulliver's excellent post:

"The issuing officer was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force."

[i]This[/i], to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: [i]Trust the people.[/i] Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE. Gun control activists don't think they can be trusted, with their guns or their money. They know better. They'll tell us what to do.

Well, as far as the U.S. government trying to disarm America, it won't happen. Not only because the people will resist. Not only because it is in the fabric of the document that limits and legitimizes government. The single main reason why you won't see a police state here, ever, is because [i]American police think it's a crock of shit, too.[/i]

Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own. We don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Preatorian guards, elite Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens? Think again.

These [i]trust the people[/i] freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be genetic, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized he was being marched to his death and decided to do something about it.

We are a nation of immigrants, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic idiots and unelected intellectual effete sadists. When Europeans call us idiots, they simply show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table discussion and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.

Our [i]grandparents[/i] walked on the moon, man! And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about you than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.[/blue]

In response to first part of that comment, another reader posted, "The individuals who were massively machine gunned did not believe they were digging their own graves. They were always told they were digging foxholes, and other fortifications. They often did run for it when the machine gun arrived, but by then it was far too late." This reader has some noble ancestors who did participate in the resistance.

In response to part of that, Mr. Whittle posted the following:


[blue]While you may have [i]inferred[/i] I thought that 'victims of the Holocaust were cowards or idiots' I can assure you I do not see them as such. Let me clarify for you: I imply that they were in a deep state of denial, that denial began many, many years before they found themselves in that horrible situation. I argue that they saw an increasingly brutal and clear set of warning signs and that a large number of them - not all - convinced themselves that things would not get worse. I come to this conclusion by studying the words and memoirs of the victims themselves, and much of my admiration and respect for the state of Israel is based on their open-eyed assessment that they will not allow this to happen to their people again. They know what they are up against.

I have just deleted many paragraphs of response to life inside the camps since it is irrelevant to my argument. The photograph that starting my questioning was taken during the early years of the war. There were no camps. There were just large numbers of people standing around, digging mass graves for themselves in a clearing in a forest, and a few Nazi bastards with single-shot rifles and pistols. I drew a boy's conclusion: Why not run for it?

Furthermore, the real issue, as you may recall, was whether or not gun ownership deterred or defeated attempts to haul your family off in the first place. I maintain it does, and I maintain that soldiers are incapable of pulling American children out of their beds at night because unlike the those poor unarmed, psychologically battered Jews of the 1940s who came to believe they were guests in their own country, NO ONE is pulling ANY kids out of this crowd's house at night and going home fully staffed, ready to try again tomorrow. Understand? THAT is the point.

[In regard to the Yale Milgram experiment], here's one that would be closer to the point of the argument:

Kick down 100 doors of self-proclaimed French pacifists, grab the women and kids, and haul them away. Then try again in Texas, with 100 NRA members. Collate, or rather, have a surviving relative collate the results. Extrapolate the abductors' rates of casualties to determine the total number of abductors needed. See what percentage of jackbooted thugs have a suicide wish and then determine if you have a statistically significant deviation between the armed and unarmed groups.[/blue]

In discussion with a very gentlemanly Canadian, Mr. Whittle posted the following:[blue]

It is a common argument that bans on travel - cars, airplanes, etc. - are a false analogy compared to banning guns because cars have a clear benefit while guns don't do anything other than kill people.

While that is exactly true, I think it misses the point, which to me is simply this: We'd never ban car travel to avoid thousands of highway deaths. It's clearly not worth it in both economic and personal freedom terms. The point I am trying to make is that banning guns is taking away the property of a person who has broken no laws by a government whose legitimacy is determined by a document that specifically allows that property, namely guns.

Destroy that trust by punishing the innocent, by pulling a plank from the Bill of Rights, and the contract between the government and the people falls apart. Once the Second Amendment goes, the First will soon follow, because if some elite determines that the people can't be trusted with dangerous guns then it's just a matter of time until they decide they can't be trusted with dangerous ideas, either. Dangerous ideas have killed many millions more people than dangerous handguns - listen to the voices from the Gulag, the death camps, and all the blood-soaked killing fields through history.

The framers, in their wisdom, put the 2nd Amendment there to give teeth to the revolutionary, unheard-of idea that the power rests with We The People. They did not depend on good will or promises. They made sure that when push came to shove we'd be the ones doing the pushing and shoving, not the folks in Washington. And by the way, gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? EXACTLY. It's unthinkable. GOOD. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.

Now for the domestic cost:

Assume for a moment you could vaporize every gun on the planet. Would crime go away? Or would ruthless, physically strong gangs of young men be essentially able to roam free and predate at will?

The history of civilization shows time and time again how decent, sophisticated city dwellers amass wealth through cooperation and the division of labor - only to be victimized by ruthless gangs of raping, looting cutthroats who couldn't make a fruit basket, sweeping down on them, murdering them and carting away the loot, to return a few years later, forever, ad infinitum. Vikings, Mongols, desperadoes of every stripe - they are a cancer on humanity but there they are and there they have always been.

If civilization is worth having (and I believe it is) then it has to be defended, because the restraining virtues of justice, compassion and respect for laws are products of that civilizing force and completely unknown to those who would do it harm.

Therefore, since I believe in this civilization, in its laws, science, art and medicine, I believe we must be prepared to defend it against what I feel no embarrassment for calling the Forces of Darkness. Now those forces could be raiders on horseback, jackbooted Nazi murders, or some kid blowing away a shopkeeper.

For your argument to convince me, you'd have to show me a time before shopkeepers were blown away, hacked away, pelted away or whatever the case may be. Show me a time in history before the invention of the firearm, when crime and raiding and looting did not exist, when murders and rapes did not exist. We may lose 11,000 people to handguns a year. How many would we lose without any handguns, if killers and murderers and rapists roamed free of reprisal from citizens or police? I don't know. You don't know either. Maybe it's a lot fewer people, and maybe, in a world where strength and riuthlessness trump all, it would be a far higher one. And I can't see any moral distinction between a policeman and a law-abiding citizen. Policemen are drawn from the ranks of law-abiding citizens. They are not bred in hydroponic tanks. They are expected to show restraint and use their weapon as a last resort. Millions upon millions of citizens, a crowd more vast than entire armies of police, do exacly this every day.

If all of these horrors had sprung up as as result of the invention of the handgun I'd be right there beside you calling for their destruction.

But clearly, this is not the case. In our cowboy past we used to say that "God created Man, but Sam Colt made them equal." This is simple enough to understand. It means that a villager, let's say a schoolteacher, can defeat a human predator who may have spent his entire life practicing the art of war. Firearms are what tipped the balance toward civilization by eliminating a lifetime spent studying swordplay or spear play or pointed-stick play. The bad guys have always used weapons and they always will. The simple truth about guns is that they are damn effective and even easier to operate. They level the playing field to the point where a woman has a chance against a gang of thugs or a police officer can control a brawl.

I don't see how vaporizing all the guns in the world would remove crime or violence - history shows these have always been with us and show no signs of responding favorably to well-reasoned arguments or harsh language. I wish it were not true. I wish the IRS did not exist either, but there it is. [/blue]

(cont'd)

[blue]Criminals, and criminal regimes ranging from The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains all the way through history to the Nazis and the Soviets, have and will conspire to take by force what they cannot produce on their own. These people must be stopped. The genius of the 2nd Amendment is that it realizes that these people could be anybody - including the U.S. army. That is why this power, like the other powers, is vested in the people. Nowhere else in the world is this the case. You can make a solid argument that the United States is, by almost any measure, the most prosperous, successful nation in history. I'm not claiming this is because every American sleeps with a gun under the pillow - the vast majority do not. I do claim it is the result of a document that puts faith and trust in the people - trusts them with government, with freedom, and with the means of self-defense. You cannot remove that lynchpin of trust without collapsing the entire structure. Many observers of America never fully understand what we believe in our bones, namely, that the government doesn't tell us what we can do - WE tell THOSE bastards just how far they can go.

Of course, all of this is completely whimsical, because, like nuclear weapons, guns are HERE and they are not going to go away. You cannot just vaoprize them. Honest people might be compelled to turn in their weapons; criminals clearly will not. So what do you propose? Forget the moral high ground of gun ownership. Again a simple truth, often maligned but demonstrably dead-on accurate: [i]When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.[/i]

Here is my dry-eyed, cold-hearted, sad conclusion: I believe that the freedom, convenience and economic viability provided by the automobile is worth the 26,000 lives we lose to automotive deaths each year. I've lost loved ones in auto accidents and I still keep driving nevertheless.

By the same calculation, I accept that the freedoms entrusted to the people of the United States is worth the 11,000 lives we lose to gun violence each year.

I wish I could make both those numbers go away. I will support any reasonable campaign to make them as low as possible.

But understand this: 11,000 handgun deaths a year, over four years is very roughly 50,000 killed. In Nazi Germany, an unarmed population was unable to resist the abduction and murder of 6,000,000 people in a similar period: a number 120 times higher. Throw in the midnight murders of the Soviets, the Chinese, the various and sundry African and South American genocides and purges and political assassinations and that number grows to many hundreds, if not several thousand times more killings in unarmed populations.

Visualize this to fully appreciate the point. Imagine the Superbowl. Every player on the field is a handgun victim. All the people in the stands are the victims who were unable to resist with handguns. Those are historical facts.

I, as one person, am willing to pay that price as a society. I wish it was lower. Any rational look into the world shows us numbers among unarmed nations that are far, far higher.

Of course, many societies have far lower numbers. Japan is a fine example. I'm sure if the United States had 2000 years of racial homogeneity and a culture whose prize assets are conformity and submission then our numbers would be a lot lower. Alas, we are not that society. Huzzah, we are not that society!

Canadian handgun murder rates are very similar to U.S. rates for the non-black, non-Hispanic population (I must stress here that I have read this from several reliable sources but HAVE NOT verified their methodology, nor am I qualified to do so). Would I deport American blacks and Hispanics to get a lower murder rate? I most emphatically would not. This country would fall to pieces without them, and again, the enormous, huge majority are completely innocent and I'd rather punish the guilty. I WOULD like to change the urban culture that glorifies gun violence. I think that is one all-American, homegrown, 100% pure evil, but there it is.

If these statistics are true - and I really must emphasize again that I do not know that they are - then the U.S. and Canada would have pretty much complete murder parity - if only we'd commit the heinous moral crime of deporting millions of blacks and Hispanics in order to remove the vanishingly small percentage that commit a disproportionately high number of handgun murders; these being American citizens with as much right to be here as I have.

In case anyone thinks they may have heard something I did not mean to say, let me state unequivocally that if the race-based statistics I mention do turn out to be true, then I attribute this solely to the fact that disproportionately large numbers of blacks and Hispanics live under circumstances that would make criminals of anyone. As a random viewing of "COPS" clearly shows, the bad guys, and the good guys, come in all colors, and the satisfaction and gratitude that I feel seeing a black policeman take down a white criminal is no greater or less than I do when the situation is reversed.

I've done you the courtesy, for the sake of the argument, to grant all your statistics, so if only for the sake of the argument, grant me this one: If the white murder rate is the same in Canada as in the U.S., what advantage can you gain by trashing the Constitution here in the U.S.? Isn't there something deeper at work here? Could it, perhaps, come back to my core argument that the problem is not with the number of guns in this country but rather in the hearts of those who we allow to wield them, repeatedly? Could it really be as simple as apprehending, and punishing, those that would do harm to civilization? Rather than banning guns, should we not attack the moral rot that infests small, violent populations who put such horrible numbers at our feet?[/blue]

(cont'd)

[blue]The American Revolution surely is unique in the sense that the ringleaders - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, etc - were men of property, wealth and prestige; in other words, men with something to lose. Compare this to any other revolution in history, where the ringleaders were poor, dispossessed, powerless. The Russian Revolution, French Revolution, etc - these were joined by desperate people fighting mind-numbing poverty and political repression.

And yet the Founding Fathers were men who were as well-off as any men on earth at the time, and furthermore, any of them could have been (and were) political leaders under His Majesty's government.

For all practical intents and purposes, they had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything in the world to lose, by taking on the greatest military force the world had ever known. Why would they do this? What possible motivation could such rich, well-off, powerful men have? Militarily, they seemed certain to lose, and they knew before they started - and Patrick Henry made the point crystal clear - that they would be hanged as common criminals if they failed.

Of course, the answer is, they did it to be free. And they did it to make the rest of their nation - the poor, disenfranchised - free as well. And it is clear as crystal from their collective writings that they took that risk to make Bill Whittle and Rachel Lucas and the rest of us free, too. They knew that God, (or for me, chance perhaps) had put them together in a time and place where a bold, courageous action followed by much suffering, doubt, blood and fear could, perhaps, unleash in mankind an energy source the likes of which they could not imagine.

So for me, a child of that bet - that guess, that committment, that roll of the dice - for ME, I owe them that defense of freedom, and I will do my poor mite to pass it on as best I can. These men pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred Honor. They pledged that to ME. I owe them. I do not have the RIGHT to take away someone else's freedom and property - it is offensive to me to even contemplate it. Of course, if someone breaks the freedom/responsibility covenant by committing a crime, then all bets are off. To that extent, I view handgun murderers not just as criminals but as traitors as well.

I hate seeing our kids get shot on the street, I hate it, [i]I fucking hate it[/i]. But that is the cost of freedom. People get horribly killed on road trips to Florida at age 18. They're driving drunk. We could ban them. We would save lives. Enron and MCI steal like the worst characters from Dickens, taking people's Christmas dinners so they can have gold plated faucets. We could regulate more. The day may come when someone flies a Cessna into a stadium. We can ban the airplanes. Ditto for pleasure boats. We can ban and confiscate and regulate to our hearts content, and we will save many, many innocent lives by doing so. All for the price of a little freedom.

I believe we should punish the perpetrators. I will not agree to restrict the freedoms of the vast numbers of people who abide by the concomitant responsibility and live lives of honesty and decency.

And there is more than the physical restriction of freedoms: There is the slow erosion of self-reliance, self-confidence and self-determination among a nation. The more your government restricts your options, the more you psychologically look to government to keep you safe, fed, clothed, housed and sustained.

There is a word for people who are fed, clothed, housed and sustained fully by others, and that word is SLAVES.

If Congress was occupied by angels and Michael sat in a throne of glory in the Oval Office, I would listen to what they said for my own greater good. But no government is made of angels, not even the Canadian government in all its decency and compassion. So who determines how much freedom we trade for how much security? People do. People are not unknown to place their own interests above those of others. There is even a vanishing remote chance that Jean Cretien has at some point perhaps put personal interest above your needs.

The real genius of the Founding Fathers was that these great and good men had the foresight and the courage to look into their own darker motives, and construct a system that prevents the accumulation of power.

That Constitution could be torn up by force of arms. And that is why the Founders left that power in the hands of the people, who together can never be cowed by vanishingly small numbers of thugs holding the only guns.

As PJ O'Rourke points out, the U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate people safe, prosperous and free. Smarter people than me may disagree with that document - I'm for not touching a comma.

So as a proud son of those brave men, I'll take freedom - all of it - and because I accept the benefits of those freedoms, I'll solemnly take the responsibilities as well. I may someday lose a child on a trip to spring break, but I'll never lock them in the basement to keep them safe. And I'll accept the fact that living in Los Angeles puts me at risk for being shot to death because I feel the freedom is worth it. I breathe that freedom every day, and hey, we all gotta go sometime. I'll continue to fly experimental airplanes because I am careful, meticulous, precise and responsible, and yet the day may come when I am out of altitude, out of airspeed and out of ideas all at the same time. Oh well. I have seen and done things up there that you cannot imagine and I cannot describe. Freedom.

I respect and admire Canada and Canadians. We have been, and always will be, the best of friends despite these differences. And while Canadians frequently point out that they are free of our vices, I perceive that they are free of our greatness as well. You can't have it both ways.

Me, personally, I'll take an American flag on the moon over free health care. I can buy health care. I wish to hell I could go to the moon. (Some of us in the Mojave desert may still have few tricks up our sleeve on this one. We're still free to build airplanes [i]and spacecraft[/i] and fly the goddamn things. From our garages. Try and keep up with a nation that builds working spacecraft in the garage. As a hobby. For FUN.)[/blue]

[blue]And everyone who has taken America's disdain for intellectualism as a lack of intelligence has woken up looking at our dust trail as we speed ever faster beyond them. We're not just a smart country - we're THE smart country. Behold the list of inventions and Nobel Prize winning scientists. Einstein was an [i]American[/i]. Germany threw him away - he's ours now, by his choice, not ours. Ditto Von Braun and numerous others, not to mention homegrown geniuses like the Wright Brothers and Robert Goddard, just to draw two names from the narrow field I know best. Staggeringly brilliant men and women, the best, most active minds on the planet pulling for the same team.

So take your pick: Freedom or security? Greatness or goodness? Passion or decency?

Our respective ancestors made their choice and here we are. I respect your right to chose differently. I only speak up to defend the choice we made as a deeply spiritual one, borne of reflection and danger and a spectacular triumph against all odds. I cannot stand idly by to hear people denounce our freedoms as the dimwitted macho posturing of a mob of illiterate uncultured idiots who are so vulgar and uncouth as to still believe in Hollywood myths manufactured for our simple complacent unsophisticated nature.

From the Revolution until today, the choice for full freedom with all its accompanying excesses and failures is a profoundly well-reasoned, moral and ethical choice, and the result has been national and personal success unparalled in the history of this world.

I am proud to be a member of such a magnificent group of people. I hope to God I can give back as much as I owe.[/blue]

So should we all.

Paraphrase

[img]http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Usa/Tests/Ukgrable2.jpg[/img]

Talk about nuking the competition!  This should be required reading in every social studies class in America, and given to every Congresscritter when they are sworn into office.

God bless Mr Whittle!

Edited to fix spelling

WOW!!  
Saved myself a copy of that. Very nicely done. [beer]

WOW, that was like Readers Digest condensed version of Unintended Consequences!  Outstanding.  I aspire to be so eloquent.

Wow, is all I can say.

One of the few things of that length that I read with rapt attention. That should be read by every American.

Your comments were good too, KBaker, especially to that idiot Angel whatshisname.

that is the most beutifull piece of writing i have ever read..

i will be printing this one up and handing them out to local schools. not to the admin, but directly to the students. this has to get out..

So do I.

Excellent.

Wow.

("Well, as far as the U.S. government trying to disarm America, it won't happen. Not only because the people will resist. Not only because it is in the fabric of the document that limits and legitimizes government. The single main reason why you won't see a police state here, ever, is because American police think it's a crock of shit, too.")

It WILL happen.

("Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who.........You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens? Think again.")

Ha! Remember Kent State?
How about Waco?

well done, what do you know about the author?

And look where those isolated incidents landed us.

I'm blind, where have we landed?


also, what the hell is a blog?

a blog is slang for web log, or online journal.

Outstanding, A must read!

Thank you for posting.  
To the Writer.  Thanks, always felt that way.  You put it in writing better than almost anyone ever could.

TXLEWIS

Wonderful writing!

I'm saving a copy of that, for sure! I really oughta get a copy of UC and some of those other books. They're next on my reading list, really!

Reminds me of something from a Clancy book, went sorta like this:

Take all of the enemies of America, and give them a trip to Disney World. Let them ride the rides, watch the shows, and eat the food. Tell them "This is what we do just for fun. Now just imagine what we can do when we're serious."

Never say never.





[url]http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/8967/[/url]

I printed this for my soon to be 15 year old daughter and she cold not stop reading till she finished it. She said she will give it to one of her freedom loving school teachers.

THISISME

A fantastic read.  Powerful statements like “because unlike the those poor unarmed, psychologically battered Jews of the 1940s who came to believe they were guests in their own country, NO ONE is pulling ANY kids out of this crowd's house at night and going home fully staffed, ready to try again tomorrow. Understand? THAT is the point.”
And “gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? EXACTLY. It's unthinkable. GOOD. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.” Really drives home the points the author is trying to make.  

Thats the whole point.  Nowhere.

[b]Time for my favorite pic again[/b]

[img]http://compjrk.home.mindspring.com/einsatzgruppen_8.jpg[/img]

Abzolutely amazing!

My only quibble would be that American soldiers and police would indeed shoot citizens.  Happens every day.

Ok, I can see police, who else are they going to shoot?  But where are all of the civilians the American soldiers are shooting?

BTT - too powerful for anyone to miss.

Jim

I'm in the military, and I know many people in many branches, and I know I would kill in order to protect, but never would I or any of my friends ever fire on our fellow countrymen....we go to far off places away from our families and friends in order to protect.  

To add, its kinda ironic that we go fight for liberals freedom to take away our freedom.

Also, splendid post....I read it all non-stop.
Thank you,
sybur

Wow, very well wrote. Too much for me to quote.It's always good to hear from someone who can venture beyond the realms of black and white.

Good reading for anyone who wants to delve deep into the essence of true freedom and what sacrifice it takes to truly preserve it.

I have always felt the same sentiments of the author on the 2nd amendment and tried to explain to others that the 2nd Amendment is KEY to all true freedoms we have today.

The high school boy shepherding his sheep in south Texas comes to mind.

He said it happens every day.  Please post some objective evidence that this is happening "every" day.  

You should go and read some of the "discussions" that took place after. It was a slam fest. It's a hour or so read but worth it.