Month: April 2021

Short one today.

I’ve been listening to The Gulag Archipelago on Audible. I have to do it in bits and pieces with frequent breaks because my imagination is too good at turning the words of the narrator into an emotional visceral gut-punch of the true horror that lies behind them. I can only take so much at a time.

Too much darkness even for me.

So folk wanting to try to “sell” me on Communism/Socialism can just kiss right off. Doesn’t matter if this was “true socialism” or not. Doesn’t matter how you try to define “true Marxism” to make it “not this.” What matters is that every time folk selling Marxism to the masses gain power you end up with horrors like this.

Every. Damn. Time.

It has been said that insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Well, that’s neither a legally nor medically valid definition, but there is an element of truth to it. If you keep insisting on doing the same thing, which has always had the same results, and are all “This time for sure”, then there is something deeply, seriously wrong with you.

So take your socialism/communism, fold it so it’s all sharp corners, cover it in capsaicin oil, and shove it where the sun never shines.

That is all.

If there were any justice today would be a national holiday at least as big as Independence Day.  I’m not kidding.

Back in the 1770’s an unrest that had started more than a century before–with Colonial reaction to the English Civil War, the Catholic reign of James II, and the Glorious Revolution that followed–was growing in the American colonies, at least those along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire down through Georgia.  Protests over taxes imposed without the taxed having any voice in the matter, complaints about a distant monarch and legislative body making rules and laws over people to whom they are not beholden.

There had been clashes which fed that unrest, including the famous “Boston Massacre” where British troops fired into a rioting mob resulting in several deaths.  Think of it as the Kent State of the 18th century.

In an effort to quell the unrest, or at least have it be less of a threat to British officials, General Thomas Gage, Military governor of Massachusetts, under orders to take decisive action against the colonists, decided to confiscate firearms and ammunition from certain groups in the colony.  His forces marched on the night of April 18, 1775.

The colonists, forewarned of the action (the Longfellow poem, which children learn in school–or they did when I was in school “Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere”–is historically inaccurate, but it sure is stirring, isn’t it?), first met the British troops at Lexington Massachusetts where John Parker, in command of the local Colonial Militia said, according to the recollection of one of the participants, “Stand your ground.  Don’t fire unless fired upon.  But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

Whether Parker actually said those words, the first shot was fired.  No one knew who fired it, whether British or Colonial.  In the ensuing, brief battle the British regulars put the Colonial militia to flight.

The British then turned toward Concord.

A small unit of militia, hearing reports of firing at Lexington marched out but on spotting a British unit of about 700 while themselves only numbering about 250 they returned to Concord.  The Colonial militia departed the town across the North Bridge to a hill about a mile north of town where additional militia reinforcements continued to gather.

The British reached the town and began searching for the weapons they came to confiscate.  They found several cannon, too large to be moved quickly, and disabled them.  Other weapons and supplies had been either removed or hidden.

On seeing the smoke of the burning carriages from the cannon, the Militia began to move.  It is not my purpose here to go into detailed description of their movements but in the end the British regulars found themselves both outnumbered and outmaneuvered.  They fled, a rout that surprised the Colonial Militia as much as the British regulars.  Again, I simplify but in the end they marched back to Boston continuing to suffer casualties from what amounted to 18th century sniper fire from the surrounding brush.  The frustration of the British soldiers led them to atrocities, killing everyone they found in buildings whether they were involved in the fighting or not.

Eventually the British forces fought their way back to Boston where they were besieged by Militia forces numbering over 1500 men.

And the Revolutionary War had begun.

And so, on this day in 1775, the nascent United States took the course that would lead eventually to Independence.

And that’s why April 19 deserves to be a National Holiday on a par at least with Independence Day.  The latter was recognition of what became fact on the former.

Really, Joe? You’re making that statement?

Well, let’s go over them, shall we?

I suppose that you do think that there’s no absolute right to freedom of speech or freedom of the press. And given the past year, I think we know where you stand on peaceable assembly. So long as it’s “mostly peaceful” BLM rioters it’s okay, but anyone else gathering in groups of 10 or more without wearing masks? That’s forbidden, right?

Of course the 2nd is exactly where you’re coming with this so we know where you stand on this. It’s the very one you’re arguing to restrict.

How about the third? Is the right of people not to have troops quartered in their homes without their consent during peacetime absolute? Or can you sometimes demand it? That right isn’t absolute, right?

And with the fourth, yeah, I think we know where you stand there. Have you ever even spoken against civil asset forfeiture? Maybe you don’t like Stop and Frisk, but you certainly didn’t seem to have any problem with surveilance of American Citizens without warrant while you were Vice President. So I presume you don’t think this right is absolute either.

Then there’s the fifth. Is the right not to be compelled to be a witness against oneself absolute or can the government sometimes force people to testify against themselves? And when you were Vice President I don’t recall you speaking against indefinite detention of American Citizens without trial or drone strikes against Americans from Barak “I’m really good at killing people” Obama. And, of course, there’s that whole civil asset forfeiture thing where people can have their property taken without any hint of due process. So there you have Life, Liberty, and Property all taken without due process of law and you seem to be perfectly okay with that, so I guess the 5th is another you don’t think is absolute.

Okay, what about the sixth? The right to a trial by jury is not absolute? Well, NDAA is a thing so I guess you don’t think it is.

Seventh? We can dismiss a jury in those suits in the common law with value over $20, at least sometimes. Although, considering what appears to be the case with actual criminal proceedings, I can’t really expect that you really do think this is superfluous too.

Well, there’s the Eighth. Do you think that, in some circumstances, we can go ahead and bring back thumbscrews and racks for some cases? After all, the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments isn’t absolute either, correct?

Now I think you actually like the Ninth. It gives you an excuse to grant “rights” to whoever you might want–the right to plunder others for certain people’s own ends, the rights to “goodies that other people pay for” for some, to rob selected Peter to pay collective Paul. But beyond that? Rights of people to keep what they earn, to live their own lives as they see fit, to make provision for the security and safety of their own families that seem right to them? Oh, no. Never that.

And that brings us to the Tenth. In all your long years as a Senator, then as a Vice President, did you ever once say “this should not be a Federal matter, but rightly belongs to the States or the people”? Even once?

You know, when I started this, I thought I’d show some examples which would illustrate why you cannot possibly mean it to say that “no amendment is absolute” but as I go through them…and I could continue beyond the Bill of Rights, but at this point I think the matter is demonstrated…I find that you apparently really do believe that. You, apparently, think that “rights” are no more than whatever the government, and you in particular, happen to grant them. You believe that you are the arbiter of what rights We the People have and if we disagree, well, that’s just too bad.

You grant the same “rights” as Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao. The same “rights” “granted” by every tyrant in history. The “right” to do as you’re told. You are a tyrant. More, you are an oathbreaker. When you swore that oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States you did so under false pretenses, lying through your teeth. Your intent was not to support but to subvert. You are worse than people like Jefferson Davis and others in the Confederate States. They, at least, had the honesty to declare themselves not our countrymen before going to war against us. You pretend not only to be one of us but to actually lead us, swearing falsely to uphold our founding document, the supreme law of the land.

You are a viper in the nest, worthy only of vilification.

This was originally posted in defense of a bunch of kids making pronouncements on public policy (specifically gun control) being criticized for their lack of life experience and general knowledge of the subjects involved. We were supposed to go “oh, those guys were young too, so I guess it’s okay.”

There’s just one problem. None of the listed people, not one, was a policy maker in the nascent United States in 1776. None of them.

Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, was born in September of 1757, so, yes, he was 18 at the time the United States declared independence. Being born a noble in France and in the context of his family’s martial tradition, he was commissioned an officer at age 13. In December of 1776, Lafayette was made a Major General but, well, at that time and place commissions were largely purchased. It was not until 1777 that he actually began his trek to America. When he learned that the Continental Congress lacked funds for his voyage, he bought a ship (The Victoire) with. his. own. money. on which to make the journey.

While the Marquis de Lafayette would go on to be a significant figure in the American fight for Independence, he was not a shaper of American political policy.

In 1776 James Monroe dropped out of college to join the 3rd Virginia Regiment in the Continental Army. Since he was literate, he was commissioned a Lieutenant. He was cited for bravery and promoted to Captain. As a captain he was expected to recruit his own company of soldiers but, lacking funds (unlike Washington, he was not independently wealthy), he was unable to do so and asked to be returned to the front. It would be some years later, in 1782 (age 24) when Monroe would win election to the Virginia house of Delegates. Later, he would become a United States Senator, a Minister to France, Governor of Virginia, and eventually win election to the Presidency in 1816 (age 58). So, while Monroe would go on to become a shaper of American policy, it was certainly not at the tender age of 18.

Henry Lee III became a Captain in a Virginia Dragoon detachment at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. In 1778, he was promoted to Major. Later, in 1786, then in his 30’s, Henry Lee III became a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation and in the 1788 Virginia convention, a 32 year old Lee favored the adoption of the United States Constitution. In 1799 (age 43) he became a member of the US House of Representatives. So, again, it was a Henry Lee III considerably older than in the meme above who actually became a policy shaper in the United States.

Nathan Hale is certainly a hero of renoun. In 1775 he joined a Connecticut militia unit. He participated in the siege of Boston. He was also part of the first organized intelligence service in the United States and, in that role, as a spy behind the enemy lines, he was captured by the British and executed with the purported last lines “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Nathan Hale was a hero and martyr, and is deservedly honored as such. He was not a policy maker.

With Aaron Burr we see the continuation of the pattern that’s becoming clear. He took part in Colonel Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Quebec. In 1776 he joined George Washington’s staff but, by June had quit that position to return to the battlefield. He played an important role in the evacuation of Manhattan after the British landing. Even though active in the war, Burr was able to finish his legal studies and was admitted to the bar in 1782 (age 26). He was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1784 to 1785 (age 27-28). He became seriously involved in politics, however, in 1789 (age 33) when appointed as New York State Attorney General. He became a US Senator in 1791 (age 35). He ran for President in 1796 and again in 1800 in which he became Vice President, which would lead to his famous duel with Hamilton and an end to any political influence he might have. So, again, Burr may have been young in 1776 but he was not a policy maker and would not be one for some years.

And, finally, we get to Alexander Hamilton. Shortly after the battles of Lexington and Concord (April 1775) Hamilton joined a volunteer militia company. He raised the New York Provinical Company of Artillery in in 1776 and was elected captain and fought in the campaign around New York City. He would go on to do more fighting and to serve on George Washington’s staff. In 1782 (Age 27) he became a member of the Congress of the Confederation as New York representative. He resigned in 1783 to return to law practice. In 1787 (age 32) he was an Assemblyman in the New York State legislature. While Hamilton had been a leader in calling for a Constitutional Convention, his actual influence in the convention was rather limited. The other two delegates from New York, being from a different faction, ensured that New York’s vote went their way (each State got one vote, which was decided by majority of the delegates from that State). Hamilton was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers used to “sell” the newly drafted Constitution to the States in general and New York in particular. He would go on to hold various roles in government, most notably Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington and his political infighting was a large part of the reason that John Adams only served a single term (and the power of the Federalist party was essentially broken from that point) until his fateful duel with Aaron Burr.

So the folk in the meme were not policymakers when they were 18-21 years old. That came later–for good or ill–with more seasoning and experience. So who were the policy makers and how young were they?

Well, the instrument shaping the policy of the colonies and the nascent United States at the time of the Declaration of Indpendence was the Second Continental Congress whose youngest member was Thomas Jefferson at 33 and whose oldest was Benjamin Franklin at 81.

Hardly the children demanding to have their way in the political arena today.

Over in another forum we had the argument raised, once again, on the theme of “you can’t fight the military with rifles…” I’ve addressed that before but I wrote a slightly different response to this one:

Ah, the old “lightly armed irregulars in the US can’t successfully fight the US military.” Let me ask you, do you also share that position regarding lightly armed irregulars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a little place called Vietnam?

Here’s the problem (one of them anyway). A resistance to a government gone rogue wouldn’t be like the American Civil War with setpiece battles with one group on one side of the field and the other group on the other side of the field and they shoot at each other until one side is dead or fled. It won’t have defined lines here people on one side are “your people” and the people on the other side are “the enemy’s people.” It would be all mixed together: allies, enemies, noncombatants all mixed together.

What exactly is the military to do with all its heavy weaponry? Is it to carpetbomb Boise because some insurgents are hiding in the population? Roll tanks through Des Moines because of an illegal propaganda operation somewhere within it? Nuke Indianapolis because a few home workshops are turning out copies of Sten guns (not that hard, actually)? How many of your. own. citizens. are you willing to accept as collateral damage in order to take down those insurgents?

Now, maybe the person giving the firing order on that cruise missile aimed at, say, Kansas City doesn’t have friends or family living in the area likely to be damaged/destroyed. Maybe nobody on the missiles prep or maintenance team does. But you can be bloody sure they know somebody who does. That’s the thing about an all volunteer force. It becomes really awkward to use it indiscriminately against your own people.

Now, you might be able to convince your force that the rebels are a threat to the nation and need to be shut down and that it’s their job to do so. It would take some preparation, both in terms of how you “paint” the rebels and also by making sure that you remove “unreliable” elements from the military in advance (perhaps by declaring the politically unreliable as “extremists” and the purge as “removing extremist elements”). Still, it’s a lot harder to convince that force to use force indiscriminately. You need to be selective. You need to be able to distinguish actual opposition force from allied civilians and noncombatants.

That requires “boots on the ground”, individual soldiers who can go into the population, target the actual individuals who present the threat, and do minimal harm to those who are not. And those individual soldiers are vulnerable to individual weapons. And armed United States Citizens outnumber the combined US military and police forces by about 50 to one, as a very conservative estimate. For that matter, armed United States Citizens outnumber the entire world’s combined military and paramilitary forces by about three to one. And that’s not counting the individuals who could arm others who come late to their “Road to Damascus” moment.

James Madison alluded to that in The Federalist Papers. While the anti-Federalists had serious…misgivings is too mild a term…about having a standing army, Madison noted that there were necessary tasks that simply were not well handled by a citizen militia. He gave the example of manning forts in the frontier. He noted, however, that the largest standing army a nation could realistically support (as a function of population, about twice what we have now) could be countered by a citizen militia at least an order of magnitude larger.

But let’s go further. Suppose, just suppose, you manage to convince the military, through a combination of propaganda and purging, to actually use the heavy weapons on US Citizens, to actually be willing to drop those bombs, roll that armor, launch those missiles, on American Citizens in the United States. You could level cities, certainly, and there’s little that the insurgents could do, directly, to stop you. But that doesn’t mean you have it all your own way. That army needs to be fed. The food has to come from somewhere, and it has to be transported to your bases and your troops. That transportation is vulnerable. The food is vulnerable to interception and/or contamination. How effective is your army going to be if a shipment of food gets laced with LSD (for example)? Are you going to test every shipment of every kind of foodstuffs for every possible contaminant? Well, maybe, but that’s a lot of manpower that’s taken away from actually fighting the insurgency.

And now trustworthy is that manpower? Can you be sure they will diligently perform their tests? That they won’t be subborned? That they won’t need to be suborned because they’re already irate with you because you just bombed Grandma in Boise and left Cousin Earl homeless after a tank ran through his house in Des Moines?

Now add in fuel, electronic spare parts, batteries, ammunition, and every other bit of the logistics it takes to run a modern army. And guarding the supply lines for all that logistics once again requires “boots on the ground”.

And, guess what, those “boots on the ground” guarding the supply lines are vulnerable to those lightly armed irregulars.