Three Percent: toward a theory and practice of republican restoration

Three Percent: toward a theory and practice of republican restoration



"A third area in counterinsurgency operations worth examining is the stability of the environment. It is almost a tautology that insurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability." -- Measuring Effectiveness in Irregular Warfare, James Clancy and Chuck Crossett, Parameters, Summer 2007, pp. 88-100. http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/07summer/clancy.htm

Why are we "bitter clingers"?

During the late, lamentable campaign for the presidency, the President-elect was trying to explain to a latte liberal bunch of donors in San Francisco why he was having such trouble making headway with rural Pennsylvania Democrats.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -- Barack Hussein Obama, 12 April, 2008, San Francisco, California.

Of course, this immediately promoted the sale of teeshirts proclaiming "I'm a 'bitter clinger'". This sort of insulting, clueless snobbery has always informed the liberal critique of traditional America but the observation, while mistaking causes and effects, hit on something eternal. We do "cling" to our faith and our liberty with great ferocity, mostly because we intuitively understand that it is the old verities that have brought us this far as a free people.

The Gramscian collectivists who have assaulted our culture for the past century through Hollywood and the indoctrination of our youth in government schools understand this. It is to their successes in the culture that they owe the election of the candidate who is the epitome of the collectivist con artist. A people firmly grounded in the principles and history of western civilization, who understood free markets and the glorious concepts of the rule of law and private property, a people who were educated in critical thinking -- HOW to think, rather than WHAT to think -- would never have allowed the slow destruction by corruption that has brought the Founders' Republic to this point.

Yet, here we are. Two peoples, divided by culture, trapped within the same borders. For the moment, our opponents have swept the political field and are poised to collect what they see as the fruits of victory. Among these fruits, we have been told, are more oppressive gun control laws. We Three Percenters, so named because we see ourselves as lineal descendants of the three percent of the colonial population who physically took up arms against King George the Third, have sworn to resist any more such laws. Not one more step back, is our cry. We understand that this may make us outlaws within our own country in short order, bringing us into conflict with the new federal regime. We Three Percenters are truly the "bitter clingers" of whom Obama spoke.

But why are we "bitter clingers"? Leaving aside the issues of faith and principle and focusing merely on defense of the God-given inalienable rights that are codified in the Second Amendment, we do so because we understand (as did the Founders) that it is the Second Amendment that secures all the rest of the Bill of Rights. We do so because it is our firearms that provide stability and order to the society.

We all know this. Heck, even the gun confiscationists know this from experience though they refuse to admit it. What has been the result of the concealed carry movement in the past 30 years? John Lott has said it in the title of his book: "More Guns, Less Crime." Where are the worst outrages against public order, life and limb? Why in the victim disarmament zones of our big cities, of course. Where do the massacres of innocents take place? In the criminal free fire zones that have been carved out of our schools and public spaces. "Gun free school zone" is a lie just as much as a sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" over an extermination camp gate, and in the aggregate it is just as deadly. So we cling to our firearms because in the violent uncertain world that has arisen in the ashes of our traditional culture, it is only them, and ourselves, we can count on to protect our families, hearth and home. As the saying goes, "9-1-1: Minutes Away When Seconds Count."

We also understand from observing the statistics of crime that it is unnecessary for everyone to be armed for weapons in the hands of some of the citizenry to bring order and stability for all, even the most hard-headed gun confiscationist who is protected by the uncertainty engendered in the local criminal's mind as to just who has a weapon. Do you see the Brady Bunch putting up signs on their front lawns saying: "Gun Free Household"? Of course not. They're hypocritical beneficiaries of our preparedness.

We are "bitter clingers" because we understand that for a woman with a vengeful ex-boyfriend, or one who accidentally walks into the notice of a rapist, her gun IS order and safety. And we are "bitter clingers" because we understand that our firearms protect us not only from petty criminals, rapists and freelance murderers, but also from tyrannical government criminals and organized murderers of the Stalinist and Hitlerian kind.

Our gun confiscationist opponents sneer at this reasoning, but as I have written in more than one place, if they think tyranny can't come to America, they're whistling past the graveyard of history. The armed black veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who protected the advocates of Ghandian pacifist resistance to the racist oppression of Klan-dominated local law enforcement with M-1 rifles in their hands and determined looks in their eyes knew this. That is why gun control down here in Alabama is a non-starter for most black folks even today. They remember what it was like to face corrupt government officials who could kill you at a whim.

Here again we see that firearms, and the will to use them, protected order and liberty. Another example would be the Battle of Athens, Tennessee in 1946, when veterans fought a corrupt and violent political machine ignored by the state police with guns in their hands, kept an election from being stolen and won the day. It is not necessary to footnote this with quotes from Ceasare Beccaria, or Tom Paine, or any of the Founders. This is plan common sense understood by anybody with half a brain. Criminals and governments step lightly around citizens who are armed and prepared to defend their lives, their property and their liberty.

In any riot, hurricane, or other man-made or natural disaster, who is the most popular guy in the neighborhood when the looters begin to roam? The man with the evil semi-automatic "assault rifle" of course. "Nobody needs one of those," our enemies sneer. Except, of course, when they do. Will the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13, the Latin Kings, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Klan and every motorcycle gang in the country not have them too? What a silly question. So pardon me, Brady Bunch, if I wish to be armed as capably as the worst maddog criminal I might encounter.

So when we "bitterly cling" to firearms, this is what we cling to: order, safety, liberty.

"Insurrection" or Restoration?

For our declarations of refusal to cooperate in our own further disarmament, our "pragmatist" critics in the gun rights movement have labeled us Three Percenters as "insurrectionists," "insurgents" and "revolutionaries," among other less printable names. Yet we do not want to overthrow the system of government designed by the Founders, but rather to restore it to its former glory. I would draw your attention once more to the quote at the top of this essay.

(I)nsurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability.

Our political enemies of all stripes, including those who claim to be our friends, say that it is we who are "revolutionaries." But, I ask you, which side of this struggle over the culture of this Republic has introduced "chaos," "terror," "uncertainty," and "fear"? Is it not the social engineers of the left who destroyed the black family with their tender mercies of the "War on Poverty" so condemned by own of their own at the time, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Is it not the Gramscian culture wreckers of Hollywood and the Gangstas? Is it not, indeed, the gun confiscationists, with their criminal free fire zones in the cities? Further, is it not the social engineers and crony capitalists of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democrats all, who set us on this current descent into financial chaos?

It is THEY who are the revolutionaries. THEY who are the insurgents. THEY who are the insurrectionists. By clinging to our firearms and our values, it is WE who provide the basis of order and stability in this society, not them. NEVER them. Ordinary Americans understand this intuitively, even if they are often gullibly taken in by the lies of language the gun confiscationists use: "reasonable regulation," "common sense," "loophole," and "assault weapon."

Gun control has worked so well in the localities under the political domination of the gun controllers that they are happily willing to share their disorder with us. What nice folks. Of course in the end, this is not about "pulic safety," or "crime in the streets," or really even about firearms. The anti-gunners aren't anti-gun, they're anti-guns-in-the-hands-of-individuals. It's not about guns, its about power, which is why it's about guns because as one of the collectivists' fondly-recalled Asian rock stars of the last century famously observed, "political power grows out of the end of a gun."

They know this, and on some level, most every one of us "bitter clingers" knows this. The government, at every level, will always have firearms. Criminals, obviously will always have firearms. At issue here is whether or not the law-abiding citizens of this country will have firearms of military utility able to resist predatory criminals or predatory governments. Yet it is WE who provide the basis for safety and security in this country. This is why we refuse to continue to disarm by a thousand cuts. Because it is in our ability to project credible deterrence to criminals of all stripes, even elected ones, that our safety and the safety, security and liberty of this entire country rests.

We Three Percenters are not trying to "overthrow the government." We are merely insisting that we will not allow the government of the Founders, that sad, battered old girl of a republic, to be finally, irrevocably, overthrown by the collectivists who now have it by the throat. To the extent that we are able to get that idea across to the people (a huge challenge, for it must needs be over the megaphone shouts of the Obamanoids and the ill-named "main stream media"), we may be able to get out of this looming confrontation without anybody getting shot. The "pragmatists," who have much greater resources for getting that message out than do we, could be critical in that. I know they can, but I do not hold out much hope that they will. They are too busy calling us "lunatics" and "insurrectionists," while the real insurrectionists and revolutionaries tear down the old political verities that the pragmatists have counted on for so long.

In the end, faithful to the Founders' legacy, we Three Percenters will still be here, providing even in our resistance to tyranny, the basis of order, liberty and the rule of law against the revolutionaries of the left.