Pitchforks, Pistols and Pepto-Bismol: Introducing the New York Times to the Concept of the Three Percenter.

Folks,

I am indebted to David Codrea for bringing my attention to this editorial column from the New York Times. Once again we see the opposition is obsessed with things as they wish them to be, not things as they really are. I sent the author an email explaining these inconvenient truths, which you will find below the op-ed.

Mike
III

Pitchforks and Pistols

By CHARLES M. BLOW

New York Times, April 3, 2009

Lately I’ve been consuming as much conservative media as possible (interspersed with shots of Pepto-Bismol) to get a better sense of the mind and mood of the right. My read: They’re apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their “leaders” seem to be trying to mold them into militias.

At first, it was entertaining — just harmless, hotheaded expostulation. Of course, there were the garbled facts, twisted logic and veiled hate speech. But what did I expect, fair and balanced? It was like walking through an ideological house of mirrors. The distortions can be mildly amusing at first, but if I stay too long it makes me sick.

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution.

Some simply lace their unscrupulous screeds with loaded language about the fall of the Republic. We have to “rise up” and “take back our country.” Others have been much more explicit.

For example, Chuck Norris, the preeminent black belt and prospective Red Shirt, wrote earlier this month on the conservative blog WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, imagining herself as some sort of Delacroixian Liberty from the Land of the Lakes, urged her fellow Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous,” ready to bust caps over cap-and-trade, I presume.

And between his tears, Glenn Beck, the self-professed “rodeo clown,” keeps warning of an impending insurrection by saying that he believes that we are heading for “depression” and “revolution” and then gaming out that revolution on his show last month. “Think the unthinkable” he said. Indeed.

All this talk of revolution is revolting, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms.

According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

Coincidence? Maybe. Just posturing? Hopefully. But it all gives me a really bad feeling. (Where’s that Pepto-Bismol?!)

"Cherish your enemies. They teach you the most valuable lessons." -- Ho Chi Minh

Dear Sir,

Chugging Pepto Bismol already and you haven't met a Three Percenter yet? Meet your ulcer:

From my blog, sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

What is a "Three Percenter"?

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.

The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.

We are the people that the collectivists who now control the government should leave alone if they wish to continue unfettered oxygen consumption. We are the Three Percent. Attempt to further oppress us at your peril. To put it bluntly, leave us the hell alone. Or, if you feel froggy, go ahead AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.

Feel free to explore my blog, and read the new book by Dr. Robert Churchill, Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face (University of Michigan Press, 2009), or just google my name. I am proud to say I have been on the enemies list of three consecutive White Houses now. I am equally hated by the ATF, the FBI, the Klan, the neoNazis, Clintonistas, Obamanoids, Bushies, crooked politicians, drug dealers and various and sundry bad cops. If a man is known as much by his enemies as his friends, I am indeed rich.

Yet, with my experience of some sixteen years as an enemy of the various regimes of the unconstitutional state, I can tell you that blaming politicians or talk show hosts for the Great Obama Firearm and Ammo Rush is ludicrous. They reflect our anger dully, without truly understanding it themselves. You are playing blame the messenger, at least in part because this is a comfortable way for you to try to fit your unease at seeing something that frightens you and which you don't understand into a familiar meme. Baby want bottle? The politicians and talk show hosts are familiar whipping boys for you, but they are irrelevant to your present circumstances.

You are wrong in another respect. The current run on weapons and ammunition is not primarily about Obama's stated appetite for gun control. It may have started out that way, but it is much more about a perceived existential threat to public order and civilization posed by monetizing the debt (hyperinflation) and the schism in our politics which demonstrates that we are in fact two peoples inhabiting the same land and speaking the same language but divided by almost everything else political, cultural, and religious.

Partial proof of that is how many liberals are among those buying weapons for the first time. You might get an interesting column by asking THEM (with whom you surround yourself and thus validate your opinions like an echo chamber) why they're buying weapons and ammo like a big city gangbanger in a turf war. But here's another snippet from a recent column on something that happened just this weekend at the Knob Creek Kentucky Machine Gun Shoot:

A sustained and very intoxicating high: sitting at the Shotgun News table (in a chair with my cast-bound foot up) watching millions of rounds of ammunition move inexorably into the trunks and cargo spaces of waiting vehicles. . . That observation post near the choke point of the entrance allowed me to see, and even cheer, the folks struggling by with cases of ammo on their shoulders, rolling on two- and four-wheeled dollies, chugging past on mechanical mules and their trailers, even loaded out on exhibitor pickup trucks, beds full, chassis sagging, springs down on the axles. It was like watching a Ho Chi Minh trail for good guys.

You know, in every modern American war, when the enemy was getting pasted with a particularly effective artillery barrage or airstrike, it was the wont of GIs and Marines to holler out in approval: "Kaiser, count your 'children!'" or "Hitler, count your 'children!'" or "Tojo (Chairman Mao, Uncle Ho, Saddam), count your 'children!'"

At one point, a mule went slowly by, packed sky-high, hauling an equally burdened trailer and, delighted, I hollered out "Obama, count your 'children!'" People looked at me like I was nuts. Other people laughed and nodded.

But here's the thing: Clausewitz observed that in military affairs, "quantity has a quality all its own." As the Great Obama Firearm and Ammo Rush rolls on with no signs of abating, this transfer of defensive and offensive military power into the hands of the American people is a strategic military fact that is almost overwhelming to contemplate. Note well, Obama and your socialist butch minions -- you will NEVER be able to reclaim this by legislative fiat, you will NEVER be able to seize enough of it by force, you will NEVER get back the power that this transfer of military means represents. The American people have voted, are voting and will continue to vote with their wallets, and unless you are very, very circumspect, your own election to power hangs in the balance.

It boils down to this, Lightworker: if you continue to overstep your constitutional bounds (by the Founders' standards and not your own), the American people have the means to remove your regime should they be so inclined. Count your socialist 'children,' Obama. The American people are ready for them. And the Rush STILL goes on.

Factoid heard at the SGN table: There are in excess of 100,000 ARs on backorder at the various manufacturers.

You folks at NYT have spent years editorially clucking your tongues in anger at the GOP and the NRA, as if they were your real problem when it came to citizen disarmament. Silly little men. The way we look at it, THEY protected YOU. Now they have been swept away as a significant force. Politics no longer avails us. We must find other means to defend our liberty and property.

The Democrat majority and the "Chicago Way" can give you whatever you want, Constitution or not. You've got us surrounded, you poor bastards. Now you're going to have to deal with us. Directly, without political cover. I pity you folks. I really do. You'd just better pray that if the administration does decide to try to disarm us, we don't embrace Bill Clinton's rules of engagement that he used on the Serbs when he declared that the politicians, intelligentsia and news media of his enemies were legitimate targets of war and pumped precision guided munitions into the headquarters of Serbian radio and television. Under those rules, an American civil war would get very messy, very quickly, and perhaps for you, very personal. Unintended consequences are a bitch, aren't they?

One last thing. If you think the military will enforce unconstitutional orders for you, check out the blog Oath-Keepers. The military, pal, especially combat arms, is US. And they didn't swear an oath to the Lightworker. They swore it to the Constitution. Better get it out and read that document once again. Oh, yeah . . . and it wouldn't hurt to buy a firearm. You might need it. One other thing. They have operations for ulcers. Good luck on yours.

Mike Vanderboegh
Pinson, AL
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com