Patrice Lewis writes in "The late great United States" --found here-- that today, July 4th, should be a national day of mourning. I can only sadly agree.
This solemn attitude appears to be shared by my fellow gunnies. David Codrea writes here that "Independence requires the will and means to preserve it."
Likewise, Kurt Hoffman at the St. Louis Gun Examiner tells us here that the "Brady Campaign observes Independence Day by lobbying against liberty," which comes as no surprise. Kurt concludes:
So, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of our free nation, the Brady Campaign continues its relentless lobbying for banning private sales of firearms, rationing the right to buy them, banning useful and hugely popular semi-automatic rifles, and giving the BATFE more money and power with which to abuse gun owners. I don't think so, Brady Campaign. Not even if it takes another war against tyranny to stop it.
The sum of all our fears, I think, is this. For years, and for many of us all our lives, we have tried to get the collectivist enemies of our rights to liberty and property to understand that they had better leave us the hell alone, or else. And now, thanks to their arrogance, stupidity and tyrannical appetites, we are coming to the "or else."
The Founders must have experienced this moment, when their fear of opposing the mighty British Empire with all of the terrible winds of war that would be unleashed thereby vied in their minds and hearts with their desire, their demand, to be free of a tyranny that interfered incessantly in their lives and that would not leave them be.
But then, as now, the Power, the Leviathan, would not cease shoving people around because it felt it knew better than they how to conduct their own lives.
Yet, the Founders stood and claimed their independence. Over the intervening centuries their descendants gave it up bit by bit, gradually selling their freeborn heritage for a mess of socialist pottage.
So here we are, at the hollow anniversary of Independence Day, faced with the likelihood that we will very soon have to reclaim that independence from another grasping tyranny with our blood and our lives, placing all we hold dear, our families most especially, on the ghastly chess board of civil war as markers of our sincerity.
We KNOW that this situation of two peoples -- one of free individuals and one of the collectivist herd -- cannot last for very much longer. One or the other must triumph. And we know from history that such deep divides are almost always bridged by piling up enough bodies in bloody civil war to fill the chasm.
So, no, I will not be celebrating this Independence Day. I will hold my family close, and I will pray to God for guidance and protection and I will look to the bloody future with apprehension. But -- know this. Know that I intend to maintain my own liberty, even if it kills me and mine in the process. That was the Founders' solution, and that is mine.
So you must decide for yourselves this Independence Day, gentlemen and ladies, where you will stand and what you will risk. The next match of the eternal contest of liberty versus tyranny is about to begin. Place your bets. Just understand the game pieces are your own flesh and blood. And some of us will, if required, be expendable. That is what "or else" means.
22 comments:
Or, as the late Edward Abbey expressed it: “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Come on out and fight like a man, it is a good day to die. Because I would rather live on my feet, than die on my knees. III.
In 200 Years will Historians point at John Hinckley, Jr.'s March 30, 1981, assassination attempt on Reagan as the seed that brought about the Second American Revolution? I Hope not, I pray the path we are heading down offers a chance to turn around before it goes that far, but I fear it does not.
Today is my birthday, and this year more than any other year it seems like this day is more about me than my country.
Sad.
I do not agree Mike. I WILL celebrate this day. Just as those before us chose this fourth day of July as their independence against tyranny, I too am declaring this day, July 4th 2009 as my family's Independence day against oppression and tyranny, against taxation without representation, against all the Brady's in this world, and ANYONE who schemes to take away the freedoms we are entitled to.
Weaver
III
Amen. God bless you and yours.
Bill
III
Well written....
Well received.
A double amen for Sean's comment.
Bob
III
I will celebrate this day if for no other reason to annoy the "Safety Monkeys". They hate and ban fireworks in some "states" or perhaps collectives is the right word. look to the sky tonight if it is banned but still lights the night. Then the embers of resistance and Liberty wait to burn brightly Again.
And we Ain't Dead Yet!
Watching, waiting, preparing, and praying.
III
J.
"Sean said...Come on out and fight like a man, it is a good day to die. Because I would rather live on my feet, than die on my knees."
Thanks, Sean.
Careful with the bi-polar thinking. Kicking the can down the road when time costs your opponent more than you can be a good thing.
I'll fire from cover and concealment if possible, with nearby decoys. Shoot, scoot, comm.
Mercenaries get paid enough to kill for the cause but not nearly enough to die for it.
Cheers.
I too am celebrating Independence Day a little differently this year.
I started the day by watching "Defiance" by myself, with the aid of a couple of good cups of coffee.
I think that despite the very different setting of this movie (a fringe Soviet territory), the fact that these people "just wanted to be left alone" makes the film apropos given our time and our condition now.
They merely fought to be left alone to practice their beliefs, but the evil forces against them refused to leave them alone. Thus they hid when they could, ran when they had a choice, and fought when they had no place left to run to.
Sound familiar? I see no place to run to, personally.
Up the Republic!
Keep your powder dry,
Atlas Shrug
I hope that we can change it positively, however, I am ready for the time when that no longer works. "Always prepared" (gotta be a good boy scout.)
Today is my third Independence Day in Wyoming. I celebrated the history of the day by putting up a flag pole and will henceforth fly the modified Gadsen flag that says, "TIME'S UP!"
I insist on living our my sovereign individuality. And I will die for it if necessary.
Despite my gloom (for the same reasons Mike stated) I have to admit I love fireworks.
Have since I was a youth and manned the 4-H petting zoo at the State Fair each year. The fair would always close out with a great show.
I really need to get into the hobby of rolling my own fireworks (I say that every freaking July 4th). I figure the skills learned might transfer to other uses.
I saw a magnificent display of fireworks last night, and I, too, mourned the loss of what this day was supposed to mean. We have come from limited government to electing a Soviet-style Premier.
When the bloody revolution comes, I hope I make more than one of the enemy expendable, if I am to also be expendable. The enemy must pay more in blood than we do, if we are to win.
July 4, a reading:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1130&Itemid=264
Let me ask you a question. And I mean this not as a challenge or to be a jerk, but as a serious question.
Why should I risk my life, my fortune, and the fortunes of my loved ones for these liberties? I can certainly see the sacrifice being worthy for me and mine. But to secure the liberties of strangers, and of those strangers' posterity? Why?
If a second revolution must come to pass, why should I believe that in 200 years, the people will not be what they are now: ignorant, happy slaves to the government Leviathan.
Even if a second revolution was to result in the most explicitly-written Constitution (embodying all of our Founding Father's ideals), why would that Constitution survive any better than the one we have now? It is not the words in the Constitution that truly matter, but the willingness to defend the plainly-written meaning of those words. We don't even do that now!
In short, why should I risk my neck for future generations who will most likely be taught to detest me (as many are taught to do today with regards to the Founding Fathers)? Why should I risk my life for future generations who will most likely not even appreciate their inheritance of liberty, and who will be more than eager to give their liberties away to the first messianic demagogue who comes their way?
Why?
Somebody remind me, what did we do with the last king? I don't think this country is going to sit by much longer while our royalty throws a party once or twice a week on our dime.
Weaver
You might want to take a look at this:
http://www.starlancs.com/
fourth_of_july_tea_party_
speech.htm
This is the text of my Fourth of July Tea Party speech. It is a five-minute history lesson and a call to action.
I believe that America will have to be driven to its knees before enough of us wake up and do what is necessary. And I'm not talking about voting or debate. We'll never see another truly free, open and honest election in this country until after the next American Civil War - the Left, ACORN, massive vote fraud and gutless Republicans have seen to that. As for debate, well...
€"The great misfortune of the twentieth Century is to have been the one in which the ideal of liberty was harnessed to the service of tyranny, the ideal of equality to the service of privilege, and all the aspirations and social forces included under the label of the "Left" enrolled in the service of impoverishment and enslavement. This immense imposture has falsified most of this century, partly through the faults of some of its greatest intellectuals. It has corrupted the language and action of politics down to tiny details of vocabulary, it has inverted the sense of morality and enthroned falsehood in the very center of human thought."
from "The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information"
1991, Random House Jean Francois-Revel
As some of you who know your history know very well, once a people has been driven to its knees, they seldom have the will or the opportunity to get back up on their own.
So it's time - long past time - to stand up and call things by their proper names. Time to look to what you can and must do to defend liberty.
Ayn Rand, writing in her 1941 afterword to "Anthem" was spine-chillingly prescient:
"The greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning attached to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one's eyes shut. They expect, when they find themselves in a world of bloody ruins and concentration camps, to escape moral responsibility by wailing: "But I didn't mean this!"
Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condemning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead."
Those who voted for slavery in the last presidential election have a great deal to answer for. If you are an Obama supporter, then you HAVE accepted collectivism and the premises of the ideas that support it. Like it or not (and perhaps you do), know it or not (and perhaps you don't care), you have opted for slavery of the most insidious type. Those choices have consequences. Those consequences start here, now, with me.
As an old man, I expect to be cannon fodder. On the other hand, I can run 20 miles. Make good use of me. I have waited for a Larger Purpose. Our leaders will be courageous, daring, and so very deadly.
Dear Anonymous,
I understand your question well. Why SHOULD be risk life, property, family to re-establish a free USA again, when it will simply slide down the slope again in another brief span of time?
The only answer I have, is because I could not bear to look at my children or grandchildren, enslaved thru their own ignorance and lethargy and think to myself" I could have helped to change this, and I did nothing."
So that is why I will fight. Hopefully in a smart fashion, not sacrificially. Hopefully in a very meaningful fashion so that I and others can succeed in re-establishing, even if only for decades, a truly free USA.
Side benefits may include removal of all illegals, elimination of all gun laws, restoration of free enterprise - the only form of industry that works for more than a few years - and elimination of the vast majority of intrusive laws currently on the books, including income tax and virtually every other tax we labor under.
How's that for a reason?
To the previous Anonymous who asked "Why?"
Because it is the choice between quietly boarding the Gulag Express and resisting with the likliehood of dying in the process. Would you rather die with a hot barrel and an empty magazine or after ignominious groveling and protracted abuse and humiliation? Ref. A. Solzhenitsyn
I will fight and die if necessary to provide ANOTHER example to our posterity of how true freedom loving Americans will react and handle future attempts at tyranny.
I will fight and die if necessary so I can go to my grave knowing I left my children and their posterity a FREE America. What they do with it is up to them. I hope I have taught them what they need to know to leave the same inheritance to their successors.
And to this I pledge my honor, my fortune and my life.
Paladin
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