A Day of Reflection, Part Two: Ruminations upon a cracked pot. "The Kenyan is more clueless than the Kaiser." We win by existing.

The other day I got a real jeremiad of an email from a prag calling me, among other less printable things, a "crack pot." At the same time I received a call from a good friend who, having shaken the bushes in the District of Criminals and environs, reported a warning to me that Main Justice felt I was "having entirely too much fun at their expense." I laughed, but he didn't. He is concerned that that the "no more free federal misadventures of any kind" meme and the "One Hundred Heads" warning had not been internalized by some of the powers-that-be, although the professional analysts do understand the seriousness of the overall situation. "They've read 'The Guns of August,'" he said, "and they're afraid that the Kenyan is more clueless than the Kaiser." That is, that civil war could start by stupid federal misadventure.



The same day, I got another reminder from a long-time friend that no matter how desperate the Dem's political fortunes seem now, that the OKC bombing followed Newt Gingrich's coronation as "the only relevant American politician" by a bare four months.

We seem to be making progress, yet how much of this is our own self-delusion betting upon a triumph of hope over experience? I do not know. There are days, weeks, when the weight of it tells upon me. Days when I stack the frictions and frustrations against my hope and my blessings and come up a bit short.

I am 58 years old. In the Seventies, and later, since the Nineties, I never thought I would last this long, and my chronic health problems remind me of my frailty. That is as it will be. I long ago put that in God's hands. Same for the name-calling, the threats, the dangers. As for myself, I care nothing. That too is in God's hands and I know that I am on some pretty powerful prayer lists. I thank sincerely all of you who hold me and the rest of the Irregulars up in prayer and I pray for y'all and our common cause.

The frustration -- my biggest frustration -- of finishing the editing, or perhaps the re-editing -- of Absolved still dogs me, but I will put it behind me shortly.

Of my blessings, I have many. Most of all, my children, who never cease to amaze me and impress me with their brilliance, their adherence to principle and duty and their accomplishments. Child rearing is the one task given to us that is the most important and can pay the biggest dividends. Being a citizen is important, leaving more citizens behind is more important. I have been blessed, without doubt.

Another equally important blessing, as I contemplate my 25th anniversary of my marriage to Rosey this week, is my wonderful wife. I married above my station, and if we have succeeded at child-rearing is is more than half to her credit, not mine.

The health issues, the legal struggle I'm in right now, the eternal parlous state of our finances, all are as nothing compared to that, and to the blessing of all my many friends, including most of you, my dear Irregulars.

The sense that it is 31 August 1939, that the panzers are rumbling just across the river and temporarily out of sight beyond the trees, oppresses me. Again, not for me, for I have long ago made that bargain, but for my family, my friends, my country.

And yet.

And yet.

As as I told a very good friend (whose name you would recognize) this morning, as I prowled the thrift stores for cheap military equipment to help newbies get squared away -- for everyone who calls us names, for everyone who sneers at our campaign to make the ATF abide by its own rules, for everyone who hates us (and they hate him full as much as they hate me), for everyone who threatens our lives, our families and our liberty and property, for every photo-phobic federal Wizard of Oz bureaucrat who yells in panic, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!' -- for all of those, we defeat them by merely existing. One more day. One more week. One more month. One more year.

For every day we continue in existence, we put the lie to their alleged omniscience, to their pretended omnipotence. For every day we thumb our noses at their "power," stick our word fingers in the eye of their pretensions, for every day we do so and live, thrive and survive -- every one of those days is a victory.

It is a victory that ought to encourage others. A victory that ought to lend strength to the wobbly knees of other nascent freedom fighters. WE have done this, day after day, year after year, and they have not slain us. They have not beaten us. They have not discouraged US.

It is WE who live in THEIR heads rent free, with all utilities paid by the federal leviathan. So far, THEY are dancing to OUR tune. They are frightened of OUR light switch of truth.

We win by existing, by fighting using whatever means necessary, every day.

WE win.

They don't.

And even if they kill us, we win.

Or I should say, you'll win for us.

And a win is a win, for all our children and grandchildren, for all our futures.

We all have our jobs. I will do mine until I am dead, one way or the other.

Y'all have your own jobs too.

Train.

Prepare.

Organize.

Fight -- politically until you can no longer, militarily when that is denied you.

We do what we do in the simple trust that y'all will do what you need to do when we are gone.

That is the way it has been since before there was a United States.

Don't let the Founders down.

Don't let your ancestors down.

I know you won't.

And that is why I can't stay depressed for long.

Because we WILL win.

We will outlast them.

We will win by existing.

And our children will urinate upon their despised graves -- political, metaphoric, or otherwise.

Mike Vanderboegh
Crackpot and the alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.
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