Of Kokesh, John Parker and Fort Sumters.

Alan W. Mullenax comments on Latest on Kokesh: “We will see you on the front lines of freedom on July 4th, 2013 for this, The Final American Revolution.”

Gotta be honest, I don't know what to make of the dude. However, if he does in fact serve as a John Parker, I got no bitch. I'm of the opinion that patriots, what few are left, need a kick in the ass to get started. We constantly rail about no Fort Sumters. Mostly because of comfort and cowardice, again in my opinion. Personally, at the least I support the guy. Hell, I may even show up to the party depending on how things develop. It's important to remember that Samuel Adams and John Hancock were in Lexington on the night of April 18th. I have no doubt that the initial confrontation was thought out, staged, and executed. I have no bitch with that either. If this gig starts the party rolling, I have no bitch with that either.

A. Captain Parker did not march his unit up to the British roadblock on the Boston Neck and demand entrance. The Patriots contrived a situation over many months, if not years, to make the British come to THEM, not the other way around. That was because they were serious men, cognizant of the weight of leadership responsibility and convinced that while they would not back down, that they would surrender the vital moral high ground of refusing to take the first shot while standing upon their rights as Englishmen under the English Constitution. Get that? SERIOUS men. Whatever egos they had were subordinated to the task at hand. They did not try to execute wild hair ideas by posting a circular on the village green. Every move was fully thought out before execution. What thought, what reflection, what responsibility, what preparation and organization does Kokesh's proposed action demonstrate? If he wants to bet his own ass on such an ill-thought venture that's one thing. Risking others is something else again. But any comparison between Kokesh and Parker is both historically ignorant and insulting to Parker's memory.

To underline the above: Parker was just one small cog in a liberty organization. He was responsible to both his men and to the resistance leadership of the colony of Massachusetts. This was, as I noted above, the result of years of organization and preparation -- political, social and military. If Parker was urged to stand his ground by Sam Adams (as seems likely, since it was a change plan from what he had agreed to with his men earlier in the morning), then it was because Adams convinced Parker that the General Gage had finally stuck his official dick in the moral and political grinder. Remember that the British column was not only a raid for firearms but an attempt to capture the resistance leadership in the form of Adams and Hancock. Gage HOPED to accomplish both without a fight, but in his arrogance he didn't foresee what a political victory he was handing the resistance if it didn't happen the way he'd planned. The BRITISH had marched out of Boston under arms to work their will upon the Colonists. They were plainly the aggressor, not the other way around. No matter who fired the first shot, WHERE that shot was fired was vitally important in the propaganda predicate to the Revolution. Kokesh, if he can maintain his dope-fogged attention span, ought to read and internalize a little more history.

B. Mullenax says: "We constantly rail about no Fort Sumters. Mostly because of comfort and cowardice, again in my opinion." Since I am the principal advocate of the phrase "No Fort Sumters" it is presumably me that he's criticizing as cowardly and comfortable. He is entitled to his opinion. But I say that the Founders would not have thought so. Their entire record from the Stamp Act to 19 April 1775 demonstrates their appreciation of the political and military realities that they faced. How many provocations did they refuse to answer with violence, preferring to take as much time as they could to lay the groundwork for 19 April when they maneuvered the British into dancing to their tune? Many. They used those provocations to continue to build their case against the King and his ministers, to continue to build their own rival political and military structures, Again, they understood how vital it was for them not to take the first shot, nor even the second or third, but to absorb the blows until they were as fully ready as they could make themselves. That was not cowardice, nor addiction to comfort. It was smart and, in the end, through many other trials, tribulations and sacrifices IT WORKED. The historical record shows that the Confederates, by allowing themselves to be manipulated by Lincoln into firing on Fort Sumter, lost whatever moral high ground they had.

C. So, does this make those of us who are risking our asses standing our ground while defying these new laws of King Barack and his minions on the state level (no new federal laws having been enacted) cowards and comfort addicts, or merely smart, responsible people who rightly fail to jump at the latest "call to action" on the Facebook page of an historically-amnesiac, irresponsible anarchist doper?

This is serious business, people, and ought to be prosecuted by serious people who feel the weight of the responsibility that it entails. When you are talking about initiating another civil war that will stack up bodies by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions, there is no place for impatience, recklessness or failure to think things through. Contriving to surrender the moral high ground at the beginning of the conflict is to wink at the prospect of the failure of one's own cause. What then IS Kokesh's cause? Anarchy? Yeah, that'll work. But to what purpose and in whose interest? History will judge that. And somewhere the Founders will be weeping in righteous anger and frustration that we paid no attention to their successful template of liberty.

But comparing Kokesh to Captain Parker? Pull the other one.