One country? Or two?

 Pretty girl from Alabama with some guy in the background.

Speech at the Alamo, 19 October 2013

One country? Or two?

My name is Mike Vanderboegh.  I am from the great free state of Alabama and I am a Three Percenter. This is not the first time Alabamians have come to the aid of Texas in her time of need. There is an Alabama flag hanging in this sacred shrine of American liberty behind us, marking the sacrifice of the Alabamians who died here. But that was the least of my state's losses in your war of independence. After the surrender and massacre at Goliad, it is said that every single planter family in the Tennessee River valley of Alabama went into mourning, grieving for their lost sons squandered by COL Fannin. Alabamians have since been more than a little suspicious of Texas colonels, but as for myself I expect to make it back to Alabama in one piece after this, although I suppose that's up to the city leadership of San Antonio.

For those of you who don't know me, if you need to pigeonhole my politics I consider myself a Christian libertarian. I believe in God, free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founder's Republic and that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion. I most especially believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the ultimate guarantor of liberty.

I have also been called a "seditionist" by members of the current regime. If faithfully fulfilling my oath to the Founders' Republic and unrelenting hostility to those who would undermine and overthrow it makes me a "seditionist" then I cheerfully plead guilty.

The Three Percent movement I founded has been denounced by that paragon of moral virtue Bill Clinton and I am a perennial "honorable mention" on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of dangerous folks. I have even been the subject of an eighteen and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and the current Attorney General of the United States knows -- and despises – me by name because of the Fast and Furious scandal that, with my friend David Codrea, I broke the news of on the Internet. Eric Holder would not be surprised to know that the feeling is mutual.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence calls me an "insurrectionist" because I don't believe, as they do, in a government monopoly of violence, but rather in a literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny. Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann says, "It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable" and I suppose my remarks here today will only reinforce my enemies' opinions of me. I think I can bear the burden.

But as you can see by my hat, I have also been forced by circumstances to become a smuggler. You see, the recent spate of citizen disarmament laws in states like Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York has led me on a campaign to defy, resist, evade and smuggle in opposition to those laws. This is my specialty – a standard capacity magazine. So far my friends and I have broken the laws of three of those states – and we don't smuggle for money, we give the magazines away to people who have committed no crime save the ones that these state officials, these petty tyrants, have created. So, am I a law breaker?

They certainly think so. But it is an established principle in American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. One man's criminal is another man's freedom fighter.

This same principle was at the center of the civil rights movement in the 60s as was the concept of armed civil disobedience and the right of self-defense against uniformed criminals acting out their prejudices on the innocent under color of law. Few however know this part of our history.

Raise your hands if you've ever heard of the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

The Deacons formed black self-defense militias made up mostly of veterans of World War II and Korea (often carrying the weapons they had smuggled back from the wars) who protected the advocates of non-violent resistance. Ironic, huh? We've all heard of Martin Luther King's Gandhian principles, but few know that when he came to my adopted home town of Birmingham he slept soundly and safely because armed men like Condoleeza Rice's father guarded him with firearms in the hands and determination in their hearts. The Deacons were the Three Percenters of their time and place. And like the Deacons, we Three Percenters are here today not to break the law but rather to reinforce those laws against those who would force an opinion-driven agenda as punishment upon the law-abiding under the mere color of law.

The concept of the Three Percent harkens back to the Revolution when as best we can determine only 3% of American colonists actually took the field against the King. They were actively supported by perhaps another 10% with a further 20% approving but merely acting as cheerleaders from the sidelines. Likewise, a third of the population supported the King and the final third blew with the wind and took what came.  Today this third is watching Dancing with the Stars and gossiping about the Kardashians.  Some things never change.

The lesson of our Revolution – as relevant today as then – is that history is made by determined minorities. For good or ill this has been true throughout the ages. The Founders were such a determined minority. So too are the people today who are determined to subvert and overthrow the Founders' Republic and replace it with some supposedly benevolent collectivist Borg.

To these people the Three Percent of today declare:

WE WILL NOT DISARM.

YOU CANNOT CONVINCE US.

YOU CANNOT INTIMIDATE US.

YOU CAN KILL US, IF YOU THINK YOU CAN.

BUT REMEMBER, WE'LL SHOOT BACK.

THERE'S MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF YOU, AND WE'RE NOT GOING AWAY.

SO, YOUR MOVE, MR. WANNABE TYRANT. YOUR MOVE.

Another way of putting it is this: WHEN DEMOCRACY TURNS TO

TYRANNY, THE ARMED CITIZEN STILL GETS TO VOTE.

This is not sedition. It is not insurrection. It is a philosophy that the Founders embodied and would endorse today. The men who died at the point of Mexican bayonets behind those walls would endorse it as well. This philosophy does not even constitute revolution. We don't want to overthrow the government. We simply want to restore it to the Founders' model of what a republic should be. It is that determined minority of so-called progressives, the statists, the collectivists – call them what you will – who have spent the last century waging quiet revolution against the Constitution and the rule of law embodied by the Founders' Republic. Thus, if you wish to be precise, we are the forces of COUNTER-revolution to the collectivists' revolution. We are indeed the forces of restoration.

Whether we can restore the republic remains to be seen. I know of no example in history where a republic so corrupted, so undermined by its internal and external enemies, has saved itself from bloody collapse. So it remains to be seen.  I do know that we have to try.

There is abroad in our land the growing thought that America is now in fact two countries sharing a common border and (mostly) a common language but divided along the answer to this question:

DOES THE GOVERNMENT SERVE THE PEOPLE OR DO THE PEOPLE SERVE THE GOVERNMENT?

Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC recently reinforced this idea when she accused your Senator Ted Cruz of not being loyal to or caring about “the country.” It is apparent to me that Ted Cruz is in fact loyal to MY country and to his, which is the Founders' Republic. It is equally apparent that Mika does NOT see him as loyal to HER country. She believes that the people should serve the government.  Ted Cruz, and the rest of us, answer the question differently.

This is not a question whose answer can be finessed, compromised or negotiated. It is either one or the other. It is either the answer of individual liberty or that of the collectivist Borg. It cannot be both or part of either. For  our part we would be happy just to be left alone. But the collectivist impulse – the tyrannical appetite – cannot be readily denied by its practitioners. It is an addiction for which there is no easy 12-Step Program. And those who possess this insatiable appetite for other people's liberty, property and lives can only be deterred by the compelling and credible counter-argument that such appetites come with personal consequences for them – consisting at the least of a bad case of indigestion and, if necessary, broken teeth.

Are we irrevocably two countries and not one? WE ARE HERE TODAY TO TEST THAT THEORY. WE ARE HERE TODAY TO LEARN WHETHER WE ARE TWO COUNTRIES OR STILL ONE, UNITED AND INDIVISIBLE UNDER THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RULE OF LAW.

AND, I MIGHT ADD, WE HAVE THE OFFICIALS OF SAN ANTONIO TO THANK FOR THAT.

When San Antonio enforces its leaders political opinions under color of law they are no better than Bull Connor in Birmingham in 1963, fifty years ago. What we have seen is not “law enforcement”: it is AGENDA enforcement under color of law – which is itself illegal and unconstitutional. When Police Chief William McManus is quoted as saying he doesn't care what Texas law is, he is declaring himself to be the modern-day Bull Connor.

I am shamelessly lifting this next observation from my good friend Bob Wright of New Mexico who is here today. “Let's be clear,” as Barack Obama is fond of saying,

"OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE ANTI-FIREARM NEUROSES OF OUR LIBERAL NEIGHBORS OR THOSEOF NERVOUS PUBLIC OFFICIALS."

THAT is why we are here today on this spot sacred to the liberty of all Americans. That is why we are here – to determine whether we still live in one country, or two. The answer is up to the city officials of San Antonio.  Are they still part of the Founders' Republic? Do they support the actual rule of law and the Constitution that they took an oath to uphold?

Their own declaration of the answer to these questions will be seen on the streets of San Antonio today and going forward.

So, which is it, Mr. Mayor? Which is it, City Council of San Antonio? Which is it, Chief McManus?  You tell us. But take care with your answer. For we are the 3% and we will honor our oaths to the Constitution and the rule of law even if you will not.

Thank you.