Wherefore The Maintenance Of Liberty Essay, Research Paper

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

-Thomas Jefferson

On a cold, miserable day in the North Caucasus, the only one who does not look dismal is Russian General Mikhail Malofeyev. He is dead. His body is flag draped and on open display before a dark stand of pines. He is encircled by his mourning officers clad in hulking, camouflage coats.

“Russia Admits Chechnya Losses Growing,” says the news headline. Military body counts since the counting of them began bear little relationship between actual and reported casualties. Russians officially admit to 910 dead since the war restarted in October of 1999. The Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, who gets its accounting from soldiers, their families, and military hospitals, thinks that 3,000 is a far more likely figure. Interestingly, NTV, which is a local Russian private investigating network and which reports on military news contradictions, has been kicked out of the military press reporting pool.

This Chechan conflict is just another example of an ill equipped militia fighting one of the most powerful militaries in the world to a standstill. This is as it was with the Afghans who were even so primitive that they had to forge rifle barrels in their own backyard furnaces. The Afghani ultimately kicked the Soviet invaders out of their homeland. This was just like the Warsaw ghetto Jews, who kept the murderous Nazi’s at bay for almost a month with only a handful of small arms before the Jew’s valiant final defeat. History repeats with the citizen patriots of Lexington and Concord, who demonstrated with their blood the power and the purpose behind the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the then new United States of America. The Second Amendment confidently guarantees that We the People will ever remain free.

Pro Second Amendment people always talk a good game. But what would happen should Americans ever needed to put this right to arms to the test. There are over 20,000 gun laws on the books. These “laws” include outright bans, registration, confiscation, waiting periods, quotas, and any other abhorrent violation that the ruling class imposes just to probe if Americans can be intimidated into servitude. For note, that test of submission happened a while back while the citizens slept. The citizens have already been graded, and by the criteria of their forefathers, they have failed miserably.

Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers…

-George Mason

“The Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting!” announces a bumper sticker. It is about Mason’s the “whole people,” meaning all Americans, armed and trained to, if needed, make war against government gone bad. This is rather bold philosophy to be tossed about by people afraid to own militia-suitable arms because the government will not let them. Rather potent bunk for a people afraid to bear concealed arms without the government granting them a permit. Rather absurd that, at election time, the modern minutemen actually vote for rulers who further undermine citizen rights. Then the modern minutemen justifies this capitulation by indicating what worse horrors the other candidates want to impose.

How many hundred million guns are in this country? Almost 300,000,000. How many gun owners? 80 million? And of these, maybe three and one half million at most are members of the NRA, GOA, and all the smaller gun organizations combined. These generally have lots of overlap, as many people tend to hold multiple memberships. Of these few, how many do more than read their magazine or newsletter? How many fewer only occasionally respond to one of the interminable fund raisers?? How many ever get off their rears and do anything at the grass roots level? On a regular basis? That is a laugh.

With apathy like this existing during the easy times, should the necessity to call out brothers-in-arms ever arise, the voices answering back from the void will most likely just be empty echoes of that alarm. So it is good that this is just armchair speculation. After all, who, but a wacko, really anticipates a time of renewed militia defiance in America? Really, what kind of crackpot takes this inflammatory, extremist rant seriously?

Fair questions. Now here are a few more questions for anyone who would ask them.

Is it anyone’s contention that our civilization is eternal, immune to breakdown and decay? What is the foundation for this astounding world view? Why has no other society in the past attained perpetual stability, security, and justice? How does history advocate the idea that this nation will be the one that is unique and invincible?

At what moment would one personally define a government which ignores its lawful limits as tyrannical? At what point would one draw a line in the sand, saying “no more!” and participate in actions of civil disobedience? At what point would one join active resistance?

And if the people have been disarmed, with what will they resist?

For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible.

-Niccolo Machiavelli

What will be done when the corrupt elites who rule, abetted by their socialist media allies, fool enough of the people enough of the time and take control of the various legislatures? What will be done when the tyrants tell the people to register their guns, thereby disclosing the location and quantity of arms to the tyrants? What will be done when the new masters order the people to get the tyrant’s permission to own the registered guns in the form of exorbitantly expensive licenses with arbitrary and ephemeral qualifying standards? What will be done when the masters tell American slaves that their license application has been rejected, that their registered guns have been banned, that the new American slaves must turn in the guns or confront arrest, imprisonment, or worse?

Experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

-Declaration of Independence

Alright, so today’s Americans are not unique. The Founding Fathers confronted the same apathy, the same unwillingness to take a stand. And why not? Only a fool or a fiend embraces war while there are other means to preserve life and liberty. Just consider Chechnya; who wants his home town to look like beautiful, downtown, bombed out Grozny?

Powerful arguments can be made on both sides about the final outcome should a citizen militia ever again have to stand against tyranny on American soil. Who can pretend to know the product of so appalling a possibility, to know whether the forces of light or darkness would prevail, and to know if it would be protracted or fleeting, a whimper or a bang?

But that is tolerable. So long as that uncertainty exists, the Second Amendment stands on watch and is doing its job. As long as this government fears its armed proletariat (and based on all the idiot laws that this government is trying to pass, they sure must), the most commanding check on tyranny is in place. It is a self evident truth that the strength of our nation is gauged by it’s citizens’ freedom, and the Second Amendment is the key indicator of this freedom. In the Second Amendment’s attrition, the breakdown of trust between government and the governed can be seen. In the Second Amendment’s erosion, the resultant instability and conflict that is inevitable can be seen.

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

-Winston Churchill

BibliographyCodrea, David. “You Say You Want A Revolution?” Guns & Ammo. June 2000. Pages 18-21.

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Random House. New York. 1947.

The Anthology of the Federalist Papers. Simon and Schuster. New York. 1959.