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| The Gordon Riots - John Seymour Lucas (Source) |
Sometimes that is not enough, sometimes violence will be employed against the crowd. At times in the past blood has been shed. Often, that will cause the crowds to flee. Sometimes they won't take to the streets again, they have been sufficiently cowed to trouble the government no more. Sometimes though, they simply withdraw, treat their wounded, bury their dead, and start planning. Organizing. Plotting.
That was the way for centuries throughout the world. That was the way of the world when kings and emperors sat upon thrones and ruled by "divine right." So they claimed.
In the United States the yoke of monarchy was thrown off in the period from 1775 to 1783 which we in this country generally refer to as The Revolutionary Wars. In some ways it was a clean break. The British Army went home, we stayed and began building a country. Needless to say, not everyone was happy with the outcome. Many Americans left the United States, returning to Great Britain, the Mother Country from which their ancestors had departed. Many of those people felt no more at home there than they did in the new United States. They weren't really welcomed in either place. Many fled to Canada.
But the revolution was over. The enemy was gone. Many revolutions did not have such outcomes.
Nearly bankrupted by the support provided to the United States, the French government was on shaky ground. New taxes were raised, but the people weren't having it. The French Revolution ensued. Many of the nobility fled France, many could not and died. The kings of Europe didn't care for all this talk of Liberty, Brotherhood, and Equality. They invaded.
The French rallied and managed to defeat the armies of the kings and emperors. But the monarchs vowed to return and fight until the revolution was crushed. Which led to the rise of Napoléon and a series of bloody wars lasting for years. The effects of those wars echoed into the 20th Century. Whereby an exhausted France, having lost thousands of young men in the wars of the Revolution and the Emperor barely managed to stand against the Germans in 1914.
They were unable to stand at all in 1940.
The Russian Revolution was brutal and eventually led to the virtual enslavement of half of Europe. Literally millions died directly due to that revolution and millions more died at the hands of the brutes who seized power in Russia.
Mao's revolution in China also killed millions. It caused the enslavement of millions more. Don't think so? Talk to a Tibetan, or a Mongolian.
Revolutions are nasty things. When I wrote of the Second American Revolution the other day, I mentioned the cost in lives, over 900,000 Americans died. Out of a population of approximately 32 million. Think of it, over two percent of the population died in a period of four years. The bitterness and anger still lingers to this day.
This election year frightens me like no other. The nation seems torn, at least the media wants us to believe that is the case. Many will listen to that divisive poison. I'm not one of them. No matter who the candidates are this November, think carefully of the direction you want this nation to go in. Very carefully.
Voting is the answer, making your voice heard to your representatives is the answer. Revolution is not.
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| Trust me, you don't want this... Barricade rue Soufflot - Horace Vernet (Source) |
If revolution is to be avoided, a lot more people are going to have to get their heads, hearts and backs in the game. Pulling a lever once every four years won't get it.
ReplyDeleteIt's unlikely we'll see a reawakening before a revolution though. IMO.
Be nice to be surprised though!
Too many warm bodies are just along for the ride and the free stuff's that's in it.
DeleteAs with the rest of you, I am watching with the fascinated horror of a man who sees the train speeding towards the ravine where the bridge is out. There's time enough for the train to stop, but history has shown that enough people will fail to realize the peril until it is too late.
DeleteIt's hard to look away, even when you know it's going to be nasty.
Delete+1 PA
ReplyDeleteConcur.
DeleteRevolution may not be "the" answer, but it is always "an" answer. Maybe not a good one, but sometimes the best option among a bunch of options, all bad.
ReplyDeleteBack in 1960 The Happy Warrior said in an interview, "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." (Hubert H. Humphrey)
With his words in mind, one has to wonder about the actions in the California Legislature in this past week. Why is a certain party so intent on making it impossible for citizens to exercise their civil rights protected by the 2nd Amendment?
I forgot to put in this by 9th Circuit judge Kozinski:
Delete"The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
KOZINSKI, JUDGE ALEX, Silviera v. Lockyer, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2003
It does remain "an" answer. Does anyone outside Sacramento have a clue as to what the California state legislature up to?
DeleteSounds like Judge Kozinski has his act together.
DeleteIs anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see, what I see?
Deletehttps://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Is+Anybody+There+1776+From+the+Movie&&view=detail&mid=2B8AEC458BB070E684192B8AEC458BB070E68419&FORM=VRDGAR
DeleteAs to your first comment Scott - the answers to those three questions scares the dickens out of me.
DeleteAs to the second, thanks for the link. I had forgotten that musical (not a big fan of the genre). I also had no idea that William Daniels could (and did) sing.
DeleteLive and learn. Good points by the way...
What we do not want more than a Revolution is an entrenched Federal Overlord whose agencies are entangled in and control so much of our lives.
ReplyDeleteHaving a Revolution while it is remains an option is preferable to just rolling over and going quietly into the night, with our children and grandchildren having their American Heritage taken away from them, probably permanently.
I hope not but it's better than losing everything. When it remains the only option, we're in deep kimchi.
DeleteNice post Sarge. A pause for sanity.
ReplyDeleteStill, there is no harm in buying another 500 rounds of ammo....
Never any harm in that, is there?
DeleteOTOH....
ReplyDelete"A little Revolution now and then is a good thing"
T. Jefferson
In theory...
DeleteI recommended "The First Congress" by Bordewich the other day. I repeat that recommendation, and coincidentally enough just recently read the chapter where the first Congress passed the first 10 amendments (after much protest and bellyaching. Madison bullied them.)
ReplyDeleteAccording to Bordewich, we are lucky to have the first 10 at all. He writes about after their passage:
"The collective mood was less one of triumph than of sheer exhaustion. No one in Congress regarded passage of the amendments as much more than an exercise in political housekeeping. Relief was felt at having staved off the Antifederalist assault on the Constitution more than any sense of exaltation at enriching the Constitution with freedoms that had been left inadequately unprotected."
...
"It would be left to the courts and future generations to interpret and give force to the minimalist language of the amendments. Virtually no members of Congress imagined that they had just passed a set of measures that would become, in their own right, part of the sacred canon of American democracy. The members were practical, impatient, and tired politicians, many of whom had regarded the whole debate as at best a distraction from things that mattered: the national revenue, the protection of codfish and molasses, the establishment of courts, defining (or enlarging) presidential power, and agreeing on a permanent capital. The rights that the amendments described would be nothing more than paper guarantees until the judiciary discovered them: in 1789, they were for the most part only aspirational and unenforceable."
I shudder to imagine the country without the "force field" defense of the Bill of Rights to protect the liberty of the individual.
Congress has never been a friend of the people.
DeleteWithout the Bill of Rights, I doubt we would recognize the United States. At all.
(And I must add that book to the ever lengthening list of things I want, no strike that, need to read.)
Move it to the top 5. You won't regret it.
DeleteSo let it be written, so let it be done...
Delete