Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Of Civil Wars, Apaches and "Social Futurism" -- "Leave us the hell alone!"

Geronimo in old age.

Some of you I know have already seen this piece by Sara Robinson at alternet.org entitled, "Does the Right Want a Civil War?" (http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140623)

I decided to reply to Ms. Robinson and that reply, sent to her via email, is below. The thing that amazes me is how blithely liberals talk about civil war. It's as if they have no concern for the butcher's bill -- the stench of burning bodies, the sight of dead babies in the ditch, fires in the night. You'd think it was antiseptic. But to invite one just to try to intimidate a political opponent?

Mike
III


Of Civil Wars, Apaches and "Social Futurism."
By Mike Vanderboegh


For the Chiricahua, as for all Apaches, revenge was not primarily a matter of personal spite. It was a means of redressing an imbalance in the state of things. To kill members of the enemy after they had killed one's own was almost a sacred duty -- though a leader such as Nana had no right to order any warrior to fight. The Apache ideal of revenge bears a kinship with the Greek notion of Nemesis. As Kaywaykla put it: "Ussen had not commanded that we love our enemies. Nana did not love his; and he was not content with an eye for an eye, nor a life for a life. For every Apache killed he took many lives." -- David Roberts, Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo and the Apache Wars, Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 192.

My dear Ms. Robinson,

I see from your blog that you, like me, are a student of the Apaches. You proclaim these words from Geronimo to be your "favorite quote": "All the free men are dead or still fighting."

The quote from Geronimo that I best remember are the words he spoke to General Crook when he surrendered to him: "Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all."

My "favorite" Apache, if that is the right word, was Juh, their greatest tactical genius. Afflicted with a terrible stutter, and dead long before Geronimo, he is not remembered for eloquent speeches. But his name, Juh, was a corrupt Spanish rendering of the Apache phonetic pronounced "Ho," meaning "he who sees ahead." As Roberts describes his premonitions:

As long ago as 1876 . . . Juh had been seized with a sense of doom. Even as he recruited his warriors, he told them time and again "that he could offer them nothing but hardship and death." He reminded them that "they would be hunted like wild animals by the troops of both the United States and Mexico." On day . . . Juh received a vision. Out of a thin cloud of blue smoke seen across a chasm, thousands of soldiers in blue uniforms marched into an evanescent cave. Juh's warriors saw the vision, too. A medicine man explained it: "Ussen sent the vision to warn us that we will be defeated, and perhaps all killed by the government. Their strength in numbers, with their more powerful weapons, will make us indeed Indeh, the Dead. Eventually they will exterminate us." Yet there was no alternative in Juh's pessimistic soul but to fight on toward that inevitable end. -- Ibid., p. 207.

As you probably recall, Juh married Geronimo's favorite sister, Ishton. Uncharacteristically for an Apache, Juh was over six feet in height and stockily built. A member the Nednhi, southernmost of the Chiricahua sub-groups, Juh's home ground was the high mountains of the Sierra Madre in northern Mexico. Roberts says, "The Nednhi were to remain throughout the Apache wars the most mysterious, the 'wildest' of the Chiricuhuas." (p.62).

On 5 May 1871, Juh demonstrated his tactical brilliance and iron purpose in a carefully targeted and orchestrated ambush of U.S. Cavalry near Bear Springs in the Whetstones -- an action which for almost a hundred years was attributed by historians to Cochise. His target was no shavetail fresh out of West Point, but the best Indian fighter the Army in Arizona had, LT Howard Cushing. Before this day, Cushing had been responsible for killing more Apaches -- mostly Mescaleros and Pinals -- than any other officer. He was brave, determined, resourceful, cool, energetic and already famous beyond his years all over the southwest. He had also sworn to track down and kill Cochise. In any case, he was no match for Juh.

Suckered into an arroyo by following the trail of a lone Apache woman, Cushing's unit was ambushed and the three man advance party cut off. But as the Apache fire was not too severe, Cushing rushed forward to extricate his men. At that moment, as SGT John Mott later recalled, "It seemed as if every rock and bush became an Indian." The Apaches' fire was concentrated on Cushing. First he was wounded, then he was killed:

For a mile, the Apaches kept up a running fight . . . It seemed however that with the death of the lieutenant, the Indians had accomplished their aim. At last they let the rest of the soldiers go. . . Mott's men staggered westward . . . Besides the lieutenant, the patrol lost only two men, with a third severely wounded. But the army's finest Apache fighter had been coaxed into a trap, then slain with selective precision. . .

Cushing had made it his personal vendetta to hound Cochise to his death, and as he crisscrossed Arizona killing apaches, he was convinced he was close to cornering his worthy adversary. At the same time, Juh -- a chief Cushing had never heard of -- had made it his own mission to bring the gallant and cocksure lieutenant to his downfall.

Juh's antipathy had formed when he learned of an army attack on a camp of peaceful Mescaleros in New Mexico, apparently led by Cushing. The soldiers had left everyone dead except two women . . . Enraged by this treacherous attack, Juh developed a personal obsession with Cushing. He sent out scouts who spied on the lieutenant's maneuvers. Three times Juh engaged Cushing's column in indecisive skirmishes -- the very firefights in which the lieutenant thought he was closing in on Cochise. At last Juh lured Cushing into his trap in the Whetstones.

As Juh's son recalled many years later, "Other White Eyes were killed, too; I don't know how many. We weren't all the time counting the dead as the soldiers did. Juh wasn't much interested in the troops -- just Cushing." -- Ibid., pp. 61 - 63


I thought of Juh when I read your essay, "Does the Right Want a Civil War?," the other day. (http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140623)

Now, you may be a "social futurist," but how you intend to see the future clearly when your present knowledge and assumptions are clouded by deliberate conflations, elisions, simplistic analysis, unreasoning prejudice and spectacular lumping of all your perceived "enemies" into one is beyond me.

Take me for example. I am a small "r" republican. I believe in the constitutional republic of the Founders, in individual liberty, free markets, God and the deterrence of tyranny through preparedness. Not in that order. I am proud to say that I have been on the enemies lists of three consecutive White Houses now. I vehemently opposed the PATRIOT Act. I despise Rush Limbaugh, Dubya and Sean Hannity. I have fought -- literally fought at street level -- green-teethed Ku Klux Klan sheetheads, neoNazis and anti-semites all my life. During the Clinton Administration, we in the Constitutional militia movement had to embarrass the FBI into arresting some of the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery gang who were being allowed to walk the streets of Philadelphia free as birds. Just ask Eric Holder, he'll remember. For my pains I was called "anti-government" and blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing, as was Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others. Your technique is by no means original.

I despise collectivism in all its forms. And yes, Ms. Robinson, the Bush-hating, 911 Truther, Holocaust-denying anti-semite and Nazi who killed the guard at the Holocaust Museum was a collectivist, just like fascists are collectivists, socialists are collectivists, and communists are socialist collectivists with guns. So for that matter are tribalists, Jihadis and other religious fanatics. The Holocaust Museum shooter isn't one of ours, he's one of yours. He was and is a collectivist.

I know all the the similar collectivist lies, common recruiting and operational techniques because I am an ex-communist myself. That makes me the most virulent anti-communist you can find. Now, I understand why you want to lump us all together. You think that the lie makes our repression more palatable to the public. But here's the deal: you don't, you can't, convince US. And WE are who you need to be worrying about when you invite us to a civil war.

Look, I've spent almost twenty years now first arguing and then shouting across an ever-widening divide between our two respective sides (and remember ALL the collectivists are on your side, as I see it). I am tired, I am hoarse and frankly, I'm convinced that we have come to the point where it cannot possibly help.

When educated journalist lawyers like Bonnie Erbe call for "rounding up all the haters" simply for expressing their opinions and when supposedly bright "social futurists" like you try to still diverse voices by lumping us all together with neoNazi terrorists and inviting us to civil war, I'm simply more convinced that further discourse, beyond one critical topic, is now futile. As Jayme Evans wrote in the Canada Free Press yesterday, we have come to the point where "one man’s Constitution is another man’s toilet paper."

We are, we must admit, two peoples sharing a common language, the same national border and not much else. You are seeing through a glass darkly when you perceive looming civil war. This much I will credit you. But you are foolish to demand that we put up or shut up, for I assure you, we WILL put up if forced to it. And, thus for the sake of preventing the civil war whose prospect you so irresponsibly invoke, it is THIS critical topic which must still be discussed.

First, you may not have noticed, but you must deal with this fact, among others:

June 15, 2009

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

These annual figures are based on multiple national Gallup surveys conducted each year, in some cases encompassing more than 40,000 interviews. The 2009 data are based on 10 separate surveys conducted from January through May. Thus, the margins of error around each year's figures are quite small, and changes of only two percentage points are statistically significant.

To measure political ideology, Gallup asks Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. As has been the case each year since 1992, very few Americans define themselves at the extremes of the political spectrum. Just 9% call themselves "very conservative" and 5% "very liberal." The vast majority of self-described liberals and conservatives identify with the unmodified form of their chosen label.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/Conservatives-Single-Largest-Ideological-Group.aspx


OK, get that? We outnumber you two to one, and our numbers are increasing. From your perspective, this is worse than the Revolution -- the FIRST American Civil War. Back then, a third of the population agreed with the Founders, a third sided with the King and a third blew with the wind and took what came. The revolutionary combatants in the field amounted to only three percent of the population, actively supported by perhaps ten percent more.

Second, we are the ones with the firearms. There are something on the order of 250 million firearms in this country, and as Clausewitz stated, "In military affairs, quantity has a quality all its own."

The American armed citizen's rifle is the bone in the throat to any potential tyrant. And not to put too fine a point on it, but what you're selling is collectivist tyranny from our point of view. You disagree, of course, I understand that. But if what you are tempting is civil war, Ms. Robinson, you'd better bloody well try to understand our point of view for a moment.

WE are not trying to make YOU do anything. WE do not want your property, as you covet ours. WE don't want to tax you or put your children into indentured servitude. WE are not trying to tell you how to think or what to believe. Heck, as much as I despise the racists in this country I understand that they still have the right to speak their pus-filled beliefs whether I like them or not. The same goes for your opinions, or Bonnie Erbe's. This evidently makes me more enlightened than Bonnie Erbe or you. Oh, well, I have long known that if you scratch a liberal, you'll get a fascist.

But, no, we don't want you to be anything you don't want to be. I wish I could say the reverse was true. If it were, we'd be one country instead of two.

But here's our creed, and if you insist, our battle cry:

LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE!

We are done being shoved back from the free exercise of our God-given, inalienable rights. It is you, not us, who are pushing, shoving, tempting, even demanding that this country descend into its third civil war. But it is we who are more ready to prosecute that war than you.

This is true not only because we outnumber you.

This is true not only because we are armed to the teeth and know how to use those arms.

This is true because our side doesn't think of the noble surrender that was Geronimo's, but rather of the deadly efficiency of Juh's strategy and tactics. In military affairs, Juh was Geronimo's superior in every way.

So here it is.

Start a civil war, and we will win it. It's that simple.

That may not agree with what you see in your "social futurist's" crystal ball, but it is nonetheless true. Be careful what you solicit, Ms. Robinson.

You might get it.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

31 comments:

GunRights4US said...

Well said Mike. You have a talent far beyond most for patiently delivering your point. I want to just dissolve into ranting and foaming at the mouth.

To elaborate on your call to Leave Us The Hell Alone I want to say this:

All I have ever wanted was to live a life free of looking over my shoulder for government goons. To raise a family, to keep the fruits of my labors, to see my sons grow up free and unfettered, these are the things that I desire most.

I and my ilk crave a law based society where every man is equal and under that law. I want the courts distributing justice, not injustice as they are wont to do today.

My property, my children, my labor, my rights as guaranteed by the founders; these are what I demand and expect. It is not in me to delegate such things as self-defense. My life and the lives of my family belong to ME and no other. It is my intent to respect others around me, but I demand that respect from all others as well.

An armed man is a free man. A disarmed man is a subject. I will not be a subject. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the policy wonks, and the think-tankers can all rot in hell if they ever try to infringe further on my existence. I and many like me have backed up all we’re going to.

It may sound cheesy (but I don’t care a lick for how it’s perceived by others) but the character JB Books, as played by the late John Wayne, stated a personal credo that has stayed with me ever since I first heard it as a boy. It sums up my entire view of my earthly existence:

“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same of them.”

Anonymous said...

Amen, brother.



GIII

Doc Enigma said...

OUT-standing reply to the little lady!!

ScottJ said...

The response, if any, will probably be priceless entertainment.

If she counters at all I suspect she'll bring up the military.

You failed to point out it isn't likely a majority of them will side with the statists.

III

Genie said...

God bless you, Mike.

I have liked your style ever since I first found Sipsey Street, and I certainly appreciate the fact that you realize that what the leftist collectivists are pushing is the "third" American civil war not the second.

Thank you for the history lesson. I am not a student of native American History & was unfamiliar with Juh, but I shall become more familiar with him now.

God bless America!

Anonymous said...

GO MIKE!! AND GIV'EM HELL!!

B Woodman
SSG (Ret) U S Army
III

Anonymous said...

Mike that was a well written and clear rebuttal of the current collectivist mindset.

I saw this and consider it an absolute mind blower because it comes from a DOD training manual which considers 'protests' as 'low level terrorism' AND!!! It was covered and commented on a Salon site (Salon = typically left liberal site). Maybe the Mobama charm is wearing off?

http://open.salon.com/blog/dennis_loo/2009/06/14/dod_training_manual_protests_are_low-level_terrorism

Cory

Anonymous said...

Good Lord son, you getting better and better. Your writting is apropo and so RIGHT on. We gonna frame that little speech and put it on the letterhead of every newspaper in America. Thanks-Quill

Uncle Lar said...

Us vs them.
Collectivists vs Free Thinkers.
It's a clear line from my perspective.
A simple choice of do the people control their government or does the government control the people?
And when you penetrate to their heart of hearts you find that invariably the collectivists whether left or right secretly believe that in a fair and just world they will hold the reins of the government and force all those obstinant and unruly people to behave in a manner they deem fit.
Every collectivist at their base is a tyrant lusting for complete and total control of everything. And the fact that such desire is an impossible goal simply causes them ever increasing frustration which they then blame on us, the unwashed masses dragging our heels against their progress towards their imagined nirvana.
We must for our own sense of righteousness continue in our attempts for peaceful resolution, but we must also be prepared to resist with our whole being when their inevitable frustration causes them to step over the line.
What was that old Apache saying before going into battle? "Today is a good day to die." And once you move past a fear of personal death your enemy can kill you but he cannot stop you for you and your cause live and fight on in the bodies and minds of your compatriots.
III

Anonymous said...

These collectivists firmly believe that their "servants" - the police and military - will just follow orders and do the "dirty work" for them...i.e. rounding up and imprisoning or just exterminating all of the "haters" who don't share their vision of a socialist utopia.

They will not stop pushing us because they see no personal cost associated with their actions. They do not seem to understand that the rules of warfare have changed. It will indeed be a rude awakening...

ParaPacem said...

I am so overwhelmed by this incomparable article, this statement par excellence of our beliefs and creed, that I can only say, "Uuurahhh!!!!"

Anonymous said...

Listen, sweetheart: we have too long suffered the third D-gree. We passionate conservatives, who in our careers and personal lives, have been delayed, denied, derided, demoralized, defamed and demonized by the collectivist Left have finally reached our limit.

If you keep pushing this, you may well discover that you have brought on a second D-Day. Remember--the fascists lost that one. What, are you hoping now to even an old score?

MALTHUS

Anonymous said...

She made a nice piece of cheese. Congratulations. She caught the wire.

CorbinKale said...

I read Sara Robinson's article and the comments from the progressives that followed. That is the most unhinged, disconnected collection of psuedo-intellectuals, ever!

I, especially, enjoyed that one nut who swears to 'defend myself and mine' with a modified horse twitch! It's like they grew up on a different planet.

Anonymous said...

Amen, Mike.


III

Horse-Man said...

Horse twitches ceased to be used by most horsement due to the extreme nature of the discomfoert rendered. Vets (Doctors) still use them professionally, but no largely.

Yet this "progressive" still has one. Doesn't that violate some other article of faith that they all have?

And to use it in self-defense? Laughable.

Anonymous said...

Something for Ms. Robinson and Ms. Erbe to think about:
Some of US, live, work, and play in and amongst THEM.

Anonymous said...

All patriots need to read, "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross.

nex ut tyrannus!


Spook
III

W W Woodward said...

Mr. Vanderboegh,

Thank you for the history lesson. I can only pray that Ms Robinson takes the time to read it as well and that she and her ilk will receive at least a modicum of enlightenment from the experience.

Robert Heinlein wrote something to the effect of, “Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.” He went on to say, “That fact should make it easier for you to kill him if you find it necessary.”

After reading Robinson’s and Erbe’s rants and the virulent comments from their tree hugging, environmentalist, Bambi loving, free love, for the good of all mankind, flower children, horse twitching supporters, I finally understand the kind of enemy we’re up against. These people will not leave us the hell alone. They will continue trying to push us square pegs into their round Disneyland holes until we demonstrate to them that they have pushed too far too often.

At that point, Sleeping Beauty will awaken, suddenly realize that those she saw as the minions of Evil are taking great chunks of her nether regions for supper, and will cry to her, up to now, non-existent god in righteous indignation for salvation that will not be forthcoming. She will never understand that no one wished her injury or evil much less that all she had to do to avoid her fate was to - leave us the hell alone!

[W-3]

Anonymous said...

Great post!

I've posted a comment at the site which is home-base for her

BTW It takes some really @#%*ing brass-necked gall to throw down the gauntlet from the safety of a foreign country. In case you're not aware, she is posting from Canada where she has resided since 2004.

Anonymous said...

As all the rhetoric, from both sides, continues to ramp up, I expect to (sooner or later) see some type of compromising, conciliatory tone coming forth from the Established powers that be (right and left) by which they hope to snooker us into another 4-8 years of hibernation. They did it with the Clintonistas (giving us Dubya as our sleepy ni-night time pill) and I suspect they'll try to do it again.

SamenoKami said...

Anonymous said "They will not stop pushing us because they see no personal cost associated with their actions."
>Don't count on it. Once the SHTF all bets are off.
III

Toaster 802 said...

I left this post at their site.

The hate by the Marxist posters tells all.

The mask has slipped. Real Americans will not be fooled, nor will we stand for a Red tide and all the blood that comes with it. Socialist revolutions have spilled more blood and killed more people than any other cause at any other time in history. Period, proven fact.

Americans will not stand for this murder of our country by the communist killers. Want to thug it up in the hood? Bring it. We will raise the standard of counter revolution...The Stars and Stripes and clean house. Our house, not yours. You gave up your right to call yourself Americans when you decided to tear up the Constitution and force your Marxist ideals on your fellow citizen.

See you in the streets.

Most of what the wee willies came back with was I was living in the cold war. They cannot even see/ or will not admit that the lightbringer is a Marxist. Pathetic.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140623

The mask slips...your comment damn you! Posted under the name of crisp.


http://operationcleensweep.blogspot.com/

drjim said...

Wonderful, Mike!
i wish I could write like you.
jim III

Robin said...

Great response, you articulate yourself spectacularly.

For a good read on collectivism as you eluded to, check out Freedom Force.

J. Travis said...

They won't leave us alone, because they CAN'T leave us alone. They are religious fanatics, although God has been replaced by the State in their ideology.

We speak, and they must shut us up.

We work, and they must loot the fruits of our labor.

We have children, who they must indoctrinate.

We have weapons, and they must have us killed.

And with a totally straight face they call US fascists.

There really is no point in talking to them.

We have warned them for years, but they now have a window of opportunity to implement their utopian plans, and one of those plans is to have us wiped out in a "splendid little war".

They talk so boldly of civil war, and they require an education in consequences.

Anonymous said...

She is not afraid of calling for another civil war.

All she knows, is that she will be sitting in her little house, safe and warm, expecting the US military to go out on her behalf and kill their fellow Countrymen/women, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, etc.

What she fails to realize, is that when ordered to do that by the tyrant in charge, 90% of the military will turn around and join our side.

So yes, WE will win.

Absolutely fantastic response. Please post her response if you receive one.

Anonymous said...

Libertarian/anarchist/voluntarist/free market non conservatives are also anti-collectivists and anti-statists (the state being the collective with the most guns and legitimizing propaganda camps (public fool system) and lapdog media).

You can bet that most of those folks don't show up in polls of social affinity groupings. Within that camp are Austrian school economists who understand the corruption of government fiat money and the value of hard assets. Even the arm chair philosophers at Lew Rockwell.com have lately been espousing the value of guns, ammo, and more importantly skills training.

Civil war? These publicly visible liberal/socialist policy wonks have no idea just how strategically, tactically, physically, emotionally, and temporally vulnerable they are. And the state they worship and depend on is going bankrupt, and in many cases sporting empty sheaths among their allegiance compromised ranks.

Add one more name to files....

Anonymous said...

"What she fails to realize, is that when ordered to do that by the tyrant in charge, 90% of the military will turn around and join our side."

You -really- believe that? I don't.

Julie said...

Mr. Vanderboegh,

I just have to add my voice to the chorus of hosannas you're getting. This is really an exceptional piece. The Apache history you presented is certainly interesting, and you used it well to make a part of your point.

Your statement of what we conservatives REALLY want is concise and accurate. What's so hard to understand? What's so awful about thinking that a person really shouldn't be subject to other people's snatchings, however noble their avowed goal? You've said it beautifully.

Beyond that, your point is excellent that all the collectivists wear the same uniform--only the sleeve patches differ. "The Holocaust Museum shooter isn't one of ours, he's one of yours. He was and is a collectivist."

You bring up your communist past to point out that you know whereof you speak...having been trained in the methods of the left. This gives your remarks authority and punch. Very good!

Bravo...and thank you.

Anniee451 said...

Wow. This piece and the comments - holy shit. I'm applauding all over inside (hey, if I do it out loud my co-workers will think I'm crazy.)

LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE! That's ALL we want and goddamn it it's NOT TOO FUCKING MUCH TO ASK!

Um...off to read the comment policy now in case swearing is verboten.