A "Reasonable Mind" whistling past Bloody Hill & the graveyard of history.

Just a peaceful piece of southwest Missouri prairie today.

Folks, as I couldn't find Lyndon's e-mail address, this snail mail sits in the out box for the postal turtle this morning.

Mike
III

Lyndon K. Pitcock
11618 N. Farm Rd. 231,
Fair Grove, MO 65648

Dear Lyndon,

A link to your letter to the Springfield News Leader was posted on the Keep and Bear Arms web site, and in reading it, I could only shake my head at someone so much a prisoner of his own world view that he does not understand that the ground upon which he believes he firmly stands, and indeed has always stood, is actually the crumbling lip of a precipice.

This is your letter as printed, below. Kindly correct me if this is not what you said.

Reasonable minds will eventually prevail

September 2, 2009

I want to commend Len Eagleburger and Dr. Roger Ray for their letter and "From the Left" article on Aug. 19 . The content of both of their issues can be combined into one. Yes, the Republicans are committing credibility suicide with their bald-faced lies on every front. Especially the health care issue. With Rush Limbaugh constantly comparing the Obama administration to the Nazi culture, and Sarah Palin's fictitious "death panels," the Republicans take it and run with it. Very few of them have not condoned this nonsense with their silence.

The town hall fiascos Len speaks of not only have been proven to be pushed by the insurance lobby, but show the true colors of Republicans such as Sen. Grassley.

The people of the town hall meetings who wish not to have civil debate do not realize that their depredation of our First Amendment rights only erode that right further. The clowns showing up at these town hall meetings sporting loaded weapons are only eroding our Second Amendment rights with their blatant abuse of that right. Reasonable minds will prevail. We will have affordable health care in this country. To not pursue this endeavor is shameful, and at the least, irresponsible.

Lyndon Pitcock Fair Grove

The same piece of real estate, 10 August 1861.

Lyndon, I'm not going to try to argue any of the points above. You presume to have the authority to dictate to the rest of us how we shall act, where we shall go, what we shall do when we get there, how much of our own money we get to keep and how much your side will seize for your "reasonable" and high-minded purposes. I get that. It is only an extension, merely, of what your side in this fundamental political debate over the size and scope of the power of the Federal leviathan has been saying and doing to the rest of us over the past 75 years now.

It is indeed nothing new. But here is what is new.

We refuse to be shoved back any further from the free exercise of our liberty, our right to property and the protections of the rule of law.

Not. One. More. Inch.

This, I know, is beyond your ability to comprehend.

You believe that "reasonable minds will prevail" and your side will succeed once more in shoving another circumscription of our liberty and and an additional theft of our property down our throats. You think because your side won a national election that you get to tell us what to do, regardless of the Constitution and the rule of law as hitherto understood.

Lyndon, I want you to do me, and yourself, a favor.

You are lucky to have, quite close by, the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Park where a small but ghastly meat-grinder of a battle was fought in the opening days of the last civil war, on 10 August 1861.

I want you to drive there, see the displays in the museum, and then I want you to climb up the aptly named "Bloody Hill." Sit there, please, in the heat of the afternoon, and listen.

If you listen very, very carefully, you can hear the faint echoes of the shots, the screams, the prayers -- the sounds of many men dying -- borne upon the wind as it ruffles the prairie grass.

You may, if you wish, try to drown out those whispers of dead men by chanting "reasonable minds will prevail" over and over again.

But know this. Those men thought so too, right up to the moment they became convinced otherwise by Minie balls and bayonets that "reasonable minds" wouldn't prevail, not until one side or the other killed as many of the other side as it took to win the argument.

Silly, silly man. You think this is about politics as usual. You think, because you completely fail to understand our world view, that this is about an argument of "health care policy."

It is not.

This is about the last of what some other men once called "a long train of abuses and usurpations." This is about us being done with your side pushing us back from our God-given, inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. We understand, if you do not, the existential threat to free men and women that your "reasonable" policies pose.

So, please, do us both a favor and sit on top of Bloody Hill and listen, really listen. You may then become a little less certain about "reasonable minds" and a little more understanding of the unintended consequences of shoving other people around to suit your own perceived "noble" goals. You should listen too to the voices and the anger of the town halls and the Tea Parties rather than denigrate them as a contrived manifestation of the sad-sack GOP, the radio talk-show circuit and the insurance companies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We are so far past that.

It is precisely the failures of traditional means to protect our liberties through the corrupt and corroded tool that is the ill-named "Republican" Party that people are exercising their own voices and seeing to their own means of self-defense, political and otherwise. But still you cling to the notion because it comforts you in your arrogance and your ignorance. It is when people stop talking, even stop shouting, and start acting, that you have to worry about. Should you silence them by stifling the debate and forcing the issue to your liking over their objections, then -- trust me on this Lyndon -- THEN you will wish you hadn't.

And if you think that civil war cannot once again come to this country, you are whistling past the graveyard of history.

Put simply: Quit shoving, Lyndon, and we won't shove you back. Hard.

Listen, rather, to the ghostly voices in the wind on Bloody Hill.

Sometimes, Lyndon, "reasonable minds" DON'T prevail.

Remember that.

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