I AM Expendable. Why Colorado. Why me.

A personal note to the two former residents of Dennis Avenue who I know read this blog. Do us all a favor and don't rat me out on this post. I'm going to be speaking frankly and she doesn't need the worry.

In Colorado, not all the Nazis are in the state legislature and the governor's mansion. Some pick up the trash along the roads (and not in a chain gang, unfortunately).

Along with all the defeatist claptrap troll responses to We Are Expendable, bleating about "every day the bluefor gets stronger and the redfor gets weaker" (sounds a lot like the collectivists' "resistance is futile" meme, doesn't it?) there came a somewhat different response to my latest post on Colorado. Old Greybeard writes:

Since you will be flagrantly violating a Colorado "law", and they will want to make an example of you, what makes you think you will get bail, since surely you would be considered a flight risk?

Also, all those magazines will be totally wasted. You might as well just mail them to the Colorado state police because those guys will wind up using them someday or they will just be destroyed after being used as evidence against you.

That's the biggest reason I haven't sent you any magazines. PLEASE CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THIS FOLLY. There are other ways to support the Second Amendment. For example, being able to continue updating your blog every day, my friend. - Old Greybeard

Now I smiled when I read this because I know Old Greybeard. I know where his heart is. And though we disagree on some things, I am proud to call him a friend. He is motivated, I am certain, only out of concern for me. But he raises several issues -- some serious -- that I think need to be explained.

First, no, OGB, those magazines won't be wasted. I'll only have one in my hand or in my vehicle if/when I am arrested in Denver. The others, I assure you, will not be wasted. My daughter Zoe will be my driver/videographer for the trip and will not participate in the action. The charge is a misdemeanor. I am not a flight risk. I will have local counsel already arranged and, if the readership comes through when I issue the call, bail money in somebody's pocket.

"When, if not now, shall we resist?" -- Mike Vanderboegh, Hartford, CT, 20 April 2013.

In some measure, this is an undiscovered country I knew I was headed to when I founded the Three Percent movement. When you draw a line that you declare is a last ditch, you either defend it or risk violating your principles and discrediting your entire life.

I never sought to be a leader of anything. The unfortunate thing for me is that other people thought I was a leader. You know, when I was first picked to lead my Alabama militia unit (we didn't even have a name for it back then), I was perplexed. I had been in Alabama since 1985. I knew about the difference between "Yankees" and "Damyankees." I had married a southern girl and stayed. Ten years afterward, whenever I'd go up to Winston County to interview descendants of Alabama Unionists, I'd still get some old lady leaning forward into my face with a piercing gaze and challenging, "Y'all ain't from aroun' heer, air ya?" And I always had to admit that I wasn't.

So finally, one day, I asked the other guys in the militia, "How come you picked me? I mean, I'm a 'Damyankee.' Why are you trusting me?" There was an uncomfortable silence and finally, with a wry grin, one of the boys said, "Well, hell, Mike. You ARE a Yankee. If we put you out front and you get killed, we ain't lost nothin'." The room exploded in laughter. Which, I reflected, sort of told me where I stood. And it WAS funny.

But the thing about being a leader is that you have the responsibility, the DUTY, to LEAD. As one comment to the transcript of my Hartford speech said: "By sticking your neck out and taking action, hopefully the people of CT will have an example to follow and won't feel fear now that someone else has already done it."

And that's one aspect of leadership. A leader doesn't ask his people to do anything that he isn't willing to do himself, and, by his example, he inspires others.

The other thing is that I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep this -- all this, including the blog -- up and running. True, with my weight loss of 135 pounds since the surgery both my blood pressure and my diabetes are doing much better. My previously infected toe on my right foot is now healed and as of yesterday I am back with shoes on both my feet again for the first time in months. But I still have congestive heart failure (if I ever get tased it will probably kill me right there) and the nagging aftermath of the surgery is that hole in my back that continues to leak. In fact the past three days it has gotten far worse, and now seems to be infected according to the two different doctors (and their co-pays) that I visited yesterday. We're having to change the dressings four to five times a day. Oh, they've prescribed an antibiotic and I'm taking that but this up and down stuff gets to be more than a bit wearing. Then there's Churchill's black dog that seems to make a reappearance every time I turn to Absolved to try to finish it.

On the bright side, the surgeon yesterday came up with yet another idea to plug the hole in my gastric-esophogeal junction by means of a state-of-the-art human epoxy glue. When I get back from Colorado, I will enter the hospital (they have to keep me NPO yet hydrated by means of IVs while the glue is setting up) and we will give it a shot. The funny thing is that this glue is mostly used to repair anal fistulas and when the doc told me THAT I laughed myself half to death. When he asked what was so funny I said, "You know, Doc, there is a considerable body of opinion including my ex-wife and Eric Holder, that I am an asshole. I guess this proves it."

Still, I'm skating on the the thin ice of multiple threats to my health not including my ex-wife's voodoo doll or Eric Holder's collectivist animus. I know that, statistically speaking, after all I've been through I shouldn't be here, leading me to conclude that God is not done with me yet. So I do what I can, while I can. It is after all, what He has commanded all of us stiff-necked Christians to do -- which is to stand in the gap. The thing is, when you get closer to the end than the beginning, you begin to realize your own body's mortality and you want to make whatever time you have left count. The other thing is, if you're a Christian, you understand that they cannot take away or compromise your own inextinguishable soul, only you can do that. So, if you stay true to your faith, the worst thing that happens is that you go to a better place where your side wins in the end.

OGB, God love him (and He does), believes that to be so much fairy dust. Well, maybe it is. We'll all find out sooner than we want to rather than later, given the world we live in. But the fact of the matter is that I DO believe it. It is a part of who I am, and to quote another flawed Christian, Martin Luther, "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen." ("Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.")

The thing is, I believe I wouldn't be here without the prayerful support of my readers. This is spiritual warfare we are engaged in people, with the best evidence of that being the absolute, blood-thirsty evil of our collectivist enemies and their appetites for our liberty, our property and our lives. How can you look at Waco and not see the evil hand behind it? How can you consider the vicious, sustained campaign by the federal "law enforcement" bureaucracy to victimize the Reese family without hearing the Devil himself laugh in the background? These people who seek to enslave us are evil. It may be a banal evil, to use Hannah Arendt's phrase, but IT IS EVIL bureaucratized and yet personified all at once and together. So, viewed through the lens of my own principles, I AM expendable. It is what God put me on this earth to do -- fight evil with all my heart and soul until He calls me home.

No one thought that the authorities of your state would pass laws making criminals out of the previously law-abiding -- but they did. If they catch you violating their unconstitutional laws, they will -- when they please -- send armed men to work their will upon you. And people -- innocent of any crime save the one these tyrants created -- will die resisting them. -- Mike Vanderboegh, Hartford CT, 20 April 2013.

Why Colorado? Because that is where the collectivist enemy is. That is one place where he has made gains that need to be confronted. It seems that we have turned back the federal grab that the citizen disarmament blood dancers began after Newtown, much to their frustration. But it is the states where they continue to gain ground. So, we must confront them as they confront us -- state by state, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, using all the tools at hand. As my good friend David Codrea says, "Any chair in a bar fight." Even those who urge me not to go concede the truth that the Colorado tyranny must be resisted. We must confront these collectivist bastards in Colorado and every other state where they've made gains. My friends and supporters, OGB included, just don't want it to be ME. But if not me, who? And if not now, when?

There is one way you might stop me from going. Just don't send me any more subscription donations. Without the money for car rental and gas, without the bail money, I'm dead in the water, so to speak. As generous as y'all have been, if the PO Box remains empty as it was this week, I'll be reduced to hitchhiking. So you can vote with your wallets. Should I stay or should I go? I'm tempted to say it's up to y'all, but that would be a lie. I'm going. Somehow, God will provide. But I'm going. I love OGB like a brother, but I'm going.