A Homework Assignment

As I am sure many of you know, the email and home addresses of many Democratic party staffers have been leaked.  This presents us with a wonderful opportunity to speak directly with men and women behind the men and women that represent you on Capitol Hill.  These are the gatekeepers of the Representatives and the same people that write the legislation to cut away at the very rights that were passed down through centuries,  They pick the winners or losers of a debate.  These are the deaf ears that your cries for "not one more inch" have fallen.  What will you tell them now?

What will you tell them?

I suggest educating them on the errors of legislatively backing a people up to a wall.  You can tell them that you will not be disenfranchised anymore.  Let them know of the ruinous foreign and domestic policies have only created unending poverty and conflict.  Let them know what their illegal immigration policies have cost you or about the elections they have stolen.  You can send them a copy of the III% Catechism and Valediction to let them know who you are.  There will be no Fort Sumter's on our part but there will be a genuine refusal to obey unjust laws.  You can send them your latest range card or target score cards.  You can let them know that their small tyrannies will be answered.

If nothing else.. let them know that the 100 Heads Life Insurance Company sends its regards.

Click on this link to see who you can tell.

For the benefit of our new Three Percenters - Welcome

I am seeing a trend of people that are familiar with the III% and even this blog, but that are not familiar with the concepts of the movement or why it was started.  

Don't mistake me, I think this is absolutely wonderful.  It means that more people are coming here for the first time and that means that new eyes are being opened.  This is my one goal: seeing the movement grow to dizzying heights and still remain true to the founding principles.

To that end, I am reposting "A Brief Three Percent Catechism -- A discipline not for the faint-hearted."

The original can be found here.

Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, young people and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life. -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 5 (quoting John Paul II).

Wikipedia tells us that "in the early church, new converts . . . were instructed (catechized) in the basic elements of the faith such as the Apostles' Creed, Lord's Prayer, and sacraments in preparation for baptism." Although I'm a Baptist, this always struck me as a useful tool to make sure that all of the folks who professed a creed actually understood the faith. Catechism hardly contains all the elements of a particular belief system, but it puts the newbie on the right path of study. I have been convinced for some time that the Three Percent needed a catechism of our own, since there are a number of folks who seem to want to reinterpret (if not hijack) the original concept for their own purposes. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi, "It takes strength to resist the dark side. Only the weak embrace it!"

The Three Percent idea, the movement, the ideal, was designed to be a simple, powerful concept that could not be infiltrated or subjected to agents provocateurs like many organizations that I observed in the constitutional militia movement of the 90s. In this I was both correct and dead wrong, as I have been battling folks almost since the beginning who have misunderstood, deliberately or not, what the Three Percent was in history, what it is today and what its aims are for the future.

What is a "Three Percenter"?

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.

The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.

The Doctrine of the Three Percent in a few sentences.

The Three Percent are the citizens the Founders counted on to save the Republic when everyone else abandoned it. And we will. There will be no more free Wacos and no more free Katrinas. For we are the Three Percent. We will not disarm. You cannot convince us. You cannot intimidate us. You can kill us, if you think you can. But remember, we’ll shoot back. We are not going away. We are not backing up another inch. And there are THREE MILLION OF US. The next move, if any, is up to the aspiring tyrants among the domestic enemies of the Constitution.

This is not to say that all politics, even in the rigged, corrupt game played by both political parties today, is futile. It isn't. The Founders did not cede that ground to the forces of the King until forced to do so and we must not. Indeed, this is one way that we make the local contacts and build the local networks so key to the Founders' concepts of the militia as the guardian of, and the true expression of the will of, the people. There is a place then, for all who adopt the Three Percent ideal, regardless of age, sex, fitness, infirmity. Resistance is an expression of a determined minority, but that minority comes from everywhere and contributes what it can, where it can.

One other point. The Three Percent idea, being an idea, is internalized and finds expression in action when required without any top-down organization issuing orders. This was on perfect display at the Bundy Ranch stand-off when Three Percenters from everywhere flocked on their own to the Bundy's defense, interposing themselves between the Bundys and the Feds. No call was issued, they just came because they understood the concept of "No More Free Wacos." The Feds were shocked -- first into inaction and then into retreat. Indeed, the Bundy confrontation may be seen as the proof of the successful weaponizing of the idea of the Three Percent.

The Three Percent as a modern expression of the Founder's model.

The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. -- John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter XIX, Of the Dissolution of Government, Sec. 222, 1690.

The Founders, it must be remembered, thought of themselves as Englishmen who were merely seeking their rights under the English Constitution from the depredations of a corrupt monarchy and its ministers. In this they were guided by the philosophy of John Locke's social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate, further, under the social contract, the people could resist the government by force of arms when it acted against the interests of citizens and could replace it with one that served the interests of citizens. Such armed resistance, in Locke's mind, was an obligation which acted as a safeguard against tyranny. The language and reasoning of the Declaration of independence come straight from Locke.

Not only is the moral basis of the modern-day Three Percent movement the same as that of the Founders, but the tactics and strategy of resistance that was used by them, including the Sons of Liberty, the Committees of Correspondence and Safety and the Minutemen, are fully applicable to today's struggle. First, as I wrote over six years ago, Three Percenters recognize that with such a declaration of resistance comes responsibility:

"Take not counsel of your fears." In the coming period many rumors will sweep the blogosphere. Imminent danger will perceived from a million different directions. But here is how we should conduct ourselves.

"Wilson, I'm a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does, but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell." -- William Tecumseh Sherman as recalled by James Harrison Wilson, in Under the Old Flag.

Now Sherman wasn't saying that Grant should fail to seek through intelligence-gathering or scouting what the dispositions and the intentions of the enemy were. He was saying that you don't let your fears affect how you fight the enemy in front of you. Sherman also recalled that Grant worried less about what the enemy was going to do him and more about what HE was going to do the the enemy. As Three Percenters, we must only react to what we see and know and not some rumored threat. Above all, we must not lose our cool. We must always remain under control, and ready.

We must not react to, or repeat, disinformation, for this is the principal way the domestic enemies of the Constitution have used to discredit us over the years. As Three Percenters we must always be the adults in the room. We do not have the luxury of reacting out of emotion, fear or hatred. This is made easier by the discipline of building deterrence.

Again, from six years ago:

Work on the credibility of your deterrence. Deterrence only works if it's credible. We must ready ourselves for whatever comes. That means training, physical fitness, building up logistical bases, more training, marksmanship competence, organization, more logistics, more training.

We have our enemy's promises that they will negate any possibility of our using the standard methods of politics against them. They have won the "majority vote" decision. Fine. But if we are to avoid conflict, we must convince them of how little this actually buys them in the way of power. We do that by building up the armed citizenry, one three-man buddy team, one six-man fire team and one squad at a time. Don't advertise. Friends and neighbors will do nicely. And remember, you're doing this in case the deterrence doesn't work. This is as real as it gets, folks. Act like it.

This is a major component of the discipline of the Three Percent. If you are focused on readiness you will be less likely to jump at shadows, less likely to take counsel of your fears. When in doubt about what is going on around you, train, organize, forge yourself and your teams into the sort of "well regulated militia" the Founders first created in the period leading up to 19 April 1775 and then later codified in the Second Amendment.

"Don't fire unless fired upon." -- Captain John Parker, Lexington Minutemen, 19 April 1775.

As Three Percenters we are bound by an ironclad commitment to no first use of force. We call this, "No Fort Sumters." From six years ago:

No "Fort Sumters." This means exactly and precisely what it says. We must not fire first.

Neither were the leaders of the Confederacy eager to start a war. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, sitting in their offices in Montgomery (Alabama), much preferred to negotiate until they got their way. They always had, after all. In fact, Southerners in general considered Northerners to be incapable of standing up to them. They had seceded thinking the North would "just let them go." Should it come to civil war they were confident that the great European powers, desperately needing cotton for their mills, would intervene on the side of the Confederacy. The one possibility the South never considered was the one that actually happened: that the North would actually fight an all out civil war rather than let the Union be shattered and that England and France would not come to the aid of the South. Lincoln's adroit handling of the matter left Montgomery with few choices. If they attacked Fort Sumter, they'd lose both their moral high ground and their Northern allies. -- Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Books, 2008

We don't fire first, nor second, nor perhaps even third. This does not mean we can't defend ourselves. We must.

What it does mean is that the rest of don't react until everyone understands that it is collective self-defense. We must not cede the moral high ground.

If the Confederacy had not fired on Sumter, what would Lincoln have done? Whatever it was would have cost him the moral high ground and political legitimacy. And for the brave new world of imperial presidency that he was embarked upon, that might have led to an entirely different result. Division in the North, perhaps even impeachment. It is our enemies who are the revolutionists and the aggressors.

Take a stand on familiar ground and their appetites will do the rest. They will come to us. Just be ready. Then when it is apparent, ACT, at once and collectively, on familiar ground of our own choosing and in enlightened self-defense on a large scale seeking only the criminally culpable.

This absolute tenet of the Three Percent concept comes in for the most criticism from those who would have someone (someone, significantly, NOT themselves) take the first shot out of fear or other motives which may or may not be their own. It is in the interest of the domestic enemies of the Constitution to get us to go to proactive violence. The solution then is to refuse to do so. Their own tyrannical hungers combined with impatience at our defiance, like that of the Founders', will in time force them to cede this vital point or, far less likely, to give up the game. But it must be their choice and their action. Again, here it is vital not to take counsel of your fears and to assign some supernatural powers to the enemies of liberty. They cannot sweep down and bag the lot of us, as some Chicken Littles fear. We have them out-numbered by a long shot. If some of us are killed to make the point that THEY are the aggressors in Locke's "war against against the people," then we must recognize that this is what we signed up for when we took our oaths.

The other moral absolute that you sign on to when you become a Three Percenter is no targeting of innocents. We call this "No Oklahoma City bombings." And this includes the innocents who make up the non-combatants on the enemy's side. If you claim to fight monsters, it is important not to become one yourself. They target innocents in retributive terror operations like Waco, we do not. We are also criticized by some for this "weakness." It is, rather, not only a strength but our greatest strength. It is what defines us as defenders of liberty and the people. It is also what the tyrants most fear -- if innocents are taken off the target list, only the guilty remain. And the one thing the war-makers and decision-takers of tyranny fear is a Fourth Generation civil war targeted solely and precisely at THEIR miserable existence. It is the only thing they cherish, the only real thing they believe in -- their own existence and the power that existence gives them to feed their hunger off other people's liberty, property and lives. If the order-givers start to disappear, through death or desertion, the orders do NOT get given. With no Eichmanns to make up the schedules, no cattle cars depart to the East for "Arbeit Macht Frei." This strategy also takes advantage of our greatest strength -- our rifle marksmanship. The accurate rifle in the handle of a trained marksman is our "precision guided munition." Millions of such rifles, properly targeted, by people with the will to use them, amounts to utter defeat for any would-be tyranny, and death for any would-be tyrant.

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

This is by no means a complete exploration of the subject and I will have more as time progresses. I invite comment and criticism.

Mike Vanderboegh, 29 June 2014.

David Codrea: "Responses to Malheur Crisis Show Deep Divisions within Patriot Community."

"A common factor among many is that some of the loudest voices are complaining about what others aren’t doing. What they themselves are doing, and their qualifications for expecting others to follow their recommended courses of action, is in many cases left unsaid. . ."

When we don’t have complete information, sources are trusted or distrusted by varying degrees depending on who’s listening and what agendas are in play. Add to that instances where breaking information about significant developments has been sent out, supposedly by people in the know, only to be refuted later by others with access to those on the ground at Malheur.

It happens, and not always by malice. But it does demonstrate the critical need to verify reports before acting.

Right now, what we don’t want, is another Waco. And a factor preventing that, so far, is the government realizing it is being watched, and any repeat of such brutal rules of engagement is likely to make containing things problematic. In a very real sense, that’s been beneficial to the wildlife refuge occupiers throughout, and to the remaining holdouts.

It’s understood that’s not enough for some. That said, we can’t ignore two undeniable truths:

The Hammond family declared from the outset the Malheur takeover was not what they wanted. And now, on the other end, Ammon Bundy is calling for the remainder of the occupiers to “Turn yourselves in and do not use physical force. Use the national platform we have to continue to defend liberty through our constitutional rights in an Article 3 Court with an Article 3 judge.”

That Bundy’s call has not produced an immediate stand-down, and that his own father has now declared they “will retain possession of the Harney County resource center,” shows strong divisions exist even within the family, and then within the small band involved in the takeover.

It’s no wonder we see such distrust and anger — including that being directed by some liberty activists at others.

Now might be the time to ask ourselves who that benefits.

Stewart Rhodes comments:

Yet another Bundy writing checks he expects the rest of us to cash with our blood. I have lost all respect for their entire family. They appear to think they are patriot royalty, who get to decide, all on their own, what is best for the rest of us, and presume to speak for us, when it comes to spilling our blood.

And now Cliven is even going against Ammon's recent call for the remaining occupiers to leave. Ammon has finally caught a clue, but the old man remains clueless. All he will do is get people killed, and make this worse. Nothing like starting a fight off with a Fort Sumter, and a defeat, all wrapped into one. At least Sumter was a victory, though an empty one.

Stewart

Stewart and I have had our differences but I concur with this assessment and frankly I'm getting bloody sick and tired of this apocalyptic vision of Latter Days Saints theology that the Bundys are trying to chain around all our necks. You know, John Brown at least had the guts to lead his own sons into disaster at Harper's Ferry. Cliven sat back from afar and directed his own sons to do what he believes is "God's will" -- a religious vision thing for him without personal risk.

I am also appalled by the apparent inability of self-described "Three Percenters" to be able to exercise discernment, judgment and simple command and control of their own emotions, mouths and troops. I would refer them to the Three Percent Catechism, but that presupposes that they have the ability to read and understand basic English.

"The Breakup of the United States: Why It’s Such a Terrible Idea."

"The short version is: Forget 1861-1865. Forget Sumter and Pickett’s Charge and even Antietam and Cold Harbor. Think, for a United States that begins to break up, of Beirut in the 80s, except written across a continent, written large, and written in blood."

The ease with which civil wars can start. Uncomfortable musings on Christmas Eve, 2014.

"As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this." -- George Mason, 1787.

In one sense it is doubtless true that nobody, in 1775, wanted war; in another sense it is almost equally clear that both the Americans and the British were aching for a showdown. -- Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six, 1958.

I have long been warning that given the collectivists who seek to impose their will upon the rest of the country with their appetites for other citizens' rights to liberty and property even at cost of the lives of those who disagree with them -- and especially with their designs upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- civil war is not only possible but probable. My hope has always been to prevent that war by pointing out to all that it IS possible and that the bloody costs will accrue to everyone, especially the war makers and decision takers, if we are stupid enough to go down that path for the third time in our history. (And, yes, I count the Revolution as our first civil war.)

To that end, I have been studying HOW civil wars start. We like to think that such fratricides happen after long periods of consideration -- that no one would be so foolish as to wade into such butchery with little thought. Yet we have only to look at the bloody disintegration of the former Yugoslavia to see a modern example of how swiftly such butcheries can happen.

I was making this point to a friend the other day and he objected that Yugoslavia had been an artificial construct of Versailles in 1919, that it was a "lash-up of a nation" (to use his words) that was bound to fail. The United States, he felt, was not nearly as close to civil war as I feared from the evidence of the Yugoslavian disaster. I pointed out to him that the compromise that was the Constitution was a similar "lash-up" -- a compromise that was forced upon the Founders, despite the advice of men such as George Mason, who wrote as early as 1773:

[Slavery is] that slow Poison, which is daily contaminating the Minds & Morals of our People. Every Gentlemen [sic] here is born a petty Tyrant. Practiced in Acts of Despotism & Cruelty, we become callous to the Dictates of Humanity, & all the finer feelings of the Soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject & contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the Dignity of Man, which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great & useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds. And in such an infernal School are to be educated our future Legislators & Rulers. The Laws of impartial Providence may even by such Means as these, avenge upon our Posterity the Injury done a set of Wretches, whom our Injustice hath debased almost to a Level with the Brute Creation. These Remarks may be thought Foreign to the design of the annexed Extracts - They were extorted by a kind of irresistible, perhaps an Enthusiastick Impulse; and the author of them conscious of his own good Intentions, cares not whom they please or offend.

Mason, himself a slave owner, struggled to reconcile his own Whig beliefs in liberty with what Bruce Catton once called "the indigestible lump" of chattel slavery. Yet we know from our own experiences in the Twentieth Century, that collectivism is an even more evil form of slavery than that practiced by Mason and other Founders from southern colonies. This is not to excuse Mason and the others, yet Mason must be credited at the least with the struggle with his conscience. In that, the Founders stand up pretty well to collectivist butchers such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

George Mason.

At the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Mason warned his fellow Founders:

This infernal trafic originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Govt. constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone but the whole Union…. Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities….[It is] essential in every point of view that the Genl. Govt. should have power to prevent the increase of slavery.

His fellow Founders did not listen to him. And we now know from the experiences of the 1860s how prescient Mason was.

In The Presence of Mine Enemies, Edward L. Ayers describes the almost instantaneous resolve for war that formed on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line in the aftermath of the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for volunteers to impose the will of the national government on the Southern states. I present this not to relitigate the issues of the war or to defend or attack the morality of one side or the other. The striking thing in Ayers' account is the rapidity with which what had been uncertain became set in stone, leading to a war that nobody wanted or expected.

The Civil War did not approach the border like a slowly building storm. It came like an earthquake, with uneven and unpredictable periods of quiet between abrupt seismic shifts that shook the entire landscape. It came by sudden realignments, its tremors giving no indication of the scale of violence that would soon follow. People changed their minds overnight, reversing what they had said and done for years.

The crisis came in a strange way. It was rehearsed through debate and deliberation, through what Abraham Lincoln called "airy" and "theoretical" concerns. People on the border, dedicated to peace and moderation, imagined all the permutations and outcome, calculating carefully what would be won and lost by each strategy. Border Unionists gained momentum after the first secession, pulling Virginia and its neighbors toward compromise and reconciliation. Partisans in the border North fought with one another over every petty issue until the day the Confederate troops fired on Ft. Sumter. Abraham Lincoln bent over backward to appease the border South, giving in on everything except slavery in the territories and the fort at Charleston.

Then everything changed because Lincoln sought to resupply that fort. Actually overnight, the Virginia Convention, so cautious and plodding, threw itself to the Confederacy with the support of the great majority of the voters east of the Allegheny Mountains, including the Valley. By doing so, they gave themselves to a war that they had every reason to dread. Over the border in Franklin and Pennsylvania, the Democrats abandoned arguments that war with the South would be wrong, unconstitutional, stupid, and unmanly. They gave themselves over to the new cause.

Each side had a simple explanation for the other's sudden change: the people on the other side were hypocrites, claiming to fight for one thing while really fighting for another. The South felt certain the North fought for dominion and abolition born of sheer spite, envy, and a puritanical self-righteousness. The North felt certain the South fought to extend slavery like a disease throughout North America, infecting white people in the established states with its black slaves. Both knew the other side used the language of the Constitution as a mere shield and excuse.

Indeed, the inconsistencies were striking. The North went to war to keep people in a Union based on the consent of the governed, to maintain connection with a slaveholding society it despised. Northern leaders expressed barely a word of concern for the millions of people currently enslaved. The south, for its part, went to war under the flag of freedom to maintain a massive and growing human slavery. The South risked war and the disintegration of a nation it had dominated to maintain rights that remained unchallenged in any concrete way.

But both sides had reasons that seemed deep and compelling to themselves. The North clearly believed in the global importance of the Union, the anarchy that would follow in the North if the South were permitted to to leave and other parts of the Union broke away, and the illegality of secession. Northerners believed that the Confederacy did not speak or act for most white Southerners, that a white Southern Unionist majority only awaited help and a signal to step forward. The South clearly believed that the safety and integrity of the entire society were challenged by the Republicans, a party that had arisen for the express reason of dominating the South. The south believed too that the Constitution gave states the right to leave if they so wished and that the election of Abraham Lincoln had been nothing other than an attempt to drive the South away through electoral means. The south now wanted to leave, whether the Republicans offered an immediate threat, a long-term threat, or no real threat at all.

People defended their actions through the words of the Constitution. Like a prism, the Constitution focused and intensified the sectional struggle. Rather than fight for slavery, the South said, it fought for the right of slavery, a right won and decreed by their ancestors who helped create the United States, and the right to remove itself from a union it had voluntarily joined. Rather than fight against slavery, the North said, it fought to preserve the government the Constitution created, to stop outlaws and traitors from usurping it.

Slavery lay at the the root of the South's actions, and white Southerners were not squeamish about saying so. Since all civil society in the South, everything touched by the public realm of law and government, rested on slavery, that civil society necessarily defended slavery as a crucial part of itself. White Southerners did not isolate slavery as the "real" reason they were fighting because slavery could not be separated from the rest; it was so tightly bound up with their sense of who they were that it could not be isolated. They spoke easily, as they had for decades, of God's plan to use the South to Christianize Africans. They spoke of enslaved people's love for their masters and mistresses, of the bonds that tied them together. They spoke of the waste and bloodshed that would accompany emancipation, of the desolation of the South, of the slow death of the former slaves.

Along with the Constitutional language and the language of slavery emerged another language, a language of elemental loyalties, a language of loyalty to family and locale, of native soil and the sacrifices of the fathers. It was a language everybody knew how to speak. It was a language older than the Constitution. It drew on cultural memories even older than the Bible, memories of Greeks and Romans. It spoke from instincts embedded in the human mind and body. It was a language made for wartime, and people on both sides of the border spoke it fluently.

Both the North and the South claimed the sanction of God. They read their Bibles selectively, turning to the language of retribution and vengeance in the Old Testament rather than the language of forgiveness and brotherly love in the New. They defined righteousness as they wanted to define it, as they needed to define it, not for His name's sake but for the sake of worldly ends.

Law and right, duty and honor, fate and history, so tangled only weeks before, suddenly aligned for both the North and the South. The paths of righteousness suddenly appeared straight and smooth.

And so a nation disintegrated in rapid events that few wanted or thought possible. I present this as cautionary tale to those who think that civil war cannot come to this country overnight. It can. It requires only one or two incidents to crystallize both sides -- to kick it off into bloody fratricide. We were faced with one possible flashpoint earlier this year at the Bundy Ranch. We face the threat of others every time there is an armed civil disobedience in opposition to the tyrannical laws brought about by Bloomberg Rules. We face the same threat every time a federal raiding party forms up for some stupidity that could rapidly devolve into another Waco. Civil war can come to this country overnight. The only thing that might prevent it is when those who would victimize others believe that it can and that it will have immediate and deadly repercussions for them. That is the only thing. But it is not the way to bet.

A Brief Three Percent Catechism -- A discipline not for the faint-hearted.

Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, young people and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life. -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 5 (quoting John Paul II).

Wikipedia tells us that "in the early church, new converts . . . were instructed (catechized) in the basic elements of the faith such as the Apostles' Creed, Lord's Prayer, and sacraments in preparation for baptism." Although I'm a Baptist, this always struck me as a useful tool to make sure that all of the folks who professed a creed actually understood the faith. Catechism hardly contains all the elements of a particular belief system, but it puts the newbie on the right path of study. I have been convinced for some time that the Three Percent needed a catechism of our own, since there are a number of folks who seem to want to reinterpret (if not hijack) the original concept for their own purposes. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi, "It takes strength to resist the dark side. Only the weak embrace it!"

The Three Percent idea, the movement, the ideal, was designed to be a simple, powerful concept that could not be infiltrated or subjected to agents provocateurs like many organizations that I observed in the constitutional militia movement of the 90s. In this I was both correct and dead wrong, as I have been battling folks almost since the beginning who have misunderstood, deliberately or not, what the Three Percent was in history, what it is today and what its aims are for the future.

What is a "Three Percenter"?

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.

The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.

The Doctrine of the Three Percent in a few sentences.

The Three Percent are the citizens the Founders counted on to save the Republic when everyone else abandoned it. And we will. There will be no more free Wacos and no more free Katrinas. For we are the Three Percent. We will not disarm. You cannot convince us. You cannot intimidate us. You can kill us, if you think you can. But remember, we’ll shoot back. We are not going away. We are not backing up another inch. And there are THREE MILLION OF US. The next move, if any, is up to the aspiring tyrants among the domestic enemies of the Constitution.

This is not to say that all politics, even in the rigged, corrupt game played by both political parties today, is futile. It isn't. The Founders did not cede that ground to the forces of the King until forced to do so and we must not. Indeed, this is one way that we make the local contacts and build the local networks so key to the Founders' concepts of the militia as the guardian of, and the true expression of the will of, the people. There is a place then, for all who adopt the Three Percent ideal, regardless of age, sex, fitness, infirmity. Resistance is an expression of a determined minority, but that minority comes from everywhere and contributes what it can, where it can.

One other point. The Three Percent idea, being an idea, is internalized and finds expression in action when required without any top-down organization issuing orders. This was on perfect display at the Bundy Ranch stand-off when Three Percenters from everywhere flocked on their own to the Bundy's defense, interposing themselves between the Bundys and the Feds. No call was issued, they just came because they understood the concept of "No More Free Wacos." The Feds were shocked -- first into inaction and then into retreat. Indeed, the Bundy confrontation may be seen as the proof of the successful weaponizing of the idea of the Three Percent.

The Three Percent as a modern expression of the Founder's model.

The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. -- John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter XIX, Of the Dissolution of Government, Sec. 222, 1690.

The Founders, it must be remembered, thought of themselves as Englishmen who were merely seeking their rights under the English Constitution from the depredations of a corrupt monarchy and its ministers. In this they were guided by the philosophy of John Locke's social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate, further, under the social contract, the people could resist the government by force of arms when it acted against the interests of citizens and could replace it with one that served the interests of citizens. Such armed resistance, in Locke's mind, was an obligation which acted as a safeguard against tyranny. The language and reasoning of the Declaration of independence come straight from Locke.

Not only is the moral basis of the modern-day Three Percent movement the same as that of the Founders, but the tactics and strategy of resistance that was used by them, including the Sons of Liberty, the Committees of Correspondence and Safety and the Minutemen, are fully applicable to today's struggle. First, as I wrote over six years ago, Three Percenters recognize that with such a declaration of resistance comes responsibility:

"Take not counsel of your fears." In the coming period many rumors will sweep the blogosphere. Imminent danger will perceived from a million different directions. But here is how we should conduct ourselves.

"Wilson, I'm a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does, but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell." -- William Tecumseh Sherman as recalled by James Harrison Wilson, in Under the Old Flag.

Now Sherman wasn't saying that Grant should fail to seek through intelligence-gathering or scouting what the dispositions and the intentions of the enemy were. He was saying that you don't let your fears affect how you fight the enemy in front of you. Sherman also recalled that Grant worried less about what the enemy was going to do him and more about what HE was going to do the the enemy. As Three Percenters, we must only react to what we see and know and not some rumored threat. Above all, we must not lose our cool. We must always remain under control, and ready.

We must not react to, or repeat, disinformation, for this is the principal way the domestic enemies of the Constitution have used to discredit us over the years. As Three Percenters we must always be the adults in the room. We do not have the luxury of reacting out of emotion, fear or hatred. This is made easier by the discipline of building deterrence.

Again, from six years ago:

Work on the credibility of your deterrence. Deterrence only works if it's credible. We must ready ourselves for whatever comes. That means training, physical fitness, building up logistical bases, more training, marksmanship competence, organization, more logistics, more training.

We have our enemy's promises that they will negate any possibility of our using the standard methods of politics against them. They have won the "majority vote" decision. Fine. But if we are to avoid conflict, we must convince them of how little this actually buys them in the way of power. We do that by building up the armed citizenry, one three-man buddy team, one six-man fire team and one squad at a time. Don't advertise. Friends and neighbors will do nicely. And remember, you're doing this in case the deterrence doesn't work. This is as real as it gets, folks. Act like it.

This is a major component of the discipline of the Three Percent. If you are focused on readiness you will be less likely to jump at shadows, less likely to take counsel of your fears. When in doubt about what is going on around you, train, organize, forge yourself and your teams into the sort of "well regulated militia" the Founders first created in the period leading up to 19 April 1775 and then later codified in the Second Amendment.

"Don't fire unless fired upon." -- Captain John Parker, Lexington Minutemen, 19 April 1775.

As Three Percenters we are bound by an ironclad commitment to no first use of force. We call this, "No Fort Sumters." From six years ago:

No "Fort Sumters." This means exactly and precisely what it says. We must not fire first.

Neither were the leaders of the Confederacy eager to start a war. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, sitting in their offices in Montgomery (Alabama), much preferred to negotiate until they got their way. They always had, after all. In fact, Southerners in general considered Northerners to be incapable of standing up to them. They had seceded thinking the North would "just let them go." Should it come to civil war they were confident that the great European powers, desperately needing cotton for their mills, would intervene on the side of the Confederacy. The one possibility the South never considered was the one that actually happened: that the North would actually fight an all out civil war rather than let the Union be shattered and that England and France would not come to the aid of the South. Lincoln's adroit handling of the matter left Montgomery with few choices. If they attacked Fort Sumter, they'd lose both their moral high ground and their Northern allies. -- Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Books, 2008

We don't fire first, nor second, nor perhaps even third. This does not mean we can't defend ourselves. We must.

What it does mean is that the rest of don't react until everyone understands that it is collective self-defense. We must not cede the moral high ground.

If the Confederacy had not fired on Sumter, what would Lincoln have done? Whatever it was would have cost him the moral high ground and political legitimacy. And for the brave new world of imperial presidency that he was embarked upon, that might have led to an entirely different result. Division in the North, perhaps even impeachment. It is our enemies who are the revolutionists and the aggressors.

Take a stand on familiar ground and their appetites will do the rest. They will come to us. Just be ready. Then when it is apparent, ACT, at once and collectively, on familiar ground of our own choosing and in enlightened self-defense on a large scale seeking only the criminally culpable.

This absolute tenet of the Three Percent concept comes in for the most criticism from those who would have someone (someone, significantly, NOT themselves) take the first shot out of fear or other motives which may or may not be their own. It is in the interest of the domestic enemies of the Constitution to get us to go to proactive violence. The solution then is to refuse to do so. Their own tyrannical hungers combined with impatience at our defiance, like that of the Founders', will in time force them to cede this vital point or, far less likely, to give up the game. But it must be their choice and their action. Again, here it is vital not to take counsel of your fears and to assign some supernatural powers to the enemies of liberty. They cannot sweep down and bag the lot of us, as some Chicken Littles fear. We have them out-numbered by a long shot. If some of us are killed to make the point that THEY are the aggressors in Locke's "war against against the people," then we must recognize that this is what we signed up for when we took our oaths.

The other moral absolute that you sign on to when you become a Three Percenter is no targeting of innocents. We call this "No Oklahoma City bombings." And this includes the innocents who make up the non-combatants on the enemy's side. If you claim to fight monsters, it is important not to become one yourself. They target innocents in retributive terror operations like Waco, we do not. We are also criticized by some for this "weakness." It is, rather, not only a strength but our greatest strength. It is what defines us as defenders of liberty and the people. It is also what the tyrants most fear -- if innocents are taken off the target list, only the guilty remain. And the one thing the war-makers and decision-takers of tyranny fear is a Fourth Generation civil war targeted solely and precisely at THEIR miserable existence. It is the only thing they cherish, the only real thing they believe in -- their own existence and the power that existence gives them to feed their hunger off other people's liberty, property and lives. If the order-givers start to disappear, through death or desertion, the orders do NOT get given. With no Eichmanns to make up the schedules, no cattle cars depart to the East for "Arbeit Macht Frei." This strategy also takes advantage of our greatest strength -- our rifle marksmanship. The accurate rifle in the handle of a trained marksman is our "precision guided munition." Millions of such rifles, properly targeted, by people with the will to use them, amounts to utter defeat for any would-be tyranny, and death for any would-be tyrant.

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

This is by no means a complete exploration of the subject and I will have more as time progresses. I invite comment and criticism.

Mike Vanderboegh, 29 June 2014.

Kerodin tries to get a leg up on that old Fort Sumter thing. Pete concurs. Somewhere an FBI COINTELPRO control agent is smiling.

A reader draws my attention to this post. As Kerodin posts have a tendency to disappear when adults notice, I reproduce it below:

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

If Rule of Law is dead...

...then under what set of Rules do we exist, and should we exist?

96% of you, in the poll at right, say Rule of Law is dead.

82% of you in the poll beneath agree that you are personally ready to participate in a black-bag-a-commie-for-mommie Op. (queue Jedi Zoomie for commie-bashing, boot-stomping, knife-in-neck style propaganda... ;)

In the poll below that 94% of you re-affirm RoL is dead, and it is time to respond in kind.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know these polls are not even close to scientific, and the pool of people answering those polls are of a shared and non-mainstream political worldview.

But, does it matter, even one little bit, that the people answering the polls, in such overwhelming affirmation that it is time to go to work, represent such a small percentage of the populace? It didn't matter to Sam Adams and his boys on the docks. It didn't matter to Patrick Henry or most of the others who gave birth to this republic. I continue to use III%, but you and I know damned well George Washington could never put 3 percent of modern Americans in the field today, and if he did, they'd frag his arse before nightfall. I know damned well how truly few we are - and every one of you is worth a thousand of them, or more. I choose you. We'll call it III Percent, and we'll work with what we've got.

So now what you need to think about, very seriously, in the dead of night when you are not able to sleep, in that very quiet place in your own mind where you do not even allow your husband or wife of fifty years to enter: If Rule of Law is dead, that means that the rules which governed our upper-paleolithic hunter-gatherer aunties and uncles are in effect. (They always have been, but that's a topic for another cheery day.) That means you can't trust anyone to treat you fairly, under any circumstances. It means that when you are stopped by LEO, he may choose to put his M4 in your face, because he can. He may shoot your toy poodle, because he can. Banks can simply hold your money, because they can. If you make it to court, you will lose, because the Rule of Law is dead and the Rule of Man is in play. They will win because they can.

What has changed since Heller and MacDonald, in real terms, regarding 2A? 2A has lost ground in every major Blue state in the republic (the states that elect Presidents), 2A has lost the biggest fight since 1934 in the Obamacare "Prohibited Persons" designation which is already expanding the number of "Prohibited Persons" via "Mental Health" and has your doctor reporting to Herr Wolf. And people are braying for secession, as if those Blue areas will never choke them off economically, starve them like Ukrainians, and then move in and take those precious guns from cold, dead, famine-clenched hands before re-claiming the valuable land.

If you believe in your heart that Rule of Law is dead, are you going to continue to live under what they decree to be "Law"?

If not, then you'd better have your war-face on. You'd better have your Go Bag and tools of war with you, every moment. Because when they confront you, whether at your home, at your office, on the subway, in email from some local bureaucracy, at the pizza place for lunch, or on a traffic stop, their Law gives them the Right to kill you, where you stand or sit. They do not need a reason.

Personally, I only see one way to return the Rule of Law in America - mother*ck those bastards so badly they BEG to reinstate the genuine Rule of Law to protect themselves from us.

But we decide when, and if, that happens - not them. Crying "OK! We surrender!" is a suckers move, and if you stop then, you are just laying the ground for your kid or grandkid to have to face it all over again.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time and you had best un-fuck yourself.

That is all.

Good f'n morning.

Kerodin

Pete, Kerodin's biggest fan, heartily concurs.

The reader who forwarded these to me wrote:

"F-cking Pete. Asshole is pimping out K. The collective sheep are being goaded into throwing a Ft. Sumter. Idiots. You know when the bastard finally goads a rube into doing something it will be K’s name on the endorsement as the 'leader of the III movement' and it is that message that will be blasted out on every news channel from Kalifon-i-a to Kathmandu."

"By their works ye shall know them." Certainly somewhere an FBI COINTELPRO control agent is smiling. Of course it won't really be a Fort Sumter, they have neither the numbers nor the popular support for that.  It will be another OKC bombing, complete with FBI snitches and provocateurs.   At best, these neo-collectivists are soliciting the butchery of innocents.  Does anybody here still think that this is all about my ego?

You know, these guys are starting to make me look like a prophet.

Reports from the Shutdown. Threepers "test the fences" -- and pick up some souvenirs.

Received this photo and accompanying report from a Threeper in Virginia:

It was glorious on Sunday as American citizens removed the barricades from the WWII Memorial. (They also removed them from the Lincoln Memorial.)

I removed two “closed” posters and two signs, including this one, which officially, and idiotically, closes the grass on the Mall. I brought two pairs of wire cutters in case the first one was confiscated. One should be prepared. J I was prepared to be arrested, but the police mostly gave the protesters a wide berth. This was wise, because (1) there were a lot of protesters, and (2) the protesters were in no mood to be jerked around.

The barricades and signs are back already. As you have an audience, consider calling for their repeated removal. And removal of all of Obama’s barricades and “closed” signage from all open air monuments and lands around the country. We must defy tyranny or we are lost.

Just some guy.

Also, we have this report from the Palmetto State:

Good idea you have about re-opening our National Parks and Forests.

The Sumter National Forest in Edgefield County South Carolina was opened for business yesterday. Except for momentary efforts on their part, it will remain open.

The signs are pretty cheesy. Basically a printed piece of paper in a document protector stapled to a pole.

The next set I’ll send to you!

I will be proud to frame it. We ARE Everywhere.

Something that deserves restating at this point in time. We Are Expendable.

The following piece was originally posted on Sipsey Street 8 December 2008 entitled We Are Expendable, Or, "Giving battle, but on different terms." Some recent conversations with folks who argue that I should not proceed with the armed civil disobedience campaign because I might get arrested or killed reminded me of it. Just like anyone else in this fight, I am expendable. I can only hope the trade-off is worth it.

We Are Expendable

"You don't understand," said the young naval officer, "we were expendable." He was very earnest as he lolled on the bunk of the officers' quarters of the torpedo station at Newport, along with the other three officers who had also just got out of the Philippines. I admitted I didn't understand.

"Well, it's like this. Suppose you're a sergeant machine-gunner, and your army is retreating and the enemy advancing. The captain takes you to a machine gun covering the road, 'You're to stay here and hold this position,' he tells you. 'For how long?' you ask. 'Never mind,' he answers, 'just hold it.' Then you know you're expendable. In a war, anything can be expendable -- money or gasoline or equipment or most usually men. They are expending you and that machine gun to get time. They expect you to stay there and spray that road with steel until you're killed or captured, holding up the enemy for a few minutes or even a precious quarter of an hour.

"You know the situation -- that those few minutes gained are worth the life of a man to your army. So you don't mind it. . ." -- They Were Expendable, W.L. White, 1942

In the interests of clarification of what Three Percenters stand for, I present the piece of mine below, Resolve, from last month. I would also like to add this little preface to it.

We have been called "insurrectionists" by the prags (among other things). Insurrection, in case you were wondering, is defined as "an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government." The key word here, and the action which our opponents wish to impute to us is "rising." As in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. That is, the unilateral assault of revolutionary forces upon a government at the time and places of the insurrectionists' choosing.

If you read Resolve, you wll see that this is not what I have in mind, summed up in the injunction, "No Fort Sumters."

The prags allege that our strategy is flawed, either because we will lose political legitimacy by attacking first, or setting ourselves up for failure by sitting in our houses and letting ourselves be picked off one by one. Both of course are wrong.

Our model is rather Lexington and Concord. The British marched out, not intending to start a war but merely to carry out a lightning strike as they had during the Powder Alarm of 1774 and to be back in Boston before the "provincials" could react. They also intended to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock along the way.

No one knows who fired the first shot. It could have been someone from either side. The Lexington militia under Captain John Parker were certainly not given any order to fire and it is a matter of historical fact that the British officers lost control of their troops. In any case, the blame fell to the British because they had come to the home turf of the provincials.

Parker's injunction to his troops is our own as well, "Don't fire unless fired upon." The British had a choice that April morning. The road forked and the Lobsters could have ignored the militia and marched down the left fork, without a confrontation. The vanguard chose the right fork and found, and later lost, a war.

But after the British onslaught and the militia "unassed the a.o." as they say in certain quarters today, the colonials were treated to British cheers and an 800 musket volley of celebration. As David Hackett Fischer described it in Paul Revere's Ride:

In the houses and woods along the road, the people of Lexington listened bitterly to the British cheers and began to count their dead. seven Lexington men had been killed and also one of the Yankee prisoners taken on the road, the unlucky Woburn man who was shot while "trying to escape." Nine other Lexington men were wounded, some severely. The toll was heavy in that small town. Eight pairs of fathers and sons had mustered on the Common. Five of those eight were shattered by death. Most families in that small community suffered the loss of a kinsman -- if not a father or son, then an uncle or cousin.

As the British troops disappeared into the west, the people of the town gathered on the Common. There was at first a sense of shock, a terrible numb and empty feeling of cruel and bitter loss. Then there was another raw emotion: deep, consuming, abiding anger. The people of Lexington asked themselves, who were these arrogant men in their proud red coats? By what right did they act as they did?

Other militiamen were now arriving from the far corners of the town. Those who had slept through the alarm began to appear, weapons in hand. Captain Parker mustered his company once again on the bloody ground. There were not sixty militia as before, but twice that number. The men were silent, grim and pensive. Most had lost friends and relatives only a few minutes before. Some wore bloody bandages. A few had faces and shirts blackened by powder stains. Their weapons were no better than before, but they replenished their ammunition from the dwindling store in the meetinghouse.

This time there were no consultations of debates. With a few terse words of command, Captain Parker ordered his company to fall in. The men were no longer in doubt about what to do. They were ready to give battle again, BUT ON DIFFERENT TERMS. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

The unlucky militiamen who were killed at the first fire of the British and in the headlong rush to get away by British bayonets, were, to use the phrase of the torpedo boat officer, "expendable." They were expendable by accident, for they certainly didn't intend to get shot that morning while merely standing in formation. But they were expendable by necessity as well. They had to die at the first, there on Lexington Green, so that all their countrymen would know from that point on that it was a war of defense against Crown tyranny. They had to recieve the first fire, and they did.

And this is what the prags do not understand about us Three Percenters. We view ourselves as expendable. We don't want to. On the whole, as Mark Twain's candidate for the hanging said, if it weren't for the honor of the thing we'd rather skip it. Yet we know that someone must go first. Whoever it is will be chosen by our enemies, by the enemies of liberty and the Constitution, and not by ourselves. By taking the position that we do, it is not that we volunteer for suicide. We merely understand that to have principles means that eventually you cannot back away from them. Eventually, someone has to stand. And, in the nature of things, someone must be first. Like the machine-gunner at the crossroads, we can only hope that the sacrifice will not have been in vain.

And then, like Captain Parker's Minutemen, those of us who are still standing after the first fire will be ready, in overwhelming numbers, to give battle again, but on different terms -- Our terms. And on our terms, we will restore the Founders' Republic. If our opponents do wish to go here, they should take the other fork in the road. Or, better yet, stay in Boston.

So, for those of you who missed it the first time, or were a bit hazy about what I meant when you did, kindly read "Resolve."

Mike Vanderboegh
III


http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2008/11/vanderboegh-resolve.html

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Resolve

by Mike Vanderboegh

5 November 2008

"Change has come to America." -- Barack Hussein Obama

"Revolution"

If I may, I'd like to begin my first essay of the Obama regime by thanking U.S. Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, for clarifying matters.

As reported in Michael Calderone's Politico.com blog, there was "an emotional moment on ABC News, as Georgia Congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis told Charlie Gibson that today's election was 'a nonviolent revolution.'"

Well, yes, thank you. But revolution against what? Overturning what? The name-calling, nervous-nellie opposition bloggers within the dyspeptic "Second Amendment community" have been accusing us Three Precenters of seeking a revolution. My thanks to Rep. Lewis for reminding us that the revolutionists, Gramscian and otherwise, are on the collectivist side of this argument, thus proving my point that we are in fact Restorationists.

All we seek is the restoration of the Founder's Republic.

Death Knell: "The masks are going to come off."

There is of course much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the "pragmatists" about the utter failure of their politics. Indeed, as I know from personal emails, there is even despair and some panic in some of my fellow Three Percenters. I am grateful to my good e-friend "thedweeze" for forwarding this commentary from Perry de Havilland in London.

It says much of what I was going to say and does it more clearly and with fewer words.

Unlike many, well, most of my compatriots, I am not filled with a deep sense of gloom and foreboding at the prospect of the most left wing president since FDR gaining the White House. In truth, I can see many reasons to think it may well be a far better outcome than if a Big State Republican like McCain won.

Of course Obama will bring an avalanche of policies that will be truly appalling and quite wicked, of that I have no doubt, much like his predecessors in office in that respect. As the global economy continues to come unglued, everything Obama does to deal with the mounting crises will I fact make things worse. Civil liberties will be hammered, all in the name of 'fairness', and the flood of regulations pertaining to every aspect of economic life will grow into a drowning ocean.

And that is actually the good news.

Why? Because in truth the Republicans under John "I support the bailout" McCain would scarcely have done much better. The economic global meltdown is only just starting to roll: if you think the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the biggie, just wait until you see the fallout from the fun and frolics of the impending mess in other areas, such as debt swaps. This is all going to get worse, a lot worse, and Obama is going to do absolutely everything to dig the holes deeper. Looking back on this period ten to twenty years from now, the Republicans crying into their beer tonight will be saying "thank Christ it was not us in office then".

The lesser evil is not going to win this time and much as it may not seem that way now... or any time soon I suspect... in the long run this has a far far better chance of leading to the rebirth of a genuine pro-liberty, pro-market political culture that the gradual incremental surrender of recent times made impossible.

Many will find the glee of the statist left over the next few days and weeks hard to endure, but to be honest I have been walking around with a grin all day. Finally the era of gradualism is over and the masks are going to come off. The USA has voted for statism and it is going to get exactly what it voted for at a juncture in history where it will very quickly be impossible to hide the cost of those votes.

Obama is not the start of a new era - he is the death knell for the old one.

I agree, although I hasten to add the little prayer, "From his mouth to God's ears."


"Entering the Grey Zone"

Some of you might think that de Havilland and I are engaging in pollyannaish wishful thinking given the crisis we are about to face. However, it is not only gunnies of various stripes who are panicked at the thought of an Obama presidency.

An old friend of mine called me the other day to report that an FBI agent in the west had confessed his fears at church last Sunday. Obama, he worried aloud, was going to shove him and his agency where he did not wish to go. They were, he feared, "entering the grey zone." Now there is more than one way to interpret those words, but he made one thing explicit. He had zero interest in dying for the cause of gun confiscation. No doubt such thoughts are flickering through many minds in the federal law enforcement bureaucracy at this moment.

This is something for us Three Percenters to keep in mind. He fears the scenario of my novel "Absolved."

You know, "Absolved" is but the first of a trilogy. I will make a tiny news ripple here by saying that the titles of the follow-on books are "Resolved" and "Dissolved." As with everything else I write, this is grounded in the history of the Founding generation.

On 7 June 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a three-part resolution to Congress, which read in part:

RESOLVED, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are ABSOLVED from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally DISSOLVED.

As a scribbler, I love the English language. We use one word in so many different ways and having so many different meanings that they become elements of logical poetry - sometimes illogical poetry if you believe any of my many critics.

Take the word "resolve."

Here are some definitions of 'resolve' on the Web:

- decide: bring to an end; settle conclusively; as in "The case was decided"

- conclude: reach a conclusion after a discussion or deliberation

- purpose: reach a decision; as in "he resolved never to be fooled again"

- answer: understand the meaning of; as in "The question concerning the size of Senator Schumer's ego cannot be answered"

- make clearly visible; as in "can this image be resolved?"

- find the solution; as in "solve an equation"

- resoluteness: the trait of being resolute; as in "his resoluteness carried him through the battle"

Resoluteness, purpose, decision, visibility, solution. These are multiple meanings but each has black-and-white clarity.

And make no mistake, it is our resolve which will carry us through "the grey zone." Let others doubt. We Three Percenters must not. We must be purposeful, resolute and decisive, even when the "pragmatists" are running around like chickens with their heads cut of, or slumping disconsolately in the corner as if someone pulled the plug on their video game.

No "Fort Sumters"

My Wolverine Grandpa used to say, 'When in peril or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." He usually said it ironically when someone nearby was doing exactly that. He also would offer, "It might help if he flapped his arms." This is what is happening in many corners of our nation today, and it is exactly and precisely what we must not do.

Here, I think, is what we must do:

1. "Take not counsel of your fears." In the coming period many rumors will sweep the blogosphere. Imminent danger will perceived from a million different directions. But here is how we should conduct ourselves.

"Wilson, I'm a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does, but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell." -- William Tecumseh Sherman as recalled by James Harrison Wilson, in Under the Old Flag.

Now Sherman wasn't saying that Grant should fail to seek through intelligence-gathering or scouting what the dispositions and the intentions of the enemy were. He was saying that you don't let your fears affect how you fight the enemy in front of you. Sherman also recalled that Grant worried less about what the enemy was going to do him and more about what HE was going to do the the enemy. As Three Percenters, we must only react to what we see and know and not some rumored threat. Above all, we must not lose our cool. We must always remain under control, and ready.

2. Work on the credibility of your deterrence. Deterrence only works if it's credible. We must ready ourselves for whatever comes. That means training, physical fitness, building up logistical bases, more training, marksmanship competence, organization, more logistics, more training.

We have our enemy's promises that they will negate any possibility of our using the standard methods of politics against them. They have won the "majority vote" decision.

Fine.

But if we are to avoid conflict, we must convince them of how little this actually buys them in the way of power. We do that by building up the armed citizenry, one three-man buddy team, one six-man fire team and one squad at a time. Don't advertise. Friends and neighbors will do nicely.

And remember, you're doing this in case the deterrence doesn't work. This is as real as it gets, folks.

Act like it.

3. No "Fort Sumters." This means exactly and precisely what it says. We must not fire first.

Neither were the leaders of the Confederacy eager to start a war. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, sitting in their offices in Montgomery (Alabama), much preferred to negotiate until they got their way. They always had, after all. In fact, Southerners in general considered Northerners to be incapable of standing up to them. They had seceded thinking the North would "just let them go." Should it come to civil war they were confident that the great European powers, desperately needing cotton for their mills, would intervene on the side of the Confederacy. The one possibility the South never considered was the one that actually happened: that the North would actually fight an all out civil war rather than let the Union be shattered and that England and France would not come to the aid of the South. Lincoln's adroit handling of the matter left Montgomery with few choices. If they attacked Fort Sumter, they'd lose both their moral high ground and their Northern allies. -- Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Books, 2008

We don't fire first, nor second, nor perhaps even third. This does not mean we can't defend ourselves. We must.

What it does mean is that the rest of don't react until everyone understands that it is collective self-defense. We must not cede the moral high ground.

If the Confederacy had not fired on Sumter, what would Lincoln have done? Whatever it was would have cost him the moral high ground and political legitimacy. And for the brave new world of imperial presidency that he was embarked upon, that might have led to an entirely different result. Division in the North, perhaps even impeachment. It is our enemies who are the revolutionists and the aggressors.

Take a stand on familiar ground and their appetites will do the rest. They will come to us. Just be ready. Then when it is apparent, ACT, at once and collectively, on familiar ground of our own choosing and in enlightened self-defense on a large scale seeking only the criminally culpable.

Which brings me to another component of the moral high ground:

4. And no OKC Bombings. The terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building on 19 April 1995 was more than the operation of "lone wolf" McVeigh, but I am not here to argue that largely undiscovered history.

Even if we accept the FBI explanation for it (and I do not), McVeigh targeted a building filled with non-combatants including a day care full of babies that could be plainly seen from the street or in a cursory reconnaissance of the building. It was simple terrorism and was used by the Clintonistas to discredit all their enemies, up to and including Rush Limbaugh.

So here's a warning for all you people who are seduced by the dialectic of 'The Turner Diaries'.

If you claim to fight monsters, it is important not to become one yourself. And I say to my fellow sheepdogs, that if you find someone who claims to be one of us turning feral, rip his throat out. This is the latest installment of the eternal struggle between sheepdogs and wolves.

Sheepdogs do not prey on sheep. They kill wolves.

Keep the difference firmly in mind.

5. Be patient. The raids do not begin tomorrow. It will take some time for the new regime to begin to suck up its courage, lay the "legal" predicate for its unconstitutional actions, tighten its grip and begin to squeeze.

We still have time to prepare, recruit, organize, train.

If, that is, we have resolve.

As a good old friend of mine just reminded me, this is not new. Like the Israelites, the American people have asked for a King and one has been given to them.

But I recall that the Founders went into battle, crying "No King but Jesus!" My agnostic and libertarian friends would doubtless choke on the last two words of that battle cry.

Let us at least agree on "No King!"

Let us also be prepared, trained, and patient -- but holding on ready. Let us never cede the moral high ground nor become the monsters we fight. But if our enemies insist upon it, let us fight for and let us win the restoration of the Founders' Republic.

In a word, let us be resolved.

Of Kokesh, John Parker and Fort Sumters.

Alan W. Mullenax comments on Latest on Kokesh: “We will see you on the front lines of freedom on July 4th, 2013 for this, The Final American Revolution.”

Gotta be honest, I don't know what to make of the dude. However, if he does in fact serve as a John Parker, I got no bitch. I'm of the opinion that patriots, what few are left, need a kick in the ass to get started. We constantly rail about no Fort Sumters. Mostly because of comfort and cowardice, again in my opinion. Personally, at the least I support the guy. Hell, I may even show up to the party depending on how things develop. It's important to remember that Samuel Adams and John Hancock were in Lexington on the night of April 18th. I have no doubt that the initial confrontation was thought out, staged, and executed. I have no bitch with that either. If this gig starts the party rolling, I have no bitch with that either.

A. Captain Parker did not march his unit up to the British roadblock on the Boston Neck and demand entrance. The Patriots contrived a situation over many months, if not years, to make the British come to THEM, not the other way around. That was because they were serious men, cognizant of the weight of leadership responsibility and convinced that while they would not back down, that they would surrender the vital moral high ground of refusing to take the first shot while standing upon their rights as Englishmen under the English Constitution. Get that? SERIOUS men. Whatever egos they had were subordinated to the task at hand. They did not try to execute wild hair ideas by posting a circular on the village green. Every move was fully thought out before execution. What thought, what reflection, what responsibility, what preparation and organization does Kokesh's proposed action demonstrate? If he wants to bet his own ass on such an ill-thought venture that's one thing. Risking others is something else again. But any comparison between Kokesh and Parker is both historically ignorant and insulting to Parker's memory.

To underline the above: Parker was just one small cog in a liberty organization. He was responsible to both his men and to the resistance leadership of the colony of Massachusetts. This was, as I noted above, the result of years of organization and preparation -- political, social and military. If Parker was urged to stand his ground by Sam Adams (as seems likely, since it was a change plan from what he had agreed to with his men earlier in the morning), then it was because Adams convinced Parker that the General Gage had finally stuck his official dick in the moral and political grinder. Remember that the British column was not only a raid for firearms but an attempt to capture the resistance leadership in the form of Adams and Hancock. Gage HOPED to accomplish both without a fight, but in his arrogance he didn't foresee what a political victory he was handing the resistance if it didn't happen the way he'd planned. The BRITISH had marched out of Boston under arms to work their will upon the Colonists. They were plainly the aggressor, not the other way around. No matter who fired the first shot, WHERE that shot was fired was vitally important in the propaganda predicate to the Revolution. Kokesh, if he can maintain his dope-fogged attention span, ought to read and internalize a little more history.

B. Mullenax says: "We constantly rail about no Fort Sumters. Mostly because of comfort and cowardice, again in my opinion." Since I am the principal advocate of the phrase "No Fort Sumters" it is presumably me that he's criticizing as cowardly and comfortable. He is entitled to his opinion. But I say that the Founders would not have thought so. Their entire record from the Stamp Act to 19 April 1775 demonstrates their appreciation of the political and military realities that they faced. How many provocations did they refuse to answer with violence, preferring to take as much time as they could to lay the groundwork for 19 April when they maneuvered the British into dancing to their tune? Many. They used those provocations to continue to build their case against the King and his ministers, to continue to build their own rival political and military structures, Again, they understood how vital it was for them not to take the first shot, nor even the second or third, but to absorb the blows until they were as fully ready as they could make themselves. That was not cowardice, nor addiction to comfort. It was smart and, in the end, through many other trials, tribulations and sacrifices IT WORKED. The historical record shows that the Confederates, by allowing themselves to be manipulated by Lincoln into firing on Fort Sumter, lost whatever moral high ground they had.

C. So, does this make those of us who are risking our asses standing our ground while defying these new laws of King Barack and his minions on the state level (no new federal laws having been enacted) cowards and comfort addicts, or merely smart, responsible people who rightly fail to jump at the latest "call to action" on the Facebook page of an historically-amnesiac, irresponsible anarchist doper?

This is serious business, people, and ought to be prosecuted by serious people who feel the weight of the responsibility that it entails. When you are talking about initiating another civil war that will stack up bodies by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions, there is no place for impatience, recklessness or failure to think things through. Contriving to surrender the moral high ground at the beginning of the conflict is to wink at the prospect of the failure of one's own cause. What then IS Kokesh's cause? Anarchy? Yeah, that'll work. But to what purpose and in whose interest? History will judge that. And somewhere the Founders will be weeping in righteous anger and frustration that we paid no attention to their successful template of liberty.

But comparing Kokesh to Captain Parker? Pull the other one.