OT: Seriously????

[Webstral]

In case I don’t say it often enough, gentlemen, your feedback is invaluable. You guys are awesome beta testers. Every disagreement obliges me to find a different way of connecting the dots of my position, which makes me think of saying things in a better way.

The Founding Fathers created a federal republic. They did not create a monarchy, an autocracy, or a democracy. Those among them who participated in combat operations waged war for 8 years to create the opportunity to build a republic. Generally they seem to have believed that they were freeing themselves from tyranny. Generally they seem to have believed that future Americans might also need to free themselves from tyranny. To these men, tyranny could have been Athenian democracy, which would have seemed half-reformed mob rule to the Founding Fathers. Tyranny could have been autocracy under its various forms.


Men who had fought, sacrificed, and risked their futures in order to establish a republic would hardly be expected to equip future would-be rebels (through the Second Amendment) to overthrow the republic. By the same token, the Founding Fathers can’t be imagined as supporters of the idea that in the process of overthrowing tyranny future would-be patriot revolutionaries would establish a new non-republic form of government. They viewed autocracy as tyranny and democracy as tyranny. How can we imagine that they would endorse revolution against tyranny to establish a different type of tyranny? In the eyes of the Founding Fathers, the purpose of a legitimate Second American Revolution, waged to secure the rights and liberties of the people as recognized by the Constitution of the republic established following the First American Revolution, would be reestablishment of a republic recognizing the same rights and liberties with a similar if not identical structure.


It follows then that a new republic, mirroring the old pre-despotic republic, would be an end derived from the means employed to revive it. Unrecognizant gunmen roaming the countryside imposing their will on a hapless citizenry is not a promising seed for the rebirth of a republic. It’s not impossible for a republic to emerge from such origins. Doubtless many advocates of the Red Dawn scenario fancy themselves ardent patriots. Yet their method—deriving their authority from possession of the means of violence and not the will of the body politic—surely would contaminate the end product. While it is possible that a strong and highly principled leader would come to power over a band of gunman operating in opposition to a despotic American State, the commitment of such a warlord to republican principles is far from assured. While we might imagine that a conglomeration of such warlords might yield a supreme leader committed to republican principles, this idea seems more hopeful than sober and pragmatic. The longer a war of popular liberation—for all intents and purposes a guerilla conflict similar to that waged by Mao or Castro—goes on, the greater the likelihood of mantle of republicanism slipping from the shoulders of the guerillas. If this be the only way for the nation to throw off the yoek of tyranny, the Founding Fathers probably would prefer this mode of revolution to no revolution. But their preferred choice would be a revolution that promptly restores American rights, liberties, and governance.


The most promising modality of armed revolution in regards to reestablishing the republic is the militia. Organized, trained, and disciplined citizen-soldiers operating together because the abuses of tyranny have compelled the electorate of the various states to act through their state elected officials en masse are far more likely to deliver a coup de main against the powerful federal forces than masses of anonymous civilians with guns. Without organization, training, discipline, supply, or anything approaching a master plan, a mass of armed civilians is very, very highly unlikely to deal a death blow to a despotic regime in control of the federal government and its military machine. Instead, millions of armed Whoppers will be subject to prompt annihilation wherever the federal government chooses to strike. Just as our politics and petty rivalries divide us today, so Whoppers will be divided into infinite factions—even if they can manage a more-or-less mass spontaneous uprising. Coordination of their activities would be all but impossible. Their mass would be meaningless without unity of command. Prompt efforts at cooption and amnesty by the despotic government would bleed the disorganized Whoppers of their manpower in short order. Without proper organization, training, and discipline, Whoppers would turn to settling local scores as always happens when the social contract breaks abruptly and violently.


Accustomed to operating under the command of the state chief executive through his chain of command, the militia can have its activities coordinated. Its challenges of logistics can be thought through ahead of time and on a scale to be militarily useful. Most importantly, the militia fights as a part of a system whose vitality and authority originate in the electorate. They are the troops of the little republics that are the various states. Armed revolution by these men is so much more likely to yield a restored American republic that it is silly to imagine that the Founding Fathers would have preferred armed revolution in any other way.