So, let me pose one question. I'm a reasonable man and I have changed my opinions on things, so give me your best argument. And my liberal friend's argument was nowhere near a "best argument". It was name-calling at best. But give it a go, somebody. I do listen to rationale arguments. That's how I went from being a leather fringe, moccasin booted, headband-wearing long-haired youth to being a member of my state's public transit advisory committee at the head of a massive bipartisan local rural transportation initiative. Here goes:
My friend's argument as best I understand the argument, goes something like, "None of us could resist the government with private weapons if they want to take us down. The Chris Dorner case proves it and proves we're nutty for thinking so, therefore there is no reason for us to cling to our guns."
So let me ask my pro gun control friends something. Why did the Russians, arguably a very powerful nation, fail to subdue Afghan rebels armed with personal weapons and smuggled small arms? Why also have American forces, arguably the most powerful in the world, failed to eliminate the Talaban resistance in Afghanistan. If government can always subdue privately armed citizens, why haven't they done it?
For that matter, why did we retreat from Vietnam? It wasn't the massed forces that beat us there. We won every single military engagement we fought with Communist regulars. It was the guerrillas that we couldn't beat. The citizen soldiers with private weapons (the kind that we would make illegal here if the President has his way.)
Are you saying that the United States government wouldn't have considerable trouble rolling into, say East Texas, and disarming or subduing the millions of armed East Texans living out in the woods there? That it was only the Taliban that was capable of resisting government forces? Americans, who whipped a nation ten times its size (TWICE) largely with private weapons, couldn't provide a creditable resistance?
I'm here to tell you that the only way the government could suppress a real rebellion in East Texas would be to nuke the whole region and what American soldier would willingly press the button to wage that kind of war against his own kin and his neighbors. How many would join them? The only reason there hasn't been such a war is because these armed citizens are honest, hard-working law-abiding citizens. So why would you want to disarm the good guys is what I want to know?
An armed citizenry gives the government pause when it decides to use even what the president called for in a campaign speech "a constabulary force as powerful as the US military" to suppress disagreement. That ability to suppress citizen disagreement with government policy is a two-edged sword. It threatens both Democrats and Republicans, Green Party and Tea Party.
It's all been done before. In post-Tsarist Russia the citizens were first disarmed in the name of public safety and then they went for mental health-based crowd control solution. If you disagreed with the Communist authorities, you were dubbed mentally ill and sent to the gulags in Siberia to get some fresh air and exercise. If you pulled out your old rifle from your days in the Army during WWII, you could be declared insane and off to the gulags you went.
This is not paranoia. This is history. What conservatives fear, and rightly so, is a steady creep toward full-fledged socialism and historically, full-fledged socialism has never ended well for anyone. We believe the President and his advisors when they say things about what they want to do. We don't dismiss them as liars just because we can't really believe they're saying when they talk about collectivism, nationalizing industry, and collapsing the economy deliberately to provide an avenue for the establishment of socialism as the law of the land. When they talk about redistribution of wealth, getting rid of guns, universal housing, healthcare and taking over the energy industry for our own good, we conservatives believe them. We think the insanity is not to. We recognize the pattern we see here and we look at societies where the things they are talking about have been done. Russia - 56 million dead, China 160 million dead, Cambodia - who knows how many million dead and the list goes on and on.
"Ah, but..." the socialists argue. "We'll never choose leaders like Stalin and Mao and Pol-Pot. We'll choose wise leaders like Obama, Biden and Clinton." They can be trusted.
Is that right? Remember, the Russians trusted Trotsky and he wasn't a bad guy. Stalin had him killed. They trusted Lenin and he was only a bit more dictatorial. He died rather younger than expected and Stalin maneuvered himself into place and started making deals with Hitler and later, slaughtered anyone who disagreed with him.
"Power does not corrupt," wrote Frank Herbert. "Power attracts the corruptible."
I've never understood how the left can talk about how our government cannot create democracies nor deliver justice at the point of a sword everywhere else in the world and yet be so eager to take away our own swords and deliver them into the hands of the government in our own country.
"Insanity," pointed out Albert Einstein, "Is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Under the US Constitution, our nation has become the wealthiest, most powerful and free nation on Earth. People risk their lives to get here for the chance to live in freedom and to have the opportunity to make their fortunes. We are the last refuge for them. If we fall, the free peoples of the Earth have no place else to go. If we fall, I believe human liberty falls. The corruptible are lurking at the gates waiting for the first opportunity to seize power over their fellow man. If we fall, it will be a long time before we can win it back our freedom.
Just one man's opinion...
Tom King
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