Revolution.

I have read several articles in the media this week, some through Drudge, and some linked by the blogs I like to read.  The ones that inspired this post are here, here, and here.

Since last year, when Gerald Celente predicted the Second American Revolution, I have been waiting to see that prediction play out. I have not been displeased. I have seen success or near success of candidates running on platforms of states rights, interposition, and nullification. I have seen those terms and concepts brought back into near-common usage in the blogosphere and sometimes in the mainstream media. I have enjoyed watching the Obama inspired run on guns and the flood of applications for concealed carry permits around the country. I read with interest each time a citizen aware of his constitutional rights refuses to cooperate with the TSA or with a border control checkpoint set up in the middle of Texas (not anywhere near the border). I love and gladly joined the Oathkeepers organization.

I was grateful to read of bricks being through the windows of Democratic offices after the Looters voted to pass Obamacare. I applaud the stand being taken by those who consider themselves three percenters.

Those of us who stand against strong central government authority believe that a second American Revolution, as in the definition of a Revolution,is a returning to the starting point of the Republic. It must be a return to not only the original intent of the founders of the Republic, but to the Jeffersonian original intent.  The only mandate of government is to protect an individual's life and their property.   If you share this goal, you may be uncertain what one person can do, or what you in particular should do.  Each person has to judge for himself what his tipping point is.  At what point do I change from passive to active?

I believe in proactive self defense and passive resistance to what has become onerous and unreasonable government authority. Above all, don't give the government an excuse to come down on you. You dont give the TSA guy lip when you are standing in line at the airport with your wife and kids.  That is a lose-lose situation.  If you and four buddies have the opportunity to tar and feather an IRS man, then run him out of town on a rail, without revealing your identities, maybe you got something there.

The government is, by definition, the essence of Statism, and since the Congress and the Executive branch of the government now openly defy their Constitutional Oath, it is up to each of us to do what we can to try to preserve what we believe to be our birthright.

What does this mean practically? First of all, we are seeing in elements of the Tea Party movement, the effort of like minded people to alter the status quo through the soap box and the ballot box.  I personally have little faith in this process, since replacing a Democratic Dark Statist with a Republican Lite Statist just to teach those darn Democrats who is boss is an exercise in futility.  Witness the progression of American politics from one progressive to another progressive administration, each increasing the power of the executive, increasing their use of executive orders, each administration pushing Congress to find more individual rights to suspend (all in the guise of protecting you from a foreign menace --

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy--James Madison)  Secondly, there are passive ways of resisting the federal government, such as avoiding military service, avoiding employment in federal jobs or really any positions that originate from tax dollars (read: someone else's productivity pays your income, for there is no other way to think of what any government job is), asserting your constitutional rights at traffic stops, at border crossings, in dealings with any government representative, from IRS to census workers.

Third, and last, there is physical resistance.  That is, physical force responding to physical force.  Government is, by definition, a "legal" monopoly on force.  Taxes, conscription, court orders and the like, are enforced ultimately at the point of a gun.  One can respond with force, or more passively like Hank Rearden at his trial for selling Rearden metal to a colleague in violation of a federal directive in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:

 One of the judges, acting as prosecutor, had read the charges.

"You may now offer whatever plea you wish to make in your own defence," he announced. Facing the platform, his voice inflectionless and peculiarly clear, Hank Rearden answered:
"I have no defence."
"Do you --" The judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be that easy. "Do you throw yourself upon the mercy of this court?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"What?"
"I do not recognise this court's right to try me."
"But, Mr. Rearden, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime."
"I do not recognise my action as a crime."
"But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your Metal."
"I do not recognise your right to control the sale of my Metal."
"Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?"
"No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."

He noted the stillness of the room. By the rules of the complicated pretence which all those people played for one another's benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.
"Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?" asked the judge.
"No. I am complying with the law - to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself, where no defence is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice."
"But, Mr. Rearden, the law provides specifically that you are to be given an opportunity to present your side of the case and to defend yourself."
"A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognised by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very well. Do it." "Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle - the principle of the public good."
"Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that 'the good' was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to e their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it - well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."

One can willfully cross the line from law abiding citizen to felon when you reach the point that the laws passed are unreasonable, unconstitutional, and are essentially a threat to your life and property.  When in a situation where you are confronted by the legal system that backs up unconstitutional seizures of personal property or enforces nonvoluntary labor, make sure you don't sanction their act or cooperate with their system by trying to defend yourself.  You have become a political prisoner for defending your person or property.  Your arguments in their courtroom are irrelevant to them.  Just try to communicate with the people, tell your story to someone you know will get it out to the internet.  

One can paint grafitti on federal signs or let the air out of the tires of federal vehicles, or put a brick through the congressman's window.  I dont necessarily agree with each of these things, I am simply listing options.  Whatever you think you must do, make sure that there is some gain to be had by committing the act.  If there is no tangible gain, dont stick your neck out just because you feel you cant sit still any more.

As far as responding to force with force, it has to be under the right circumstances.  It cannot be one guy committing suicide by federal cop, or the group equivalent thereof.  It must be in response to obvious violations of personal physical rights or violations of private property by federal officials, particularly if the violations are occurring because of a person's political beliefs.  Force should be initiated when there is a reasonable expectation of piecemeal and compartmentalized victory.  Maintain your anonymity whenever possible so that you can fight the next day as well.

The hot phase of a Second American Revolution would have to be a war of attrition and noncompliance.  We, I would insist, should never initiate a hot war against the US government. That is, no large coordinated attack should initiate the conflict.  That was the mistake of Fort Sumter, with due respect to Southern honor, because the South firing on the Federal fort could be successfully spun in the northern press to the detriment of the Secessionist cause (of course I have the benefit of hindsight, and live in the world of the Yankee, which is without honor). Firing on Fort Sumter enabled Lincoln to raise his army of invasion.  If the federals had fired first on the South Carolinians because they were laying nonviolent siege to the Fort, and the Southern States had just continued to withhold their tax/tariff payments to the federal government, if they had stopped participating in the federal government and withdrew their representatives, and if they had simply repulsed any incursion into the territory of a seceding state with the least force necessary to accomplish the task, and had not allowed themselves to be drawn into major battles and risk the body of their army, the South would have outlasted the North.  They would have had a much better chance at succeeding in the goal of "to be let alone" as President Jeff Davis had wanted.

In our day, we must absorb these lessons, and the lessons of other successful insurgencies.  A people that both passively and actively resists an occupier, bleeding the occupier whenever it is practical, will eventually render the occupier anemic and unable to continue initiating force.  It would be long and painful, but what is the alternative?

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One major problem:  if like minded people wanted to coordinate their activities, and wanted to avoid moles and false flag operations by the feds, and wanted to have safe communication such as PGP protected forums online, does anyone have any ideas how that could be accomplished?  Once set up, how to safely recruit without bringing in agents of the government?