Erik Garcés: Fighting – Easier To Win When You Choose The Time And Place

I agree with most of this, however,

The millions of firearms being purchased in record numbers over the last four plus years is only one indicator. Congress has consistently held approval ratings in the single digits and the current administration was elected by a minority of the eligible voters. Mostly ignored by the controlled press was President Obama’s “winning” of 61,140,297 ballots from among 207,643,594 eligible voters, clearly indicating that almost ¾ of the citizenry refused to grant legitimacy to this government.

is a blatant lie or at the very least a significant misrepresentation. All those who voted the other way also grant legitimacy to the system so to say that fully 3/4 of the citizenry refuse to grant legitimacy to this government is hogwash. 3/4 of the voting population may not have wanted him in control of the government (whether too lazy to actually go vote for the other guy or those who truly refuse to legitimize this government actually is irrelevant to the point I'm making) but that is not the same thing as 3/4 refusing to grant legitimacy to this government. IF 3/4 of the eligible voting population of this country refused to grant this government legitimacy we would not be in the terrible situation we now find ourselves in. Now that's not to say that any better situation may or may not result. Voting as a member of the government system IS granting legitimacy to this government. It's either legitimate in ones eyes or it's not.

Any misrepresentation or half-truth can derail a message no matter how innocent but a blatant lie is unacceptable to me. I can't believe he published this with such poor choice of words. Words have meaning. Though as I said, I generally agree with the direction he is going with this piece.

Byte

 

Just a matter of time now.

 

If you don't vote, you have no right to b#$%ch about the outcome. i see voting as a responsibility. i will vote, even if it means missing work time.

 

Actually, you've got that bassackwards...voting puts you squarely on their playing field at the center of a corrupt system. Therefore, by voting, you give credence to that system; ie you should have no place to bitch (you used the word 'right' and I'm of the mind that you're using that word incorrectly). Your voting says you'll accept the outcome either way so you shouldn't bitch, not that you don't have any right. I don't accept that system nor the outcomes as valid or legitimate. And I damn sure have every right to say so! Our having different options, not just opinions, is what being free is all about. You can advocate that it's every person's responsibility to play within their system but what then are you advocating for? You believe it's my responsibility to wear the chains of that system lightly? Patrick Henry had some harsh, though not impolite, words to say about such people. I'm not nearly as eloquent or well spoken as he.

Maybe I'm splitting this hair too finely but words have meaning. Or they don't and you can abrogate my rights at a whim. I think not. Enjoy your system and the fruit it bears. It's not mine, nor will it ever be. I have no desire to pay for that system. I have no desire to be responsible for any of the black fruit it bear either. Nothing personal see. I only wish to own myself. Nothing more.

Byte

 

So your choice is to walk away? This system has checks and balances, and the ability to change. (That is crucial) If you don't like it the way it is, work for change. By NOT voting, you DO ACCEPT whatever comes, because you did nothing to stop it. It is no different than locking your doors at night. If you do nothing, you accept you may have visitors. You have acquiesced to what follows. It's a mugging without any sign of resistance. You are simply letting it happen.
I will not. For every Right there is a Responsibility. The Right to Vote, was not written into the bill of Rights. It was hard fought for, over time. It put men and women in prison, and many men died of violence. Beaten stabbed, shot, imprisoned, the fight continued. In the beginning, only the wealthy, white, land owning, males could vote. That vote (Equality for all) cost men their lives.

1A says you can say what you want, even if that proves to be silence.

I will not be silent.


History: The Right to Vote
The right to vote wasn't just handed to Americans. They had to fight for it.

By Tod Olson


Scholastic Update History: The Right to Vote | Scholastic.com
When the polls open on Election Day, every citizen over the age of 18 will be able to cast a vote. It is a right we take for granted, one that defines our nation as a democracy. But universal suffrage — letting everyone vote — did not appear overnight with the ratification of our Constitution. Two hundred years ago, you had to be white, male, and wealthy in order to vote. The three people profiled on these pages dedicated their lives to changing that fact. Without them, suffrage might still be the privilege of a chosen few.

Thomas Dorr

A strange sight greeted any resident of Providence, Rhode Island, bold enough to be out on an eerie June night in 1842. Two brass cannons stood on College Street, pointing through a dense fog toward the city arsenal. Behind the weapons massed a huge crowd of workers and artisans, ready to march against their own government. It was 60 years after the American Revolution had supposedly established liberty across the United States. And yet, according to the mastermind of this little revolution, tyranny still reigned in Rhode Island.
Thomas Dorr, the renegade state legislator who had filled the streets with angry citizens, liked to point out the gap between the nation's ideals and its political practice. The Declaration of Independence declared that "All men are created equal," and demanded that government represent the people's interests. But in order to cast a vote in the new democracy, one had to be white (except in a few Northern states), male (except in New Jersey, where women voted until 1807), and a landowner (nearly everywhere). In some places, that left more than 85 percent of the adult population out of the political process.
Dorr, strangely enough, was not one of those left out. A Harvard University graduate and the son of a wealthy merchant, he made an unlikely revolutionary. But after a majority of landowning, white male voters elected him to the Rhode Island legislature, Dorr decided it was wrong for Rhode Island's poor to be denied the vote.
In October 1841, Dorr and voteless delegates from around the state met illegally and drafted a state constitution that gave the vote to all white males over 21. Six months later, two separate elections were held. Landowning voters elected Samuel Ward King as governor, while voters empowered by the "People's Charter" chose Dorr. Rhode Island had split down the middle.

Showdown in the Fog

In June, backed by 3,000 supporters and two stolen cannons, Dorr set out in the fog to disarm what he called the "illegal" government of Governor King. According to one observer, the showdown kept residents up all night "with watchful eyes and aching hearts, to await in the most painful suspense the dread spectacle of our fair city wrapt in flames and her streets deluged with blood."
The suspense did not last long. When Dorr's rusty cannons failed to fire, nearly everyone began to drift off, leaving Dorr and 50 of his supporters to drag the artillery back to their headquarters. Faced in the morning by 1,500 armed supporters of the King government, Dorr had to admit defeat. At his trial for treason, he spoke like a true martyr. "The servants of a righteous cause may fail or fall in the defense of it," he told the court. "But all the truth that it contains is indestructible."
Dorr went to prison, won a pardon after two years, and faded from public life. His cause, however, did seem indestructible. States that had not already dropped the property requirement began to do so quickly. Rhode Island held out until 1888. But by the time of the Civil War, nearly every white man in the country — rich or poor, rural or urban — could go to the polls on Election Day.

Alice Paul

In the fall of 1917, the dingy cells of Virginia's Occoquan workhouse for women held an unusual group of prisoners: a 60-year-old nurse, a wealthy widow from Philadelphia's high society, and a few wives of important Washington newspapermen. The leader of this refined bunch of jailbirds — a quiet, determined Quaker with a Ph.D. — did not fit the mold either. But Alice Paul and her comrades were not in jail for the usual reasons. They were there for demanding — insistently, loudly, and with political skill — that American women be given the right to vote.
Women had campaigned actively for suffrage in America since 1848, when delegates met at Seneca Falls, New York, for the first Woman's Rights Convention. But convincing a majority of men to empower women was a tall order. Most people, male and female alike, believed that women were biologically unfit for politics. According to one orator at a mass meeting in Albany, New York, "A woman's brain involves emotion rather than intellect, [which] painfully disqualifies her for the sterner duties to be performed by the intellectual faculties." Even those who thought women might be capable of political activity, often decided that the family had to come first. "Housewives!" announced a Massachusetts journal, "You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout."
In the face of such resistance, the suffrage movement made slow progress. Washington state gave women the vote in 1910; California followed in 1911; Kansas, Oregon, and Arizona did so in 1912. By 1917, Alice Paul was tired of waiting.

Picketing the President

On January 10, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson emerged from the White House to find Paul and a few dozen other women standing silently outside the gates. The banners they held proclaimed their purpose: "Mr. President, What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?" and "How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?"
For weeks, Wilson's response was gentlemanly. He smiled and tipped his hat as he drove out; on one cold, rainy day, he invited the women in for tea. But when the U.S. entered World War I in April with high idealism, the pickets became a distinct embarrassment. In June, police began arresting the protesters, and Americans were treated to the spectacle of their finest middle-class ladies consigned to work clothes and manacles.
Conditions in the jail soon leaked out to the press. The food was nauseating; worms infested the oatmeal and the soup. Prison officials were less than hospitable. When Alice Paul began a seven-month term in October, she launched a hunger strike and was immediately placed in the psychiatric ward. There, amid shrieks and moans from the truly insane, she was force-fed three times a day through a tube in her throat and wakened hourly during the night with a flashlight.
With a major public-relations problem on his hands, Wilson pardoned all of the jailed suffragists in November. Two months later, he came out in favor of a suffrage amendment to the Constitution. In January 1919, the bill passed the Senate, and on August 26, 1920, after two-thirds of the states had ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, women won the right to vote.

Bob Moses

Bob Moses, still fresh from his job teaching high school in New York, hadn't been in Mississippi long before he found out how race relations operated there. In August 1961, in the tiny town of Liberty, Moses was doing his job as a civil rights worker, striding to the courthouse with two local black men who wanted to register to vote. On the way, they were intercepted by three whites, one of whom opened several gashes on Moses's head with the handle of a knife. Picking himself up, Moses continued on to the courthouse, where he and his two recruits were told the office was closed for the day. At a mass meeting later that week, with eight stitches in his head, the softspoken New Yorker laid out Mississippi's problem in no uncertain terms. "The law down here," he said, "is law made by white people, enforced by white people, for the benefit of white people. It will be that way until the Negroes begin to vote."

Unequal Opportunity

By the letter of the law, blacks in Mississippi had been allowed to vote since the passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868. Since then, however, every Southern state had found a way to keep blacks away from the voting booths. Blacks might have to interpret obscure sections of the state constitution and pay half a week's salary before they could register, while whites in the same town would simply have to sign their name. In the Southern states in 1964, fewer than 40 percent of black adults were registered to vote. In Mississippi, which stood dead last, the figure dropped to 6.4 percent.
By 1964, Moses and other members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had been going door to door for three years in the hot sun, trying to get people to register. Every week, police arrested and beat SNCC workers. In February 1963, Moses and two other organizers were driving along a dark road in the town of Greenwood when 13 .45-caliber bullets tore into their car, wounding the driver in the neck. By the summer of 1964, for all its trouble, the registration drive had yielded only 4,000 new voters.
Searching for a way to lessen the violence, or at least expose Mississippi to national attention, Moses brought 900 volunteers down from the North in a project that became known as Freedom Summer. "The death of a white college student would bring on more attention than for a black college student getting it," recalled co-organizer Dave Dennis. "That's cold, but that was speaking the language of this country." And when two white volunteers and a local black activist were killed at the start of the summer, Moses and Dennis were proved right. The media flocked to Mississippi to trumpet stories of racial violence across the United States.
The following year, a tired Bob Moses moved back North, frustrated with the slow pace of progress and increasing tensions between white and black activists. That summer, with Northern liberals up in arms over news of Southern racism, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law pledged the federal government to enforce equal access to the ballot in the South.
Despite his departure, Bob Moses left a lasting mark in rural Mississippi. In the words of Unita Blackwell, a Mississippian who was inspired to register by Moses, "For black people in Mississippi, Freedom Summer was the beginning of a whole new era. People began to feel that they weren't just helpless anymore."

 

The Liberty Sphere: Musings After Midnight--I'll see you in the war: Civil War II--Notes on the coming calamity to restore the Constitution

Good morning, dear Patriots, and welcome. The news is dire and the time is short. So, let's get right down to business.

It is my firm belief that civil war is now inevitable and imminent in America. As with the two world wars of the early 20th century, this will be "Civil War II"--which addresses issues the first Civil War failed to address.

Never before in modern history has there been so much talk even among elected government officials that we stand on the cusp of "insurrection," "a revolutionary uprising," and a "war between citizens on our own soil."

Yet here we are. Even Charles Krauthammer, who is not given to hyperbolic engagement in hysterics, stated that if the Obama Administration proceeds with its gun control plans, there will be insurrection.

And a trusted friend of mine who has significant friends and contacts both inside and outside the government has indicated that war is near and that many militia groups are now poised to fight it. "Let's get this over and done now so our children and grandchildren won't have to," is the sentiment being expressed.

If it were only the gun issue plaguing the current ruling class, civil war probably could be avoided with a simple step or two to back off draconian new gun control laws and gun bans, abandoning plans to register ammo purchases, and focusing instead on sensible security measures for the nation's children. Guns are used to protect the president, congressmen and senators, government officials, banks, money, and Hollywood stars.

Why not the children?

The answer is simple. To seriously protect the children the leviathans would have to admit that ordinary citizens need the unfettered right to keep and bear arms, as our Founders guaranteed in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This they are not willing to do. In their warped world view the people are not to be trusted with guns. Only the elites, the rich, the political ruling class, and the police and military should have access to guns.

King George and the British could not have said it better in the days leading up to the Revolutionary War in 1776.

But guns are not the only issue that has led America to the brink of civil war.

This president has told too many lies, exhibited too much unbridled arrogance, and overstepped the Constitutional limits on his power too often on a number of issues to be let off the hook. So have his enablers in Congress, most of whom are Democrats, although a few Republicans have helped him as well.

Fact 1: Obama won reelection with barely over 50% of the vote. His opponent won over 49% of the vote. This is hardly a "mandate." He does not have a blank check. But he acts like it. He thinks he is King. He acts like a dictator in the tradition of Hitler and Stalin who should be given anything he wants. He is like a big baby who never grew up and is sitting in his high chair banging on the table throwing tantrums. Any American president who displays such qualities does not deserve the office. He should be forcibly removed.

Fact 2: Obama lied to Speaker John Boehner on the debt negotiations. He told him in good faith prior to the election that he would compromise on his demands for tax increases, and accept four dollars in spending reductions for every dollar in tax increases. After the election, Obama changed the goal posts in mid stream. No longer would he settle for $800,000 in tax increases, but he demanded 2.7 trillion in tax hikes. And he insisted that any spending reductions be put off until later.

This is not a quality of good leadership, trustworthiness, or moral integrity. He is unfit for the office. In a different era he would be likened to a sleazy card shark on a Mississippi river boat. While some may admire such a person's ability to outmaneuver opponents using dishonest tricks of the trade, is this a quality we admire or want in a president? Really?

Fact 3: Obama wants to be able to increase the debt ceiling any time he wants, in any amount he wants, without the approval of Congress. Congress resisted that one, but now comes word that he will likely use the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to seize the power to be absolute dictator over the debt and spending. The amendment has never been used in such a fashion in U.S. history. But my sources say he is willing to go down that trail, opening up a plethora of legal challenges that will be tied up in the courts for years. In the meantime, Obama will spend the nation into complete bankruptcy with nobody in Congress or the Courts to stop him. They have shown they don't have the guts.

Patriots have the guts. He must not be allowed to do this, period.

Fact 4: Now that he has been reelected, Obama is appointing the most radical rejects he can find to top cabinet posts. John Kerry at State? Chuck Hagel at Defense? Jack Lew at Treasury? These are absolute clowns, buffoons who should not be serving anywhere in government at all. Each lie through their teeth. They are anti-military, anti-Jew, and anti-fiscal responsibility. And he expects the Senate to roll over and approve these lightweight Leftwing nutcases to the government. Woe be unto us if he gets to nominate new Supreme Court justices.

Republicans had best get in block mode and deny to Obama anyone and everyone he nominates. His choices exhibit a lack of competence and a deep disdain for America and its Constitution. This is why any Supreme Court nominee he sends to the Senate must be BLOCKED, even if it means tying up the Senate in endless filibusters. At all costs he must not be allowed to get whoever he wants in these important offices.

Fact 5: Obama is threatening to use the "executive order" to accomplish what Congress denies him...an abuse of the original intent of the executive order. This would amount to an outright dictatorship that bypasses elected officials in Congress. Such an act in matters of clear Constitutional precedent indicating the need for due process would amount to tyranny, a high crime under the Constitution, and punishable by whatever the Congress deems appropriate, up to and including the death penalty.

Will our castrated Republican leadership do anything about it if Obama goes down this path? I doubt it. That means only one thing, and you know what I am talking about...a citizen posse that will make arrests according to the terms of the 10th Amendment and others. Perhaps it is also time for the citizens to empower the Citizen Grand Jury, given that the judicial branch of government is failing in its duty to uphold the Constitution. The 10th Amendment, thus, gives THE PEOPLE the power to take action in such a circumstance.

Thus, while the gun issue is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, there are a number of issues driving the current unrest in the heartland of America. In short, we have had quite enough of Barack Obama and all who enable him to take unlawful and unconstitutional actions, and that includes Democrats in Congress, the Courts, and even 50% of our fellow citizens. Our patience has run thin with you for your willful ignorance, your willingness to sell your soul for a government payoff, your lack of basic values and common decency, and your practice of incessantly violating time-honored Constitutional principles that put clear limits on government and how far the "majority" can go. Unalienable rights are not subject to a majority vote.

I fully expect, therefore, that war will break out on our own soil in 2013, unless something drastic is done to reign in the arrogance of Obama and the Washington ruling establishment. These people must be stopped by the process that has been put in place to do so, or else the citizens will take matters into their own hands.

The official line in the sand is the gun issue. And thus, I have some definitive declarations that need to be considered by the powers that be before they go off on an unconstitutional rampage on the rights of the people.

1. We will not comply with any new gun control law.
2. We will not turn in any firearm that you suddenly decide to be "illegal." They are illegal only in your own delusional minds.
3. In the event you limit ammunition or require us to register to get it, we will create the biggest black market in the history of the world. We can make our own ammunition.
4. We will not comply with any new gun bans. We can make our own guns as well, even the type you wish to take from us.
5. The attempt to gain entrance to our homes to confiscate our guns and ammunition will be considered an act of war. We will not comply. Be prepared to kill us if you do such an asinine thing in what is supposed to be a FREE country. But then, also be aware that you will pay a heavy price for perpetrating such tyranny.
6. We will never fire on tyrannical government personnel first. But if we are fired upon first, you had best be prepared to live with what follows. War is hell.
7. Never again will we allow you to perpetrate a Waco, Texas massacre on citizens merely for trying to practice their religion, though unpopular. And we will never again allow you to pull a Ruby Ridge without swift, severe consequences.
One hundred million citizens own and keep 300 million firearms of various types. Do you honestly believe you have a chance to overwhelm us? Even if only three percent of the 100 million engage in battle, that's three million citizens -- nothing to sneeze at.

The citizen militia in the 1770s defeated the most powerful army in the world at the time -- the British army that presided over a worldwide empire.

And don't think that Civil War I is any indication of government power in this. The situation was entirely different. Southerners at the very outset were in a weakened position. Poverty was rampant. They were at a clear disadvantage.

This time, it won't be one region of the country pitted against another region. Patriot gun owners live in all 50 states, and the three percent are scattered throughout America. That means that if you are in Maine or Massachusetts, your neighbor may be one of the three percent who will fight you and the federal jackbooted government thugs.

And if any one of us is arrested, murdered, or harmed in any way in order to make an example of us, you had best beware and be prepared to go into hiding. Three million angry gun owners will rise up in defiance of your deadly tyranny and teach you a lesson that will go down in history as a definitive moment in our nation.

These words of mine are meant to force the powers that be to think twice and pause indefinitely before they embark on any action that will culminate in such violence in our streets. Mine is but a warning, a word to the wise. You need to know what's coming. And you need to rethink your current course of action.

We are dead serious. We are not going to allow you to blame us for what one idiotic, crazed lunatic does illegally with guns he obtained illegally. Do something to actually secure the schools rather than widow dress with a red herring (gun control and bans), and address the problem of the criminals and the lunatics. But leave the rest of us the hell alone. Or else.