Claire Wolf: Question of the Century Nominee

Claire asks a question, here:

One of the hardest things about living in a police state is watching other people be crushed by state power and feeling unable to do a thing about it.

We read Pastor Neimoeller’s famous lines as a warning to ourselves. But really, there’s not much chance of heeding the warning in a way that changes anything — except perhaps for the worse.

[...]

We can’t watch others be crushed without feeling a stab of their agony. We know, as others are crushed, that the crushing machinery gathers momentum and will roll toward our own lives. We know that not only we, but the ideals that sustain civilization, are being crushed. And that matters to us. Matters vitally, painfully, heartbreakingly. No matter what else we do, we can’t stand by and watch that happen without feeling an obligation — or at least a passionate longing — to do our all to stop it.

[...]

But how? What? And why does it keep rolling on so inexorably when so many are speaking out?

[...]

So we come back to the question: What’s the responsibility of a resident of a police state? If mere speaking out doesn’t change anything, what does? And how do we do it?

Read the whole thing. The article captures the dilemma of every moral person, just now. How can we make it stop?

Claire is smarter than most of us. We'll see more of her thoughts in the next installment (part 2+?).


But here is my response, today- We don't have to like it. But we cannot ignore it.
Like being raped while watching others being raped. Something must be done.

“Let me see your papers”, and “Just following orders” were phrases we heard about other countries and other times- Now we see it here.

One thing I have been doing (perhaps stupidly) is engaging local ‘enforcers’ in discussions, and also on-line. I commented several times at Massad Ayoob Backwoods Blog regarding the murder of Jose Guerena- But Mr Ayoob sides with the storm troopers ‘just doing their job’, ‘just following procedure’ as they kill and kidnap citizens. Every suspect must submit or die, in his weltanschau. Anyone who dares question the tactics is no longer viewed as a citizen/his employer, but rather as a “cop hater”. So they create their mental barriers, to allow them to do what they do, to continue to pay their mortgage, to continue to ‘follow orders’.

I now understand how the colonists felt when the Redcoats demanded obedience.

It’s like watching the gate guards at Auschwitz go to work. You talk to them about what they’re doing, and they are so keen on ‘just following orders’ that they have lost sight of civilization.

When reason doesn’t work, when the ballot box and the courts accelerate the tyranny, when tyranny advances if you continue playing by ‘their rules’… Then what? What did the colonists do? They left for a new land.
And when tyranny tried to ensnare them there- What did they do? And where did all the prominent Torries go, during and after the ‘troubles’?

“Sic Semper Tyrannis” is the Virginia State motto.

In the end, tyranny is about raw naked force.
Most of the signers of the Declaration were captured, killed, or bankrupt.
So the bottom line then, is that Liberty is about putting an end to raw naked force of tyranny.

..Slavery
..Liberty
or Death

Avoiding trouble only works if trouble leaves you and your family alone. But tyranny is the thing that does not leave you alone, it demands your subservience. Obey or be punished. Lightbulbs or poisonous mercury. No coal, no oil, no nukes, no jobs. Tax or death. Only the state can decide which businesses are allowed, what media may report, which children get scholarships, which special friends get favors and kickbacks.

Do we let our children be enslaved in debt? Do we let our heritage be robbed from them? Do we let our civilization be consumed by locust? Do we watch and do nothing but type and whine about it? Do we apologize to our children, for what we have enabled through inaction?

Do what you must, because you can do no other.

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“So we come back to the question: What’s the responsibility of a resident of a police state? If mere speaking out doesn’t change anything, what does? And how do we do it?”-Claire

We have been here before.

What did the colonists do?
Complain, petition, seek redress- for years, in every way possible. They tried avoidance, and not participating. But tyranny is intrusive, and it damaged all their lives, and ate out their substance.
And then, finally, they defended themselves against the aggressors who demanded obedience.

After many years of widespread conflict and suffering, the Torries were eventually purged, and their storm troopers too. Washington crossed the Delaware to kill one large group of mercenaries in their beds, on Christmas morning, as they slept.

That’s what happens when people start to say no to tyranny: Tyranny masses forces and comes to your village to take you guns, your property, your business, and your children’s future. And at some point- People say no. Some guy stands in front of a tank, or something. Or they gather guns and powder, and then stand on the village green- Just to say “Oh Hell No!”.

Saying “Oh Hell No!” invariably leads to ‘crossing the Delaware’ or ‘crossing the Rubicon’. That’s what comes next, when they won’t stop pushing, and we the people say “Oh Hell No!”.

They won’t stop pushing.
There’s going to be fight.
Let’s win it.
WRSA
Beans, Bullets, Bandaids, Brains, Balls, Buddies.
PT. Plan contingencies. Read Sun Tzu and your bible. Kiss your children good night when you tuck them in. We’ve been here before.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.”
-Alexander Tytler, 1770

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”
- John Adams

“Whenever the legislators endeavor 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 further obedience.”
- John Locke

“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”
- Voltaire

“You have Rights antecedent to all earthly governments; Rights that cannot he repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.”
- John Adams

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
- Robert Heinlein

“Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”
- Ronald Reagan

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
- Mahatma Ghandi

“Those who trade liberty for Security have neither”
- John Adams

“An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.”
- unknown

“Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
- Winston Churchill

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
- Albert Einstein

“He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.”
- Leonardo da Vinci

“Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare the truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.”
- Voltaire

“If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’re gonna murder you in your sleep.”
- Frank Zappa

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
- Ronald Reagan

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.”
- SCOTUS Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
– Voltaire

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were ever our countrymen.”
- John Adams

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my children may have peace.”
– Thomas Paine

“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“If you can’t hit them with the first 6 shots, what makes you think the next 6 are gonna be any different ?”
- Jeff Cooper

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Summary: We don't have to like it. But we cannot ignore it.
Like being raped while watching others being raped. Something must be done.

Raw naked power never yields, willingly. Resistance invariably means crossing the Delaware, eventually, for us or for our children and grandchildren.

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my children may have peace.”
– Thomas Paine

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Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.