"How do we win back our liberty"\

A mom barrades herself inside her house with a gun to prevent the state from taking her child. A man, in continual conflict with a predatory IRS, flies a plane into an IRS building. A man fed up with nit-picky rules, regulations, and fines, takes a gun to a city council meeting and shoots council members and the mayor. A man and woman, believing their money is their own, use weapons to prevent a small army of police from taking them into custody for tax evasion. In all cases, the citizens who took the violent route failed to achieve anything positive. They lashed out without hope of changing anything for the better, without hope of winning,...without hope at all. It was, in fact, the lack of hope that drove them to ultimately futile violent acts. And they ended up dead or incarcerated. There is no example in the U.S., or at least none I can think of, of a successful violent challenge to any government apparatus. The governments admittedly initiated the original acts of violence through their decrees and bureaucrats backed up by gun-wielding police. The rare violent response by a citizen has always been countered by overwhelming force intended to achieve compliance at any cost, including death. When advocates of liberty are made aware of these authoritarian acts, they talk of proper and effective responses that should have or could have been used. One common thread is to talk about the necessity of working through the system to change laws and get control of run-away government, or to initiate non-violent civil disobedience. Another equally common thread is to talk about countering violence with violence, the Second Amendment, and spearheading a new American revolution. Neither line of thought is entirely satisfactory. The non-violent approach has failed for 200 years to stem the growth of government and the police state. The U.S. government has blatantly ignored individual and mass protests. The great Vietnam War protests failed to move our government to end the war. No protest in the last 10 years has changed government policies one iota. Indeed, even peaceful protests have been suppressed by lines of black-clad-overstuffed-ninja-turtle police. Think Pittsburgh. Non-violence= failure. The violent approach has also failed, as the government has the resources to bring overwhelming force to bear upon any group or individual that tries to challenge it with force. This approach not only fails, but fails epicly, as the participants are no longer free, or alive, to fight another day. The question "How do we win back our liberty" seems to have no viable answer. Violence, as well as non-violence, fails. Or do they? Perhaps it is the purity of each response that is the root of our inability to move the government to change. The reality of the world is that force, or the threat of force, is the prime language of persuasion between criminal and victim. Try keeping your property safe from a mugger by being passive. It doesn't work. But, without projecting indiscriminate violence, a mugging can be prevented through the implied threat of force: travelling in groups, unafraid eye-contact, hidden hands, etc. The unspoken possibility of forceful reaction makes the mugger look for an easier target. An entire society with that attitude makes the mugger look for a new line of work. Mass numbers, with a willingness to resort to or support the use of defensive force, seems to be the combination most likely to win. However, the mass numbers must be so great and the determination to hold their ground by all means so deep that they will overwhelm the ability of the government to marshal a successful violent response. The number of people who must turn out during protests must double, triple, quadruple. The liberty movement is not there yet. We must grow in numbers and activity. That can only happen by talking. It is not polite in American society to discuss politics. Only sports, American Idol, and DWTS are allowed. We must violate that cultural taboo and do the unthinkable: talk. We must induce our friends and neighbors to be incensed by government overreach. As our numbers grow, we must keep in mind that it is not merely the numbers, but the underlying threat of force that will give teeth to the movement. Ironically, a premature show of force will not help the movement. It will merely act as a lightning rod for the police as they make an example out of the unprotected few who put their lives on the line. We must get them to turn out and be physically present to show their support for liberty. Only then can the government and police apparatus be confronted. The confrontation with 'security' forces must result in the withdrawl of those forces if it is to intimidate them. Winning means holding the battleground and forcing the other party to vacate. If the mass movement is insufficient, and if their willingness to physically intimidate the police is not present, the state will win and the oppression will be worse than ever. So talk of using violence against the state to defend against the IRS, DEA, CPS or other agency, is doomed to failure and worse, until and unless a large mass of people are ready to take up our cause. We are not necessarily talking about civil war. In fact, I believe civil war is just a sign that the mass movement was activated too soon, before enough numbers were assembled. Civil war or violent revolution brings with it the very real possibility of something worse in place of the current government. Before we can confront the state, we must have numbers. To get numbers we must educate ourselves, then our neighbors, then have our neighbors educate their neighbors. Only when we have reached a critical mass can the tide of authoritarianism, militarism, police state fascism be turned back. So talk. Talk. Talk. Read. Talk some more. Maybe they'll be sick of you, maybe you'll be the crazy neighbor/friend/relative...until one day you're not anymore. One day, if your understanding of the world is correct, you are the seer, the leader, the inspiration, the teacher.