Saturday, July 10, 2010

Oath Keepers and A Conversation with a Cop

I was just in a local eatery ordering a sandwich.  There was a line, when I entered, so I gazed around at the other patrons and noticed a lone cop sitting at a table, munching through a bag of chips.

Since I knew it would be a bit before I would be able to order, I stepped over to the cop’s table.  I took off my sunglasses, looked in his eyes, put out my hand, and said, “Hi, I’m John Venlet,” and sat right down.

The cop was somewhat taken aback by my abrupt introduction, and with my making myself immediately comfortable at his table, but he shook my hand and returned my greeting.  He didn’t have to give me his name, as it was on his uniform, but I will not state it here.

Anyway, after that brief introduction, I immediately asked him if he had heard of, or was a member of, the Oath Keepers.  The cop looked at me, a bit puzzled, and said, “Do you mean Promise Keepers?”

I replied to him, “No, the Oath Keepers.”  The cop shook his head, so I gave him a brief tutorial on the Oath Keepers, and their Declaration of Orders We Will Not Obey,” and then asked him, point blank, “If the government passed legislation ordering that the populace be disarmed, would you obey that law?”

I am pleased to report that the cop, without hesitation, replied to me, “If that happened I would immediately quit this job.”

Though that pleases me, it caused me to wonder if the message of the Oath Keepers, specficially in regards to the Second Amendment, is actually reaching those individuals acting as enforcers for the State, and whether the answer I received in regards to disarming the populace under orders from the State, would provoke as quick and firm a response from other individuals so employed.

Additionally, I determined that I need to be more proactive in disseminating the message of liberty and freedom out on the street, and not just at this blog.

That is all.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 11:47 AM
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Starve The Beast, Don’t Feed Off It

Mayberry, at Keep It Simple Survival, has a post up titled Where I Left Off…, which is an extension comment to this post, which was inspired by a post titled Revolution Weighs Heavy On My Mind, which is posted at The Elector Retards.

Mayberry’s primary suggestion, to take back the freedom wrested from individuals by the State, in the post Where I Left Off…, is to starve the beast.

“My suggestion, as always, is simply starve the beast. It’s the one thing we all can do that won’t make for a lot of unnecessary martyrdom. For now at least. Maybe concentrate on that aspect, starving the beast. What taxes can you minimize or avoid? What items can you make/grow/trade/barter for to avoid feeding corporate and government coffers? Reduce, reuse, recycle, it ain’t just for hippies anymore.Next, look for ways to circumvent draconian legislation. Think like a moonshiner. Bucking the law is a proud American tradition! Much can be simply ignored, but the most invasive laws require a little “creativity” to get around. Trust me, when enough people start doing this (besides CONgress, that is), the spark will be struck. CONgress hates “scofflaws”. They don’t like competition…. “

I have no argument with Mayberry’s suggestion, above, and I have reduced my feeding of the beast by reducing my income, over the past eight years, from over six figures, to just below 20K, in addition to other acts wherein permissions allegedly required from the State, are ignored.

Further into the post, Mayberry continues in this vein.

Emulate the government, steal all you can from them while you still can. Apply for every “program” under the sun. Cut every corner. Lie. Cheat. What the hell, CONgress does it! Get some of your money back. It will help implode the system faster. Use the collectivists’ Cloward Pivens Plan against them. Suck the beast dry, and use the proceeds to prepare. Bring the Ponzi scheme down by starving it of it’s fuel: your money. Our money.

This suggestion, which is discussed quite indepth in a Claire Wolfe post titled About those Cockapoos…, should be rejected.  I do not think the admonition to “emulate the government”  by “applying for every “program” under the sun,” is principled, regardless of the justifications offered by Mayberry.  In fact, I think that following this suggestion only further burdens and punishes each and every individual who actually desires that liberty, opportunity, and freedom be restored to America, and who may actively be working toward that end.

I know it sounds trite, but two wrongs do not make a right.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 10:23 AM
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Harden Your Hearts

It’s a beautiful morning here in West Michigan.  The temperature is a pleasant 75 degrees, the sun is shining, a light breeze caresses and individuals are walking their dogs, jogging, or sitting on their back porches enjoying a cup of coffee.  All seems well in the world, but this sense of wellness is a facade, and the facade is collapsing, though patches are daily made to make the facade appear whole.

Many individuals do not want to see, understand, that the facade is what it is, a facade, and this fact complicates the potential consequences of the facade’s collapse.  All seems well in the world, but it is not.

I think the time is coming when individuals are going to have to harden their hearts against their fellow humans.  I pray that it were not so, but my prayers, whether falling on deaf ears, or simply unanswered, seem for naught.

Francis W. Porretto instigates my above thoughts in a post titled Making Amends: A Mini-Manifesto, which is worth taking the time to read and ponder.  A portion of Porretto’s post.

When—not “if”—the Corporate Social-Fascist State exhales its bloody final breath, the economy that results will not have provisions for those dependents’ support. As they will be unable to support themselves, their continued existence will depend wholly upon the kindness of others. But, given the immense damage that’s been done to our economic foundations by Progressive policies, the crash is overwhelmingly likely to be massive. Many of us who can support ourselves on our own abilities will be hard pressed. Many others will disdain to succor of persons they deem complicit in their own fates.

There will be suffering. It will be massive. Some will die.

Yet the reckoning is at hand. It cannot be delayed much longer: even if the rising some foresee should fail to materialize, our current profligacy and laissez les bon temps roulez insouciance cannot last more than a year or so from here. No matter how well politically connected you are, you cannot consume what no one has produced.

Harden your hearts.  This sounds mean spirited and uncaring, but if you care for freedom and those you love, you will have to harden your heart.  As the character The Outlaw Josey Wales says,

Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 08:27 AM
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“Kidulthood”

Do you tell your children what to do, or, is it the other way around?  I know at my house, I laid down the rules, which is not to mean that I would not consider my children’s thoughts regarding rules, as they were growing up, but if their thoughts were off base, they were told so directly.  There was no namby pambying in the Venlet household.

Oh that this were so out in the world of politics, but alas it is not, as this story plainly points out.

Consider Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where a classful of determined seven-year-olds started a campaign, which 19 months later convinced state legislators to ban the sale of novelty lighters. The kids, of course, are proud of themselves, and the politicos are behaving as though it’s reasonable and even admirable for middle-aged lawmakers to seek counsel from people who still worry about the monsters under their bed.

It all started when a woman took her three-year-old to a dollar store, and the toddler picked up a novelty lighter shaped like a lion. Her mom apparently bought the lighter, since it later became the mascot of the second-graders’ campaign to ban it.

Children definitely shouldn’t play with lighters; if your kid wants a plastic lion, don’t give her one that makes fire. But the New Jersey law doesn’t simply ban the sale of novelty lighters to children, or mandate stores display them on high shelves out of a toddler’s reach; the lighters are banned for everybody in the state, on the premise: “If kids can’t handle this, adults can’t have it either.”

Kids should not be telling adults what to do, and adults who allow children to dictate ridiculous ideas into legislation are worse than infantile.

From a Jennifer Abel story in the Guardian titled Welcome to kidulthood, linked via her website Ravings of a Feral Genius.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 07:53 AM
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Mild Mannered Photographs of Executioners - Uncanny Resemblance

Dr. Donald Berwick.

Adolph Eichman.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 07:47 AM
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A History of Aiding and Abetting “The Edarkenment”

Mike Soja points to a National Review (NR) piece written by Tiffany Jones Miller.  The piece is titled The Progressives’ Legacy of Bankruptcy.

Mike notes that the NR piece is subtitled “The roots of our current crisis,” and states,

That’s a keeper.

And indeed it is, and this brings to mind the strike the root quote from Thoreau.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

The NR piece should be read in its entirety, as it lays out the history of “The Endarkenment” of America quite clearly, and it also plainly articulates the progressive ideology which still, today, is turning individuals into mindless automatons of the State.

What follows, particularly those words in bold lettering, is the mantra of the State, whether the tail being worn is a donkey’s, or an elephant’s.

In a 1903 survey of the “recent tendencies” in American political thinking, Charles Merriam — founding father of the American Political Science Association and future head of FDR’s National Resources Planning Board — well captured the destructive aspect: “The individualistic ideas of the ‘natural right’ school of political theory, indorsed in the Revolution,” he wrote, “are discredited and repudiated. . . . In the refusal to accept the contract theory as the basis for government, practically all the political scientists agree. The old explanation no longer seems sufficient, and is with practical unanimity discarded. The doctrines of natural law and natural rights have met a similar fate.” Merriam’s conclusions, which are striking in their directness, were by no means unique. “Across the range of Progressive writings, and throughout this entire period,” as political theorist Eldon Eisenach observes, “one finds a persistent attack on rights and individualism as worthy foundations for American national democracy. . . . The rejection of natural rights as a foundation for moral or political reasoning was not even considered to require a defense.”

As Mike at Cold Fury notes in his post after reading the NR piece.

The noxious weed of Progressivism that is currently strangling our nation has deep roots indeed. It’ll take more than just a little pruning to disentangle ourselves from it.

Indeed, though more individuals are now awakening to the danger posed by the State to individual freedom, the alarm has been going off for over 100 years.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/10 at 06:23 AM
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