Good luck, Stewie! We’re expecting a blizzard almost as bad as ’78 here in New England tomorrow. Wouldn’t want you and your merry band of functional retards to catch the sniffles, so bundle up, y’hear? Just make sure to keep those itchy trigger fingers clear. Maybe them evil gun-grabbing Commies will make their move in the blinding wind and snow!

Racist, crypto-fascist pigs. The lot of them.

Makes me miss dear James, though :(

The paranoia and hatred of the government (and the President) is certainly palpable with these folks. It’s a shame they aren’t more concerned about how certain corporate interests have managed to impoverish so many (albeit with the help of “bought” politicians) and are now seeking to dismantle such resources as the public schools and the delivery of mail.

By all means, Aron, I think they should hold a number of complex drills in white-out conditions in the Northeastern states to demonstrate their commitment to their stupid guns. Because educating themselves regarding the far more pressing issues and threats that the people in our country face would require reading and thinking, and it would be all hard and stuff.

As a matter of fact, if the reading thing doesn’t work, and they prefer to impress us with their prowess as manly men, they could perhaps forget their lame mustering and take their fight straight to Winter Storm Nemo (HA! Some prissy sprinkle of snow named after a Disney Cartoon Character; How bad could it be?) and cross the Delaware River and any other ice-choked, swift currented streams in their respective areas. And, to be really impressive, they should make sure that they all stand up heroically and George-Washington-like in their bass boats (or whatever), brandishing their weapons and dispensing with those sissy-Maritime-Commission-approved lifejackets when they do so. I’m sure that we will all be very impressed by the survivors.

For the 2nd Amendment purists, how can you have a well regulated militia without having regulations? I refer, of course, to the first dozen words of the Amendment that most gun nuts seem to skip in order to get to the fun parts.

Coral, I think they named that storm after *Captain* Nemo, from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

They’re entitled to demonstrate. In most jurisdictions, they are not entitled to demonstrate open carry, and even where permitted, it wouldn’t be prudent. They’re not entitled to shoot.

Clearly, they are being whipped up and even sponsored. Don’t know who’d do it. Now, excuse while I get the chicken feed. The Koch is crowing.

I’m so tired of hearing about these crazy gun nuts who think that their fringe interpretation of the Constitution is the only correct one. This fantasy that they believe in, regarding marshal law, the new world order, and gun confiscation, will never happen. It’s not feasible to go door to door collecting all the guns. Nor is it feasible to round up every American and place them in some kind of internment camp.

The paranoia that people like Alex Jones pedals is causing a lot of people to make irrational decisions. It is also making Mr. Jones a tone of money from selling books, movies, don’t tread on me flags, etc. It is also making the gun and ammunition manufactures a tone of money. No one loves President Obama more than the NRA and the gun industry. They are making millions off of brainwashed suckers.

Those of us looking at the US from the outside wonder just how a nation ever became successful when you look at the type of people that attend these rallies.

It would be amusing if they didn’t have such easy access to guns.

Well, we’ll see what’s in the news when the day is over.

Rey –

Yes, I know that the folks at the Weather Channel most likely got the name of this storm from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but I am expecting that a rather large percentage of the population (especially non-readers who aren’t into old movies) are unacquainted with the character, Captain Nemo, and will instead be thinking of the cartoon fish.

On a slight tangent — I understand why the Weather Channel has decided to start naming significant winter storms, but the selection of storm names is always a bit problematic. For example, Winter Storm Lavinia just doesn’t seem as menacing as Winter Storm Brutus. Though actually, now that I think of it, Nemo, if one thinks of Captain Nemo, should be viewed as having the potential for a cunning and devastating attack. Nemo the fish, not so much (as far as people’s association with the name, anyway).

rey, apparently openly carry firearms is compltely legal in Virginia as some gun nuts here got quite a bit of press by demonstrating by marching with their guns around the parking lots at Dulles and National airports. For some unknown reason (like the fact that it took place not long after 9/11 when people were very jumpy about terrorism) that made a lot of travelers very nervous to see idiots marching around with guns at an airport but under state law they could do it as long as they didn’t set foot inside of the terminals with their guns.

They apparently turned to marching around the airport parking lots after their initial strategy of going to bars with their guns hanging out out west style failed to generate enough press.

Yup, let’s take all the guns from the people so history can repeat itself without too much chaos in the fine progressive minded passion as all commenters so far are eluding to. After all, the tens of millions of murdered and formally disarmed people of history can’t all be wrong, eh? “roll eyes” By golly, we had Stalin’s Communist Russia, Mao’s Communist China, Hitler’s Third Reich, Imperial Japan, Pol Pot, etc. along with today’s examples of North Korea, Iran, and possibly even Venezuela’s despotic regimes and let’s not forget about the already disarmed, fish in a barrel countries such as Austrailia, Canada, & the United Kingdom to name a few who are in lay and waiting for the inevitable.of these great historical outcomes. By golly, if you really think about it, those militant founding father’s should have been disarmed from the get go because if it wasn’t for them, the progressives would already have their 500,000,000 maximum people population and their utopia of total state rule in their hands by now. Instead, they now have to deal with those pesky, over 100,000,000 firearms owner’s along with the recent and ongoing absolute highest number of newly acquired firearms and ammunition run in the history of the world to date going on as we speak. Are you progressives sure you don’t want to rethink your ends justifies the means mentality? I’m just saying! ;-)

Geegollygosh, Leonard, the appearance of someone like you saying something like that was so predictable, we were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Aussie Andrew, you feel like fish in a barrel yet? Also, looks like someone’s threatening to shoot us again. Real slice of Americana for you.

Wow, so much finger pointing, name calling and opinion giving in this article. If you would like to have a real conversation with an Oath Keeper, why don’t you do so instead of taking things out of context? You may think they’re ALL nuts because things a marginal portion of the group discusses possibilities, but that, in itself, is being close-minded. Something you accused them of. As for being right-wing extremists, they’re anything but. Right-wing extremists are for corporate greed and the like, but Oath Keepers have nothing to do with that. In fact, they have more in common with the Occupy movement than you could ever imagine. There is a common goal between the two of you and this division of the people is only hurting the People of America, while the overpowered corporations and government that ignores its peoples cries keep chugging along. To me, it seems as though we’re being divided up to point the fingers at one another while ignoring the real issue.

You’re going to need their guns and balls whenever the conglomerates get their claws so deep in Washington that there’s no turning back. Seriously, find a common ground and remember that we need each other more than we need our current government.

The hatred and anger of some commenters here for these people who view the world differently than you is palpable. It’s ironic that this page is called “Hatewatch,” since that’s mostly all I ever see here.

I do find myself thinking of Brother Joseph.

Those of you who mean well, bear in mind that the ones who threaten to shoot us from time to time have made a certain impression.

Awwww, did our derision hurt poor little Larry’s sensibilities? I’m so sorry!

But not really. If you can’t take the heat, don’t join extremist fringe groups, stupid.

And Echo Chamber, I have spoken to ‘Oath Keepers.’ The only truly sane one I’ve ever encountered, our dear friend James, changed his opinion of the group when we explained their true motives. They are a danger to this nation. And you are aiding and abetting them.

This is a joke it has to be. You people would sell yourselves into slavery if it would get you away from people who want to be free.

A well regulated militia must be regulated by the people and not government. This should be obvious to anyone who understands history and the purpose of the 2nd amendment.

Government should not regulate a militia who’s purpose is to defend against an oppressive government. That would be counter-intuitive.

You people sound like you’d support genocide against the “crazies” who dissent. It’s disgusting how you talk about people who are peacefully protesting what they rightfully view as unconstitutional. Then again you are probably the same people who were against the war when Bush was in office and now support it with Obama.

Centralized power is the bane of liberty. This is exactly what has been happening. Why do large corporations that fuck us get government benefits, handouts, and subsidies? Why does our educational system continuously degrade every year, while getting more expensive? Why don’t government regulators do their fucking job? How do you explain evidence of high level corruption in government regulatory bodies such as the FDA? How do you explain Afghanistan’s increase in opium production since the USA started it’s occupation? How do you explain MK ULTRA and Iran Contra? How do you explain the documented evidence of use of false flag events in THE US GOVERNMENT? Is the state your deity or are you just asleep? How can you possible support your government knowing how corrupt it is? How can you possibly support their actions without doubting their motives? Do you seriously think they are working for you?

Don’t worry your government loves you.

My Eric, that’s quite the enormous strawman you’ve built! And all without taking any medications!

Keep on watching Alex Jones. He loves you. And he loves your money even more.

There is so much ignorance and plain stupidity blogged on this site it’s truly amazing. All I know to be true is that it’s going to be American Patriots like Stewart Rhodes and III Percent of the American populace (same as in the American Revolution against the tyrannical king of England) who are the TRUE Guardians of this Constitutional Republic, who will be ready to kick some major ass when the shtf. I just wish the rest of you pathetic morons out there with the quick ignorant clueless mouthpieces would NOT benefit from the sacrifices of those III Percenters and OathKeepers of this Republic who WILL tow the line and restore this Nation.I wish you idiots blogging stupidity on here could somehow be taken to your own island to be the slaves that you are, to the elitist and your commie America hating president.Oh…but if only…
Alicia Lutz-Rolow
American Patriot
OathKeeper to the Constitutional Republic
My Life…My Fortune…My Sacred Honor
So Help Me God!

Aron, I believe you are thinking of Brother Joseph. I miss him also, and am worried about him.

Aron, I believe you mean our Brother Joseph. I miss his presence here, also, and hope he is all right.

“Restore” the nation to what, Alicia Uppity Snodgrass the CXXIII? An oligocracy that benefits the “III” %? What makes you think you’re going to be in that exalted percentile? And what makes you think actual Americans are going to stand around meekly acknowledging your superiority?

Seems to me a lot of folks here dont understand the :We the people” part and try to use differences of opinion as a means of further division. If the “people” really supported gun control, why then are records being broken everyday with sales? I have been a Union guy for going on 30 years, dont hunt or own a gun, have voted Democrat all my life as a Union guy. Then after losing my job of 20 years in 08 had to take a real hard look at things. Ive always worked, paid taxes and voted like a good citizen should, but nearly lost everything and it wasnt for lack of trying to find work. Then I find out the people we bailed out get big fat bonus’s while I struggle to make it? The Federal agencies arent going to do anything? People losing their homes and mortgage fraud is exposed and yet again, NO one is held accountable?
What happened to justice? Now people fight amongst each other ove left versus right, guns or no guns, God or no God. Which rings me back to my original intent in posting.
What happened to agreeing to disagree and uniting for the common good of We the people? I guess it just shows how societal values really are a thing of the past and no one really does care about their fellow man. Not the America my grand parents grew up thats for sure.

Duplicate post to Aron, because it appeared the first had glitched.

Right on Eric! Apparently history must repeat itself before some people face reality. History shows what total power does to those who wield it, and hold all the weapons. If you are in denial see documentary: “Innocents Betrayed” free on line.
I for one am encouraged to see so many veterans and law enforcement renew their oaths to “uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
I kind of agree with Ron Bloom, Obama’s “manufacturing czar” who paraphrased Chairman Mao when he said : “Political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”
And just for the record, at least three thousand showed up to protest Comrade Cu omo’s unconstitutional “SAFE” act on 1/19/13. Not bad for a leftist welfare state like N.Y.

Rey, you’re absolutely right. It has been so long since we have seen him that I had forgotten his name.

And Alicia, what exactly have Stewie and his Merry Men done for me as an American? (Plus a simple Google search tells me all that I need to know about you. As if your silly little screed wasn’t evidence enough.)

Eric Geller – I think you’ve got that wrong. The militia wasn’t to rise up against a tyrannical government it was to defend against England in absense of an Army that we have now. It was so that, if needed, the government could call on the militia to fight.

Aron,
I think you missed the point of my message. Regardless of your political affiliation, Washington is not listening to us anymore.

Oath Keepers are made of up a good group of people, some are open to discussion of far-reaching possibilities, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Discussions rarely ever lead to action — just look at Washington! The vast majority of Oath Keepers are simply police officers, veterans and current service members that are making a stance that they will not violate the constitution — what’s wrong with that exactly?

Oh, I should also mention, 95% of Oath Keeper members do not participate in the forums. The people in the forums do not represent a fair collective opinion of the members in that respect.

So, let that alone debunk this entire article.

Aron,
If you’re wondering how I have all of this information, I am a professional Researcher for a well-known think tank. I took the time to research my information before making assumptions based on poorly-gathered material.

Just thought I would throw that little tidbit in there in hopes of putting you in your place. I’m sure you’ll fire back with something you think is witty, since you seem to be one of the types who can never accept that they’re wrong. Those types of people live on both ends of the political spectrum. Just imagine, if you can, you’re exactly what you’re rallying against — except you have a different opinion.

Remember kids, your intelligence is easily metered in the eyes of a professional.

Again, all I can say after reading Leonard’s, Echo Chamber’s, Eric Geller’s, and Alicia’s comments is that their fear is palpable, but I don’t think they have a clue regarding what is really threatening our country. It’s unbridled corporate/financial shenanigans, Ayn Randian zealots, certain billionaire crazies who are bent on subverting the political process, and, regrettably, certain factions of the Religious Right who hold apocryphal views and want to establish an iron-fisted theocracy, which would, among other things, lead to the biological, economic, political, and social subjugation of women.

Do I think that certain government behaviors should be changed/abolished for the benefit of greater personal freedom and the betterment of society? Yes. Dump the war on drugs. All it has done is criminalize various swaths of the public and incarcerated pot smokers at great cost and rendered them unable to find employment. Way to go, Government! Prosecute Banksters and other white collar criminals who steal from us all, often with a wink and a nod from their political “pets.” Stop jumping into wars of adventure. Stop kow-towing to the Religious Right’s war on science, women’s health, and everyone else’s right to believe whatever they choose (or choose not) to believe.

The government is not the enemy. The people who are manipulating the government for their own gain at the expense of the public or to pursue their own agendas at the expense of the public are the ones that worry me. Frankly, we need to beef up EPA and other regulators, because if corporations can get away with dumping hazardous waste so it gets into our drinking water, that is an issue that affects us all, regardless of whether we own guns or which party we vote for.

Echo Chamber,

You think I don’t speak to them in real life? Now who is being naïve…

And my elected officials certainly listen to me. I think they’re doing a great job.

And PitBull, the reason so many people are buying guns is because ‘Jack-Booted Thugs’ LaPierre has gotten everyone so scared with his demagoguery that folks aren’t thinking straight. I know many people buying guns they simply can’t afford. Why? Because the Freedom Group’s bottom line is the only one that matters, you fools.

I have said it before: you can demonstrate peaceably on behalf of vegetarianism, Prohibition, or anything else you please. Bradish weapons, and the situation changes rapidly, especially since some of the people here are making utterances that point to a seditious conspiracy. And for all your pearl-clutching about bailouts, most of you are sucking Koch and finding it nutritious.

Enjoy your ongoing commentary in this echo chamber of liberal nonsense. You guys think you’re any better than right-wingers, but you’re the same obnoxious, close-minded people, just singing a different song.

Echo on, echo on.

When you get a little older, more experienced in dealing with people on both sides, deal with politicians on a regular basis, you will understand. There are very few real democrats anymore, the same goes with republicans. If they’re near the tip top of politics and they’re claiming a political party, you can bet your butt that they’re playing the part of a demagogue. Everyone has an appeal to a certain type of person, politicians figure out which one suits them best and markets to it.

Oh, carp, another “researcher” Hell-bent on “putting us in our place”. And has it occurred to you gun-waggers that some of the arms and ordinance have been bought by people planning to shoot back if you try it?

Aron,

You seem to think you know an awful lot about complete strangers on the internet. You have obviously assumed that since I found the tone of your postings to angry and hateful, that I MUST be a member of the group you are ranting about.

I would find your manner objectionable no matter who you were ranting about.

It is a complex universe, with more than merely TWO possible “sides” to take. That is, unless your universe consists only of YOUR opinion, and everyone else’s.

Echo Chamber, you are right in that there will always e outliers. It is how statistics work. You very well may be a researcher: that’s fantastic. I’m also a researcher.

You don’t scare me. I don’t have to prove anything to you.

Judging by your convictions, I’m guessing you’re either with Cato or Heritage. Whoopie! I’m so proud of you.

But until you can prove to me beyond any reasonable doubt WHY these extremists feel the need to take an oath to violate a direct order from the National Command Authority, I am willing to hear out your side. Until then, I hold you in the same contempt that I hold David Otis, except moreso.

Larry, you’re right: I took a gamble in assuming you were an Oak Eater, and I was wrong. For that I apologize. I also apologize for the tone I took with you.

You must however understand we get many posts like yours ‘the only “hate” is coming from the commenters…’ and it has gotten old. We do not hate. Hate is irrational. We strongly dislike, disparage, and mock. The Goat Creepers are, in my own opinion, worthy of mockery. The fact that I have friends who agree with me reinforces that opinion.

As I said to Echo above me, if I am presented valid proof that the Moat Leapers have a valid argument, I shall listen. Until then, I merely mock.

(And then I hear Alicia complaining about the Illuminati on other sites. And that just tells me everything.)

@reynardine some of your postings are becoming political poetry. good job

“well regulated militia” obviously was designed to refer to preexisting state militias which were designed for collective defense. They were designed to provide defense in case of an invasion or rebellion (in the South, read that as “slave revolt”) without having a standing army. It refers to an organized – yes, by government – force.

In the 18th Century parlance, “bear arms” was a legal term in art for military service. The Second Amendment was never ever intended to protect an individual right or provide a bulwalk against tyranny. It was a way to provide defense.

DC v. Heller is perhaps the biggest Constitutional fraud brought by a relentlessly political – and at times downright tyrannical – Supreme Court although its not nearly as damaging as what they have done with turning the Eleventh Amendment into a sword for states to deprive their residents of rights.

and if the founders were really so intend on preventing tryanny, they would have gotten rid of the old concept of sovereign immunity which is based upon a belief that the King can do no wrong. They might have also set up a government which did not discriminate against people based upon income level, whether they own property, race, and gender. They might have provided the right of universal sufferage, rights to women, and abolished slavery. They didn’t. Instead they set up a government, of by, and for rich white men.

But then the Founders were actually the Top 1% of their time, now weren’t they?

No protesters at the wyoming state capitol today, guess they didn’t get the memo

Maybe the confusion lies with peoples inability to understand what “shall not be infringed” means. Correct me if I am wrong, but does the Constitution give us God given right?

So when you say that some people feel the need to take an Oath to violate a direct order from the National Command, Im confused. Is this Command Authority God? Absolute power is detrimental to ALL citizens, not a select few.

Nor anyone at Beacon Hill in Boston. Needless to say, with their skin tone, they probably would have vanished in the snow drifts.

PitBull,

The National Command Authority is the President of the United States. And soldiers and police already pledge to protect their nation against all enemies, foreign or domestic.

The Sow Reapers are dangerously approaching that latter distinction.

And PitBull, since you are so obviously a legal scholar of similar renown to Clarence Thomas, perhaps you might give us your own take, citing precedent’ on ‘shall not be infringed.’

Do you advocate access to all weapons? Nuclear? Biological? Chemical? Radiological? Weaponized bumblebees wearing bonnets whose only purpose in life is to sting, sting, sting Erika?

Aron, May I respectfully ask you what you think the founder’s true intention for the 2nd Amendment really was?

After you answer that, can you tell us if the 2nd Amendment specifies or defines which or what arms can be kept or beared by the people?

The Oath Keepers ARE NOT a radical racist organization. They only pledge to reaffirm their oath to defend the Constitution. They pledge this in a mainstream Constitutional way. They do not accept racist agenda. They encourage all Patriots across our nation to unite despite race. They welcome black, Asian, and Hispanic patriots just the same as any white patriot(or any other race), and don’ t think for a minute that our membership doesn’t include patriots of all races.

Nope not a legal scholar. Just understand what God given rights are. Sorry you cant comprehend that, but translated it basically means that NO man can change. Unless the POTUS is a God, perhaps in your eyes. Yes the OKers took an Oath and maybe they take it a little more seriously than some of our politicians. They also took the Oath.

Don’t mince words, Erika. Tell us just how much you frothe at the mouth with hatred and contempt for the traditional American concept of freedom and liberty fought for by my ancestors. We already know that you really wish there hadn’t been a Bill of Rights, so the new U.S. government would have an undisputed blank check for unlimited totalitarian rule over all the people. Just tell us all how evil the American people of the late 18th century were, for not believing in the world according to Erika. We all know that there’s some bible out there that says it’s evil and sinful for there to be slavery and very limited voting rights. We just need our goddess Erika to remind us every now and then.

Yes, all rich white men are the enemies of the working and middle classes, unless they’re Morris Dees and Mark Potok and guys like them! They’re the good rich white men!

Hilarious.

Oh look, another right-winger flunks history:

Let’s see how you did, Leonard.

“Stalin’s Communist Russia, ”

Private firearms were allowed(and sometimes even issued) in the USSR under Stalin. You can go to any history museum in Russia and see old photographs of farmers(collective farmers were responsible for guarding their fields), hunters, etc. carrying rifles and shotguns, and in some museums you can see the sort of guns themselves. Kirov was shot with a privately owned handgun. The early USSR had armed militias and these were revived during WWII. On several occasions, when weapons were short in a threatened city(e.g. Leningrad or Stalingrad), the local militia armed itself by requisitioning private firearms.

So…fail.

“Mao’s Communist China,”

Also known as “Mao’s Communist state which helped prop up the US and is responsible for all your consumer goods,” came into being via the creation of peasant militias and guerrilla bands.

“Hitler’s Third Reich,”

Pepsi Presents Hitler’s Third Reich(tm) had looser gun control laws than Germany today and the Weimar republic. Not that this mattered as so many men were being called up to join the military and boys usually were familiarized with weapons in school. Any veteran who reached Germany can tell you stories about finding German private weapons, many of which would be worth a lot today.

” Imperial Japan,”

To be honest I don’t know anything about the gun laws of Imperial Japan, so unlike you I’m not going to comment on things I know nothing about. I will point out though, that Imperial Japan was more famous for killing OTHER people’s citizens, not their own(unless you count sending them off to war).

“Pol Pot, etc.”

POL POT POP QUIZ: Without using Google, did you even know Pol Pot’s REAL NAME before invoking Democratic Kampuchea in this post? No? Then stop talking about Pol Pot. The US government helped fund the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese kicked them out of the country.

” along with today’s examples of North Korea, Iran, and possibly even Venezuela’s”

Possibly Venezuela? You do realize that when Chavez was overthrown by the military in 2002(IIRC), it was in response to an allegation that some of his supporters had fired on a procession with handguns, right? I can’t help but notice that with the exception of the Third Reich and Iran, all the countries you’ve mentioned were, at one time or another, hostile to the US and considered to be “left-wing” dictatorships. It’s curious that you didn’t mention Pinochet’s Chile, Batista’s Cuba, Park Chung Hee’s South Korea, etc. Basically your list of modern countries reads like a Fox News rogue’s gallery.

Anyway, your final grades are:

HISTORY: F
SOCIOLOGY: F

CoralSea, referring to your post before last (or before that): I agree with everything you say and more, but don’t you mean “apocalyptical views” rather than “apocryphal”? The craziness of these people is in fact due at least in part to their apocalyptic notions as to how the world around them operates: a kind of parallel universe to the real one.
Of course the stories they believe in do tend to be apocryphal, so perhaps that’s what you meant.

I see nothing HateWatch eligible about people taking an oath to uphold and protect our Constitution.

Anti-Government -Anti anything , paranoid groups have existed for centuries!!!! Personally , these paranoid , plot theorist are truly misguided , paranoid , and delusional. Our country protects all citizens in accordance with the 2nd amendment , in view of raising a home militia , in defense of invasion on land or sea , or in the case of self -protection during home invasion and or physical assault of ones person , self defense. Trigger happy citizens carry this to extremes , and therefore law abiding citizens ask our elected officials for clarity , and safety against gun wielding extremist!!!!!!!!

“This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!” – Adolph Hitler, 1935, on The Weapons Act of Nazi Germany

Aron, your playful renaming of the Oath Keeper to the Oak Eaters could be strangely prophetic. If their money printer runs out of ink, you think that could not happen here? “It can’t happen here” is possibly the most dramatically mistaken phrase ever uttered throughout human history, over and over, in many languages.

I’m always amused by how the “Oath Keepers” love their country while hating its institutions and the people who run them. I guess those folks are not Americans but Eskimos or Gurkhas, maybe.

It also amuses me how they prattle that we stand at the edge of Armageddon…the John Birchers spouted that during the 1960s, the McCarthyites during the 1950s, the Silver Shirts and Coughlinites in the 1930s, and so on. We’re always headed for disaster, but never actually seem to get there.

And they all delight in the prospect of a Mad Max-type world, in which they think that they will all band together to protect that final bunker, and all the people who had ignored them until that moment will rally around them in desperation and fear.

Actually, I think the only thing these folks will be capable of should universal disaster come is to settle a few old scores and grudges in their neighborhoods — whacking the business partner who sold them out, the rival for their girlfriend’s affections, the geometry teacher who failed them, the bully who stuffed them in the garbage can in middle school, and so on.

Then they’ll go down before the bigger force. Assuming there is a Mad-Max type situation. But I doubt that will happen. Remember, the United States adopted the son of Nikita Khrushchev and the grandson of Isoroku Yamamoto. We are amazingly resilient.

“What part of shall not be infringed don’t you understand?”

Sounds a lot like “what part of illegal don’t you understand?”

Funny how these same gun packing, don’t tread on me, tea party people who gripe about how the government is coming to round them up and put them in a FEMA camp, are the same people who advocate for the government to descend on the homes of people who have dark skin and speak Spanish, kick in their doors, round them all up and kick them all out.

The Oath Keepers do have a lot of odd people at their fringes. But, you don’t have to be a nut to be alarmed by the current state of the law. Throughout Watergate, the civil rights events of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, police misconduct, etc, the ONLY thing that really protected us all these years has been the rule of law, which is founded in the Bill of Rights. But, the Bill of Rights has been largely destroyed by the “Patriot” Act, the Citizens United decision, and the NDAA. It is now the state of US law that the President can make any of us disappear, and even kill us, without even having to give a reason – no probable cause, no warrant, no hearing, no lawyer, no trial, nothing. Sure, now we get habeas corpus as of the 2013 version of the NDAA, but we without a right to a lawyer, what good is it? Show me a law that the government has not eventually used inappropriately. It is only a matter of time before the government moves from carrying out drone strikes, renditions, and torture in foreign lands to doing them right here at home in the name of “security.” It is “legal” after all – because the president’s lawyers say it is. No amount of name calling, side taking, or blaming changes the simple fact that we have broken loose from the rule of law in our country. Bin Laden must be laughing from the grave.

So, I’m guessing those “true defenders” placed personal comfort and instead complained about how bad this was on the internet in the comfort of their homes then?

I’m a gun owner. And a shooter. But sales of guns are highly regulated in this country. And I’m a big supporter of that. I know I am responsible. It’s other people with easy access to weapons that scare me.

If anyone would like to read a detailed debunking of the claim that the Second Amendment was intended to give everyone in America the absolute right to carry a gun anytime, anywhere, the redoubtable Chris Rodda has done the heavy lifting. It’s here:

^[1]

One important point among many: At the time the Constitution was written, the phrase “to bear arms” meant “to serve in the military,” either in a militia or the regular services. It did not mean “carry a gun.” And there is no doubt whatsoever that the framers did indeed intend for the “well-regulated militia” to be regulated by the government.

Rodda’s post is a response to a book on the Second Amendment by David Barton. That in itself should tell you something about the right-wing claims: A good rule of thumb is that if Barton says it, it’s probably a lie.

Bobby, quit lying for Adolf.

Oh, look, Brock is out of his sett and eating bugs again!

Meanwhile, welcome back, Ruslan. You missed the Battle of Retrograd and all the people eating against their ideals.

Brock, you adorable Twinkee(R) brand creme filled sponge cake, aren’t you the one who wants to bring back the Articles of Confederation? And let’s see, that means that not only do you oppose the Bill of Rights, you also oppose the U.S. Constiution itself.

And while it is very sweet of you, you don’t have to call me Goddess Erika

i actually prefer Princess Erika :P

Mr. Harview, the Second Amendment contemplated that free, white males over twenty-one would turn out on weekends and drill as an armed constabulary- armed, I say, with muzzle-loading muskets and flintlock pistols (I have fired the latter) which required reloading each time with wad, ball, and powder horn. This constabulary was available against incursions by British, Spaniards, pirates (if maritime), Indians (if near a frontier), and the occasional uprising by everyone from moonshiners to slaves. Frequently, the town owned a cannon, but the individual household did not. I have no objection to such weapons, so long as they are owned by the sane. The Founding Fathers assuredly did not contemplate that anyone would have had the ability to strafe down twenty schoolchildren and five or six teachers in ten seconds, much less that they would want to. They assuredly never intended to accord them the right to.

Bobby XD9, the only thing you’ve proven with your comment is your gullibility. The alleged quote from Hitler that you reproduce is a thoroughly debunked fake. Details available at:

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Please note that the debunkers include some of the more sober-thinking pro-gun-rights advocates.

These discussions would really go a lot more smoothly if people would stick with the real facts and stop making up their own.

I’m sorry, did that much-balleyhooed Ruslan creature really just imply that the American people should THANK the People’s Republic of China for their current lifestyle – the dutiful adherence to our state religion of mass consumption, that is? Wow, so the SPLC really is THAT far-left! An actual card-carrying Communist is on the roll of one of their blogs! I’m kind of surprised, although I shouldn’t be. No wonder he made that completely nonsensical and thoroughly false comment awhile back that there was no U.S. government involvement in the economy during the Gilded Age. You have to be good and far to the left to believe such silliness.

Ah, look at that little bug-eating Brock! The best thing he can come up with is “that Ruslan creature” whargarble! Ruslan, I suspect that is one of the refugees from Retrograd, who ate against his ideals, and now he’ll never be able to articulate a cogent thought again.

Hey Brockie Dearest,

Everyone and their mother knows that our dear friend Ruslan is a Marxist. He is allowe to comment here, the same as the facists, both crypto-fascists like yourself, and the real kind as can be evidenced on other pages.

In regards to your comments that the government WAS involved in regulation during the Guilded Age, I would very much like to see your evidence. And no, debates amongst the Framers do not count, darling.

Show me how Hayes put his foot down and said, ‘Dammit, we can’t have any more of this child labor! They need to be at least twelve before they start working the salt mines.’

Please. Show us all how smart you are.

Brock, let me clarify- I did not “imply” that the American people should thank China, I pretty much explicitly stated it. The US and China teamed up starting as early as 1969 against the USSR. Initially much of the cooperation was in the realm of foreign policy, but later on as China opened to US investors it saved American corporations at a time when Japan and Germany were becoming more efficient while American corporations had a lot of their money tied down in inefficient fixed capital. It’s all very complex of course, but suffice to say that you need only look at things like Wal-Mart and other cheap consumer goods with Made in China stamped on them to understand how China contributed to the US’ standards of living. You cannot brag about the superiority of US society in comparison with say, the DDR or the USSR on the matter of consumer goods if you’re not going to credit China for our massive abundance of said goods.

To counter your other claim, I never said that there was no US government involvement in the economy during the Gilded Age. There was and always will be government involvement in the economy. At the very least the government maintains courts which enforce contracts and protect private property. What is indisputably true, however, is that there was far less government REGULATION of the private sector during the Gilded Age when compared to say, the New Deal era and everything afterward. And with far less government regulation, life was indisputably worse for most people. I don’t know why you brought that up and I don’t know why you felt the need to lie.

And that brings me to your comment about our “state religion of mass consumption.” Excuse me but consumption is a natural part of capitalism. How can one brag about the superiority of capitalism while harping about “mass consumption,” and why do you associate it with the state?

And lastly, I don’t carry a card.

You also get an F.

Ron, you are pining for a free country which never ever existed other than in conservative fantasies. Liberals know that America has never been a truly free country – that the promise of liberty has long been restricted solely to white males (and often solely to rich white males) with women and racial and ethnic minorities facing systemic discrimination. And the poor facing a system specifically designed to keep them poor and exploit their labor for the benefit of the rich people who truly rule this country (there are no poor or middle class people in Congress).

In fact, when you really look at the history of the United States it really exposes how much America ever being a free country was a myth. In fact, America has never ever been truly a free country and came closest in the period starting in the 1960s due to the Civil Rights and feminist movement.

Here is how much real respect the founding fathers had for freedom: less than 10 years after the First Amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act. One of the primary purposes of the Bill of Rights was for Southerners to secure their rights in owning slaves. At the time of the founding and the Bill of Rights, women effectively had no rights and while not technically slaves were basically one step above slaves. Poor whites weren’t much better also having very little rights. The Bill of Rights in fact was largely passed to protect wealth – it really only started protecting other things in the Warren Court era in the 1960s.

The states were under no compulsion to protect people’s rights until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 and realistically not until the Supreme Court began to incorporate the Bill of Rights to the states in the 1920s. And really not until the Civil Rights era – with the Warren Court and the Civil Rights Act of 1964/Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Title IX finally providing some protection for the rights of women in the early 1970s. In fact, contrary to Oath Keepers claims, the United States is actually a much more free country today that it was in 1789, 1900, or 1950. While the Warren Court precedents and the Bill of Rights is under systemic attack from right wingers on the Supreme Court there is still a lot of it left – and unlike in 1789 it protects more than just rich white males (which is ultimately one of the claims that the Oath Keepers make in how we have lost freedom – the freedom to slap around your wife or discriminate against someone because of the color of their skin, for example – maybe their patron saint can be Lester Maddox who claimed that his personal property rights in his Atlanta business were destroyed when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forced him to serve black customers (actually he closed his business voluntarily – and then sold his property to Georgia Tech at a profit and then became Georgia Governor somehow despite losing both the primary and the general election – fun portion of Georgia history there) – so in other words, he lost “his freedom” by not being able to discriminate against black people anymore – or deprive other people of their freedom.

Women were not granted the right to vote until 1920 – universal sufferage was not really protected in the U.S. until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

If the right to counsel is so important to you, it was only in the 1960s with Gideon v. Wainright that states were required to provide counsel to people who could not afford it and were facing felony charges (and there are still a lot of wholes in that because there are many people who cannot afford attorneys who are not qualified as indigent). Of course, before that, you were allowed counsel if you were facing execution. Not that did people much good (look up the Martinsville Seven case for example) since their counsel may well have not done much to represent them (or while not criminal in the case of Buck v. Bell, the counsel representing Carrie Buck was actually hostile to her interests – that was also the case in the Martinsville Seven case as well)

Up to the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government openly discriminated against people based upon race. Even today the federal government is still discriminating against people based upon gender (women working in federal jobs are making less than men in equivilent federal jobs for example – the government is still overwhelmingly controlled by white men).

Police have long been able to basically beat, kill, and rape people with impunity – with the victims being overwhelmingly minorities and women.

Ever since the drug war began in the 1930s and really stepped up in the 1980s it has been mainly an excuse to violate rights of poor people.

A conservative Supreme Court has essentially repealed the Fourth Amendment – in any case, the Fourth Amendment was really only meaningful once the exclusionary rule started – and that wasn’t until Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. So essentialy the Fourth Amendment was only meaningful between 1961 and about 2000.

The Eight Amendment essentially is meaningless – once the Supreme Court upheld a life sentence for someone who wrote bad checks under a third strike type law, forget it. The drug war has also led to riduculously draconian sentences – look up the Armed Career Criminal Act.

The First Amendment has long been under assault by right wingers – whether right wing religious types seeking to mandate Christianity as the state religion or destroy the freedom of speech or corporations using what are known as SLAPP lawsuits to silence critics. They have done a pretty good job at it to.

The Fifth and Sixth Amendments aren’t that much better.

The Supreme Court in upholding so called “tort reform” legislation essentially has repealed the Seventh Amendment (and it did quite a lot of damage to the Fifth in the process). In fact, pretty much everything here is designed specifically to help large corporations at the expense of everybody else (we have essentially returned to the Lochner era of Constitutional law where money rules all and the only liberty that mattes is the liberty of the ultra rich and corporations to walk away with everything – or if you want to be technical the right of contract).

And ask a Conservative about the Ninth Amendment and you will likely get a blank stare (ask Brock who somehow thinks that hte Bill of Rights was designed to protect states even though the Ninth Amendment makes that argument obviously wrong)

And of course, women are still systemically discriminated against in this country with the gains that women have made since the 1960s (odd that the time where Ron starts his decline of freedom is the point where black people and women started getting their freedoms) constantly being under assault by the right wing. Now they are actually trying to completely ban access to birth control – apparently to produce more babies to become global mercanaries or work in sub minimum wage jobs.

None of this are new developments – as noted, the Congress of the United States started attacking the First Amendment by making criticism of the government illegal within a decade of its passage. In fact, about the only time when the Constitution and Bill of Rights really worked as intended was during the brief period of the Warren Court which actually protected the rights of all Americans rather than just the rich and powerful. Those gains have largely been lost.

So really my question is why did it take you this long to figure it out? And why does it take supposed infringements of the Second Amendment which most assurededly was never intended to grant individual rights and in fact up until the NRA started claiming that the Second Amendment was designed to create an individual right in the 1970s and 1980s no one ever said that. There is a reason why the gun nuts waited for Chief Justice Rehnquist to die to bring a case making that argument – they needed to not just have right wingers but politicized and radical right wingers since they were effectively amending the Constitution.

Now isn’t it strange that a group which cheers and applauds numerous infringements of every other right in the Bill of Rights – and indeed argues for more restrictions of every other right – is suddenly so upset over guns? Especially when none of the other rights in the Bill of Rights has ever been absolute which is what they are arguing for guns and “Congress shall make no law infringing the freedom of speech” is a hell of a lot clearer than the Second Amendment.

The claims that the Oath Keepers are somehow upset about these infringements of rights rings hollow when hardly a peep has been heard of them for example due to the massive depravation of rights in poor areas caused by the drug war or the continued discrimination against racial and ethinic minorities and women until a Black man was elected president. And even now, they are not complaining about continued systematic discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and women – they are complaining that the government might take their penises (oopsie, i mean guns) even though that has never been proposed by anyone. That somehow limiting the size of a magazine will make them less of men (of course, since their guns are substitute penises to compensate for their obvious manhood issues for them maybe it really will make them less of a man to only be able to shoot 10 elementary school students without reloading)

The Oath Keepers do not care about rights – they most definitely do not care about the rights of minorities or women – they are nothing but the Ku Klux Klan with a new name and without the silly robes and pointed caps.

Erika, I am in awe. I have just sent some of my bonnetted bees to your house to deliver some honey as a tribute.

Now I really wish I could see you in court!

Erika, in the event of another attack of tenacious flu, let me convey to you, right now, a white gold Sharkie with chocolate diamond eyes. It goes with everything and is mounted as a lapel pin, so you can wear it to court. In an emergency, you can stick it into the sitius of Learned Opposing Counsel.

As it is almost Valentine’s Day, let us pool the rest of our precious metals and send out little luminous hearts to Brother Joseph, wherever he is, so he may return safely. Other than that, in honor of his return, let us convey to Brother Ruslan a suitable siege engine with which to fight a renewed Battle of Retrograd.

I’d like to know where the Oath Keepers were in 2001 and 2002, when the Patriot Act was passed, the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was opened, the CIA “waterboarded” prisoners, and President Bush sent good American, British, Canadian, and Australian kids to fight and die in Iraq for an absolute lie.

Why weren’t they standing up for the Constitution back then?

Oh, and “BobbyXD9?” That’s an interesting handle. Too bad you swallowed a bunkum quote from Adolf. He didn’t say it.

And I’m always amused when people say that if the Jews of Europe had guns, they could have stood up to the Nazi hordes. That’s pretty funny. The great partisan movements of World War II were only successful because they received massive supply drops of powerful weaponry from the British, Americans, or Soviets. The Yugoslavian partisans had a nice coastline for the British to ship over arms, and some of their best partisan troops were Italians who deserted when Mussolini fell, joining Tito, and taking their guns with them.

Also, Hitler’s tanks knocked off France in less than six weeks. The French had plenty of guns. They had more of them than the Germans, too. They also had more tanks, and better tanks, than the Germans. More fighter and attack aircraft, too. And half of the French border was protected by the Maginot Line. The French still fell in less than six weeks!

The Jews of Europe did try to fight back. Ever hear of the defense of the Warsaw Ghetto? The Nazis just sent in more troops, mostly Ukrainian SS men from the training center, and these mercenaries were delighted to kill Jews. The SS used flamethrowers and blew up buildings. The Germans killed and captured 56,065 defenders in 28 days by their accounting, and probably 20,000 more. The survivors were hauled off to Auschwitz to meet their well-documented fate, and the ghetto was left a ruin.

I get amused by Americans who point to 1776 and defeating the British, as if they can do it again, that if they mass their Minutemen on the town green and fire a few musket balls, they’ll defeat the 2nd Marine Division. Or whatever enemy they think is going to invade America: the French Foreign Legion, the 1st Royal Gurkha Regiment, the Canadian Scottish, The Singapore Defense Force. Warfare has changed a lot since 1776. Here’s a clue, guys: “Red Dawn” and “Red Dawn” were movies.

Anyway, we will not be defeated by invasion, nor is our government likely to turn into a tyranny, unless we make it one. Our destruction will come at the hands of people who want to overthrow this country, secede from it, or destroy their fellow citizens, in other words, the radicals. As Abraham Lincoln said, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

“Semper Potentator”, which in Latin means, “Always sovereign.”

All federal employees, as our servants, take an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. But as sovereign citizens, we have a duty to ENFORCE the Constitution.

Our “oath of office” as a sovereign citizen should be, “I promise to defend and protect my family and property against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to the Constitution for the United States, against all public servants that violate it.” Liberals will never understand this concept!

Indeed not, Solo, because most of us are sane.

Chiming in late, but well done Erika!

Solo, if you really believe what you posted then you need help. Get it before you hurt yourself or others around you.

‘All federal employees, as our servants, take an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. But as sovereign citizens, we have a duty to ENFORCE the Constitution.

‘Our “oath of office” as a sovereign citizen should be, “I promise to defend and protect my family and property against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to the Constitution for the United States, against all public servants that violate it.” Liberals will never understand this concept!’

And so, logically, “sovereign citizens” proceed to “enforce” the Constitution by filling out courts with frivolous lawsuits and false “liens” to harass government employees performing their duties under the Constitution.

And “Sovereign citizens” print their own money and refuse to pay taxes, also in violation of the Constitution.

And threaten to secede when elections don’t go their way, in violation of the Constitution.

How is all this “enforcing” the Constitution? What gives you the power to “enforce” it? Your “people’s grand juries?”

I think the “liberals” and conservatives understand, “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution pretty well. And “Defending” it is “enforcing” it.

When “public servants violate” the Constitution, we have a great deal of tools under the Constitution, to address that behavior, ranging from the courts to public protest to the media. Ask any public servant who gets nailed by any of these entities. Even US Senators, state governors, and military officers have felt the lash of such punishments, not to mention considerable amounts of smaller fry.

The truth is…you’re just not too happy that elections and legislation don’t go your way, and rather than accept the results of elections and legislation, and put up with them until you can legally change them, you want to overthrow the government, and replace it with your own personal tyranny.

Actually, you don’t even want that…as Eric Hoffer tartly observed, “the real goal of the fanatic is to give meaning to an otherwise threadbare life — to feel worthwhile and important in spite of deep-seated feelings of worthlessness.”

The Constitution does not entitle the public at large to “enforce” the Constitution. In fact the public is not even entitled to interpret it(that’s why we have something called the Supreme Court).

Aron, its a good thing that i know that you are only interested in seeing me in court because you are sure that it will be a courtroom featuring a sexist pig judge who favors clients of young and pretty female attorneys who wear short skirts, low cut blouses, stockings, and high heels (and of course, cute shark lapel pins – thanks Rey). Sadly, when i was at the public defender’s office most of the cases i tried happened to actually be in such a courtroom. Even sadder – but likely much more appealing for you – the prosecutor’s office almost always assigned a pretty blonde prosecutor who was smart enough to figure out the same thing that i did. The good news is i am pretty sure that being smart enough to know the judges preferences did keep me out of jail for contempt on more than one occasion in that court room. And yes, i really do hate it when the inherent sexism and mysogny of the legal system actually works to my advantage :)

Otherwise, i would be sure that you would be trying to kill me. Going to court is extremely stressful for me – and stress is even more dangerous that a swarm of Erika killing bees or a pack of hungry Erika eating dogs – and my primary reaction to stress is either to shut down completely or to get very upset and start yelling at the slightest provokocation. Neither reaction is very good for an attorney (seriously, i was a terrible trial attorney which is why i switched to a job where i don’t go to court) – in fact, shutting down completely and sitting there looking cute as the mean prosecutor and judge railroads your client is probably the absolute worst thing that a defense attorney can do. Or maybe yelling at the biased, mean, crazy, and stupid judge about how biased, mean, crazy, and stupid he is worse due to the strong possibly of being led out of the courtroom to jail in shackles and handcuffs by the baliffs. Of course, maybe you’d find that to be an appealing sight Aron :P

And btw, i actually did get really upset in the courtroom of the aforementioned sexist pig of a judge and told him exactly what i thought of him, but fortunately i was not hauled off to jail for contempt (although i most assuredly should have been) and instead escaped with a slap on my wrist – although i’m pretty sure that the judge would have much more preferred slapping a different part of my body ;)

Did i mention that i hate it when the inherent sexism and mysogny of the legal system works to my advantage?

Solo, when everybody is sovereign and can enforce what they think the Constitution says you do not have a Constiuttion – you have anarchy. No government can function if every citizen is empowered to declare what the law is. Government has to function using compromise and sometimes your view is simply going to lose.

You sovereign citizens sound like a bunch of spoiled children who think that the world revolves around you, do not play well with others, and throw temper tantrums when you do not get your way. Effectively you hate the Constitution and would prefer a more dictatorial form of government (although what possibly makes you guys think that you will be the dictators is beyond my understanding).

i mean, i’ll be the first to admit that i am a total spoiled brat who tends to whine and cry when i don’t get my way but i am also an adult who knows that i can’t always get my way. i know that the world really does not revolve around me. i also kind of know that if i actually did get my way all of the time it would not make me happy and would likely get kind of boring after a while.

But you should still call me Princess Erika anyway :P

Princess Erika,

I’m very sorry to hear that. I would figure in a courtroom, you are as beautiful and deadly as a blue shark with a harpoon.

But if there’s one thing I understand, it is stress. And I know how impossible that can be to deal with sometimes. So I’m glad we have you to ‘practice law’ here on the Hatewatch board :)

They’re called protective tariffs and endless corporate subsidies, Aron. Those are types of regulation and intervention. Look up the exact names of the bills passed and signed into law during the time in a friggin’ research database, for Heaven’s sake. No, Hayes and McKinley didn’t do anything to abolish child labor according to my knowledge. They’re so reprehensible for that, aren’t they, Aron? A kid learning the value of hard work and – gasp! – becoming a disciplined ADULT at an early age! . . . how evil that is!! Everyone knows nowadays that children are supposed to be bored, angst-ridden, spoiled-rotten classroom drones exploring their sexuality and playing iPhone games. Thank God that the past is past! And yep, colonial-thru-antebellum-era Americans and their modern-day apologists are all FASCISTS! On a serious note, you do know that you are an ideologically blinded and hence uneducated idiot if you believe that last one, right?

Disclaimer: I am not one of these “sovereign citizens.” They’re just a little nutty for me. But Kiwiwriter, how can a federal constitutional republican-style government created by a handful of constitutional republican states explicitly prohibit secession? I can understand that an EMPIRE will of course prohibit secession and vigorously and violently enforce such a claim (hmm, there’s something astoundingly familiar about what I just said, according to my knowledge of history), but a federal constitutional republic? Oh, and when you stated it is illegal to secede, were you talking about the amendment to the Constitution, duly and freely ratified by the people of the states, I’m sure, which explicitly says so? You’ll directly answer my questions without any invective, won’t you, because you’re not trying to cover up any sinister intentions toward your political opposition, right? Have a nice day.

Ruslan the Red, Comrade dearest, you are presupposing an inherently positive state of affairs we experience here in America in which all the stuff that used to be made here is now made elsewhere and in greater quantities. Needless to speak of the problem of employment – it’s all overseas and meanwhile our own American infrastructure is hollowed out to a skeleton crew. Now I know that is part and parcel of the trajectory of Capitalism which will eventually completely destroy America and with it the West, so I know you’re all for it. Some of us aren’t. That’s why I’m ok with capitalism (little “c,” meaning simply free enterprise, the real enemy you’re out to destroy), but in fact I abhor Capitalism (big “C,” the economic ideology which you and your comrades in fact love, because it will eventually lead to the end of free enterprise – the great roadblock, along with religion, standing in the way of Communism). Capitalism (Big “C”) leads to mass consumption, which leads to corruption of the moral character of any given nation or civilization of people. And it IS the official U.S. state religion. I vividly remember President Bush saying on TV about 5 years ago at the beginning of the present economic recession that the government wants us good and faithful American consumers to keep spending money. As opposed to – gasp! – maybe SAVING it.

Erika, babycakes, I already corrected my implication in a previous thread that the Bill of Rights addresses the states, as obviously only the Tenth Amendment does that. Anxious to misrepresent people’s arguments, are we?

Aron, you are very kind – i am actually a very shy person by nature, so choosing to be the type of lawyer who writes rather than the type of lawyer who talks was an easy choice. i’m still involved in litigation, its just now i write arguments behind the scenes and someone else argues them. i much prefer it that way.

and you don’t have to call me Princess Erika (unless you really want to). Only the Oath Keepers, Tea Party types, sovereign citizens, libertarians, and anarcho-capitalists do because they believe that individual people can choose whatever government type they want and which provisions of the Constitution to ignore – so if that is the case, then i want to be a Princess :)

Brock,

It’s obvious you spent all of your formative years in the salt mines. Otherwise you wouldn’t be such an ignoramus.

I have no issue with children helping out in the family business. What you seem to supporting is CHILD LABOR which is a totally different thing, doofus. You know it, I know it, and my hive full of bonnetted bees know it.

And with that, I shall never respond to you again, as you simply are not worth my time.

Brick, oospie i mean Brock (actual mistake there), good thing for you that no one will actually bother to go back and read your actual words to show that your “implication” was not a “mistake” or a “mistatement” and you main reaction was simply to attack my education and imply that i must have gone to a low ranking law school. with a large amount of sexist condensation as well.

Maybe you can fool some people but whatever :P

Brock, you are remarkable for the grandiloquence and prolixity of your oligophrenia.

@kiwiwriter you stated: The truth is…”you’re just not too happy that elections and legislation don’t go your way, and rather than accept the results of elections and legislation, and put up with them until you can legally change them, you want to overthrow the government, and replace it with your own personal tyranny.”

Directed at the sovereign citizens movement and I agree that you have hit the nail on the head.

It’s quite interesting to me that extremists like to hide behind the selling point that it will never lead to violent action. They are merely a nice group of loving people who just like to discuss violence, compare guns and ammo over a communal beer barrel. And yet, again and again we read headlines like this:

The neo-Nazi who slaughtered Sikhs developed his views in the Army and on the white power music scene.

This was a guy who exercised his right to play and listen to white power music that promoted hate. And I suppose that he may have considered himself a person saving the rest of America from the peace loving Sikhs that he decided to slaughter in cold blood one day. When what we all really needed was to be saved from him and his kind.

It is said that he developed his views in the Army, really! You don’t say! (sarcastically) The racist idiots who have attached themselves to our American Army cannot be a well held secret, it’s a disgusting truth.

Somehow idiots have come to the most erroneous conclusions that by wearing an American Army Uniform they are training for the SS.

Again when we thought stupidity could go no further, the imbeciles go and surprise us by spiraling into new depths of idiocy.

Brock, I think you missed the point. You made a claim that I had posted something about there being no government intervention in the economy during the Gilded Age. That was either an honest mistake on your part, or a deliberate lie. Personally I do not care which. As long as you have a class-based society you’re going to have a state, and thus there will always be state intervention. The “state” became far more obvious and powerful via capitalist development.

Now as for this: “Ruslan the Red, Comrade dearest, you are presupposing an inherently positive state of affairs we experience here in America in which all the stuff that used to be made here is now made elsewhere and in greater quantities. Needless to speak of the problem of employment – it’s all overseas and meanwhile our own American infrastructure is hollowed out to a skeleton crew. Now I know that is part and parcel of the trajectory of Capitalism which will eventually completely destroy America and with it the West, so I know you’re all for it. ”

Uh…What? Why would a Communist be for capitalism? If you get all upset about massive consumption, then you’re basically attacking the best aspect of capitalism. You can’t talk about the capitalist system being superior to 20th century socialism if you decry the abundance of consumer goods and innovation. What do you have left after that? Is it a more enlightened system? No- far more people were killed or died in the name of making profit than by Communism in the 20th century; attempts to assert otherwise amount to special pleading and arbitrary definitions of what constitutes being “killed by Communism.” It can’t be culture, because under socialism a larger portion of the people were able to have access to culture and participate in its creation. It’s not “freedom,” because such freedom has very little to do with capitalism but rather the security situation of a given state. So tons of plastic crap and other products is the main way to go- 20th century socialism had a concrete disadvantage in the production of consumer goods.

You see, when you acknowledged that globalization is basically inherent to capitalism, you were on the right track. Where you go wrong is trying to pull a No True Scotsman with this “little c capitalism” stuff. You can’t turn back the clock on capitalism. Either it develops into something else, a synthesis which delivers its best features without its worst, or you basically just create a fettered economy which will eventually end up right back where it started.

Brock Henderson said,
on February 13th, 2013 at 2:03 pm

“No, Hayes and McKinley didn’t do anything to abolish child labor according to my knowledge. They’re so reprehensible for that, aren’t they, Aron? A kid learning the value of hard work and – gasp! – becoming a disciplined ADULT at an early age! … how evil that is!! Everyone knows nowadays that children are supposed to be bored, angst-ridden, spoiled-rotten classroom drones exploring their sexuality and playing iPhone games.”

Are you serious? Kids 14 and under working in sweatshops, meat-packing plants, lumber yards, coal mines – and without the benefit of wage-and-hour laws, safety regulations, etc. etc. – are “learning the value of hard work”? Learning the callous heartlessness of the money-grubbing ownership class, more like.

Take a good look at what you’re endorsing:

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^[4]

Between the marijuana initiatives in CO and WA and the anti-gun control laws recently passed in WY, advocates for nullification in all forms have been making huge strides on the state level. This is very worrying.

Right now, state legislatures are passing laws that could be written word-for-word by the Oath Keepers.

Apparently NRA comedian Wayne LaPierre claimed that people need guns to protect themselves from hurricanes and tornados (all of those guns there must be why no hurricanes and tornados ever hit Texas – oopsie)

Seriously, guns are now a defense against the weather.

Personally i now have a mental picture of Wayne LaPierre standing on the beach as Category Five Hurricane Erika bears down on him and firing shots into the 200 mile per hour winds and when that fails to stop them, right before he gets lifted off the ground and blown away he tosses the gun in vain to protect himself from the powerful winds, heavy rains, and approaching storm surge.

Maybe these Oath Keepers can join him on the beach to defend America against the rampaging Hurricane Erika. OF course, in that case, the odds of prying guns out of the cold dead hands of the anti-hurricane militia are probably pretty low since you’d have to have to find them first. In fact, most would probably wind out getting washed out to sea and its quite possible that there would be shotguns driven into palm tree trunks by the winds. That would be an interesting site.

Or perhaps, when the sirens go off warning of a coming tornado Wayne LaPierre runs out on his lawn with his gun to protect it. And again, i can imagine the same thing would occur with firing shots.

And with these Oath Keepers, perhaps when the sirens go off warning of a tornado or a ballistic missle attack or a Communist invasion or a sparrow flying into the siren mechanism all of the Oath Keepers can run to the town square with their guns and get ready to fight that tornado. Again, i kind of have the feeling that when an F5 hits that there isn’t going to be a lot of prying of guns out of cold dead hands because you’d have to find them first.

The Tornado and Hurricane Militia therefore just doesn’t seem to be destined for sucess

i pity the poor moderators here who are going to have to suffer through lots of comments by angry “Patriots”

and is anyone really surprised that Brock who dreams of a time when women could not vote, legally own property, or legally say “no” to their husbands also is a fan of child labor. Maybe someone should have put him to work in a textile mill when he was 8.

Aron, I DID mean child labor, as in child employment. Who the heck thinks of children simply doing work, like chores around the house, when they hear the term “child labor”?Don’t let your liquified brain seep out of the crack in your head.

Yes, Ruslan, yes I can distinguish between the ideology of constant and maximum levels of corporate profit at the expense of the little guy – Capitalism, and the simple state of goods and services being exchanged within the dynamic of a proper and respectful relationship between the merchant and his community and countrymen, seeing to it that such boundaries are kept intact – capitalism.

Communists don’t like Capitalism, eh? Where have you been when American conservatives have called for the abolition of the Federal Reserve? You don’t fool me, Ruslan, so quit trying.

Oh and Aron, my super-bestest friend in the whole wide world, so sorry for forgetting, until now, to comment on another earlier remark of yours, the one about all people of all political stripes being free to comment here. My earlier point you were rebutting about the SPLC was about its fans, not its opposition. I clearly remember reading a comment from Mr. Potok himself on an old blog entry that you, Reynardine, and the great Bolshevik himself, Ruslan, were all great friends of his. A senior fellow at the SPLC – the self-appointed court of judges of what is acceptable for Americans to believe or not believe lest they be branded extremist or hate groups – calls a proud Marxist and Communist a close old friend of his. Oh, and an op-ed Mark wrote a few years ago appeared on a Communist Party website.

I rest my case. The company Mark keeps speaks the loudest volumes about who and what the SPLC really is.

More of Brock’s idiocy:

“children are supposed to be bored, angst-ridden, spoiled-rotten classroom drones exploring their sexuality and playing iPhone games.”

Kids who worked in factories were pretty angst-ridden too, what with all the dangers that 19th-early 20th century factories held for anyone working there. They also got to “explore their sexuality” or better said “got their sexuality explored” due to an institution known as prostitution, quite widespread during the Gilded Age up until the 1920′s, when a small and short-lived sexual revolution took its toll on the trade.

What a charmer this Brock is. Seriously, we have a guy here who is pro-child labor and wants to bring back the Articles of Confederation (and also thinks that the states have free reign to do whatever they want to people including allowing people to own slaves). If his positions weren’t truly world class nutty in and of themselves he is also a complete mysognistic jerk.

i recommend that he join the local Hurricane and Tornado Protection Militia – or since he claims to be in California (as an aside isn’t it typical that most people who worship the South and the late Confederacy are not from here? The loudest neo-Confderate twits always tend to be the Carpetbaggers or children of Carpetbaggers. Either that or they are people like Brock who likely has never ever been to the South) maybe you can join the Earthquake Protection Militia so that when the earth starts shaking you start shooting :P

Brock Henderson said,
on February 20th, 2013 at 1:45 pm

“the simple state of goods and services being exchanged within the dynamic of a proper and respectful relationship between the merchant and his community and countrymen”

I take it they haven’t let you out of your padded cell to go shopping recently. Or subscribe to a cable TV or Internet provider. Or set up a telephone or electricity account. Certainly, you haven’t had to obtain medical services of any kind. If you had done any of these things within the past, oh, 30 years, you’d recognize the complete inanity of your comment. “Respectful relationship” my eye.

But maybe you’re simply being dishonest in order to promote an intellectually bankrupt and morally reprehensible ideology. Certainly, it’s necessary to believe (or pretend to believe) numerous impossible things in order to align with the right-wing pseudo-Patriot mindset.

“Yes, Ruslan, yes I can distinguish between the ideology of constant and maximum levels of corporate profit at the expense of the little guy – Capitalism, and the simple state of goods and services being exchanged within the dynamic of a proper and respectful relationship between the merchant and his community and countrymen, seeing to it that such boundaries are kept intact – capitalism.”

Sorry but no such distinction exists. You are looking at capitalism in a certain stage of development(and not too accurately at that) and thinking that capitalism as it is today isn’t somehow related to that. Small businesses become large businesses, which become multi-national corporations. They don’t just fall out of the sky. History shows that capitalist development begins with accumulation of capital, industrialization, and in advanced countries, a preponderance of finance. You can’t turn the clock back on this practice. This is something that neither liberals or conservatives seem to understand.

Also I don’t know what you mean when you claim that Mark Potok said that we were “friends” or anything of the sort. I have had no communication with Potok save for a comment on this blog where I, and several others, asked as to whether the SPLC had a certain copy of a blog post somewhere.

Furthermore, if a Communist website ran one of Mark’s posts, that has nothing to do with him. People re-print articles on the internet all the time.

Alan, i wouldn’t group the marijuana legalization movements at the state level to the Oath Keepers/militia/nullification movement at all. Marijuana possession is purely a local criminal law matter almost entirely dealt with at the state level and is covered by the general police power which constitutionally only the states possess. Its perfectly reasonable for a state government or for voters in a state (where allowed) to define how they will exercise the general police power and handle local criminal law matters.

Now the federal government still has the power to regulate distribution of marijuana even locally. They probably shouldn’t based upon prudential considerations and the lack of a federal interest – but that is a policy and not a legal argument. In fact, anyone who believes that the “federal interest” in going after medical marijuana dispensitories is anything other than the campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry is extremely naive (the federal government’s own medical and scientific experts believe that marijuana does have medical use) – but under our federal system even actions undertaken on behalf and for the sole benefit of major corporate campaign donors are legal. They are terrible policy decisions, but pefeclty legal.

Also the marijuana legalization efforts do not purport to overturn federal law – instead they state that the state will not prosecute those cases. That decision is one which our Constitution permits states to make. It is also a decision which really should be made on the state and local level. Indeed, the federal system was set up specifically to allow state experimentation of policy.

It is different then from a law like the Virginia law which stated that it was illegal to enforce the Affordable Care Act in Virginia. That was an example of state nullification. It also failed.

Brock,

I’m done with you. You are truly a warped individual, and in need of serious help.

If you want to view this as a submission, go ahead. I don’t care. You seriously are no longer worthy of my time.

Erika, since I have never lived in the South I do not believe it be superior to my native West, because I do not have the requisite experience to compare and contrast. Is English your second language? It must be, as this is my third time, I believe, telling you that I am not a neo-Confederate. Southerners who wish to bring back the CSA are neo-Confederates. I am a secessionist. I believe California should separate from the rest of the Union. As should all the other states. And while it is none of my official business unless California is the subject of debate, I also believe many of the states themselves would do very well to break up. You get irritated at that concept, don’t you, Erika? Federalism! The idea that maybe, just maybe, there is a multitude of issues which are not national in scope or scale, but rather internal issues of just one household, neighborhood, town, city, county, or state, which are the business of that one body of citizens and theirs alone! Agh, there’s such little justification for the existence of your precious American Empire as it exists today when we consider that point of view!

Oh, and I despise feminism, an ideology which you claim to subscribe to. That’s the reason for the misogynistic pet-names. If I can say or type something which I believe just might tick off a feminist and really drive her into a rage against the “oppressive right-wing patriarchy,” you can bet I will. An ideology which states that women can do the same things as men, or vice versa, is worthy of ridicule, as are its most assertive and unabashed followers

CM, reading comprehension seems to escape thee. I never for a split-second said that good-natured and community-centered free enterprise which I romanticize about is the reality we live in today. Far from it. I was making a distinction between such free enterprise and profit-worshipping corporatism.

Gee Brock, I wonder what it is about feminism(the radical idea that women are human beings) that irks you so much. The typical case is a guy who is extremely insecure and has problems relating to women. Such “men” long for a time when women’s options were so restricted as to make them more available to any man.

Brock,so basically you are saying that you are intentionally offensive because you believe that women are intellectually inferior to men. Yet like the white supremacists you disprove your theory of male supremacy every time you say something :P

And furthermore you have unambigously said that you hate this country and want to destroy it. Apparently if say Mississippi wants to bring back slavery its perfectly okay for you. Or if Virginia wants to abolish all environmental laws and bring back child labor to work in the new uranium mines* with no safety protection its okay. And sure, in Calfornia it may not be a problem if say Kentucky abolishes all clean air laws, but for people on the east coast who are downwind from Kentucky it would be a real problem.

Good thing for you that will never happen – see, while you talk about matters of purely local concern, the reality is that almost everything you buy was produced elsewhere. About the only place where i can get something local is the farmer’s market a couple of blocks from my house – and even in that case, the seeds were likely imported from elsewhere. and the trucks the farmers use to take their crops to market were produced elsewhere as was the gasoline. The Supreme Court recognized the reach of interstate commerce in Katenbach v. McClure and Wickard v. Filburn – and thngs have become much more interconnected since 1964. In fact, it is odd that as advances in communications and transportation brings the world closer together that your reaction is to divide things further. The economy operates on a national and international level – and not on a local level. The interconnectness of the economy is why economic issues are all national in scope In fact, there is relatively little of purely local concern left in the U.S. (mainly criminal laws, operation of school systems, fire departments, police forces, sanitation services, local roads, street lights – that sort of thing is local and has always been left primarily to the state and local governments in this country. And if the state doesn’t want to receive federal input into those areas they can always say “no” to the block grants which help fund them. States have not done that.) Basically you have zero understanding of the concept of federalism and what a federal government is.

Yes, i’m sure that California could perhaps be its own country – it has a large land area, a large population, and a diverse economic base. On the other hand, California’s state government is one of hte most dysfunctional in the world thanks to the tax protest movement and Proposition 13 which has been just as much of a disaster as anyone with a functional understaning of economics could have predicted. California also has a big enough market that they could set their own regulations of goods and be okay. But what about North Dakota? Or Vermont? Or Alabama? Or Virginia whose economy depends upon federal spending? Could those states function as independent counties? Would manufacturers forced to meet 50 different standards to sell in a country where they currently have to meet one bother with creating goods for say Delaware? Its doubtful.

And ultimately that is why your treasonous dream of destroying the United States of America will never happen. The multinational corporations who control this country’s economy won’t let it happen. And anyone who is not a complete moron knows that the plan to create 50 different countries out of one would fail misarably. That is why there are maybe 1% of the population who are in fact neo-Confederate twits like you who actually support seccession. But obviously you do not. What does that tell you?

Personally i think we should just round up all you neo-Confederate twits who favor seccession in some part of undesirable barely inhabitable part of the U.S. (my pick is southern Georgia) and let you have your own country. Then the rest of the U.S. can set up a betting pool on how long it takes before you losers are begging to get back into the U.S.

Brock,

You’re awfully smug for someone who has yet to write anything that makes the slightest sense. “Profit-worshipping corporatism” is exactly what the capitalists have created, and it’s specious to argue that it could have happened differently “if only.” But if that’s what you want to argue, I can certainly see how re-imagining the past and rewriting history, as you’ve been doing here, would be helpful.

God Empress Erika,

I can’t seem to find the links, but I recall that there is actually an active secessionist movement in Vermont that has existed for a couple decades now. It is exactly as silly as it sounds.

Aron, we wrote a big story on the Vermont secessionists — and their rather shocking embrace of racist Southern secessionists back in 2008:

^[5]

We also have an update on the story coming in the next issue of the Intelligence Report, due out March 5. It’s an obit of Second Vermont Republic founder Thomas Naylor.

Thanks Mark, I knew it was around here somewhere.

Aron, Vermont almost fits my criteria as an area to give the successionist morons in that in winter it would no doubt qualify as being unihabitable – at least by my standards. However, it seems likely that the residents of Vermont would object and not want to move. By contrast, give the residents of southern Georgia the chance to move anywhere else and they would no doubt jump at it. The ones who actually like southern Georgia enough to stay are probably neo-Confederates anyway and would fit right in. Basically no one would notice any difference if southern Georgia became Teabagistan..

So states that were in a union calling it quits and going their separate ways is a way of “destroying” a country. You truly believe such a provably, indisputably, and thoroughly false statement, don’t you Erika? And that conversely, sending a government’s army into its own lands to wage war AGAINST ITS OWN CITIZENS is not a way of destroying a country – it’s just giving it a nudge in what you know to be the right direction, even if you have to break a few eggs to make that omelette . . . right?

Then it’s query time. Think honestly about the answer to this question, and respond in like manner:

Are you and I a member of the same nation?

Now, Erika, you keep your fingers off of those keys until you can respond honestly like a good girl. Remember, if you can remember what you should have originally learned about what a nation truly is, and how it is defined, although your mind has probably rejected such inconvenient facts. It’s a group of people with a common culture, language, set of beliefs, customs, and traditions. It has nothing to do with the existence of a government exercising jurisdiction over a certain amount of people.

Spoiler alert!

No. Well, at least I can answer here on my end. No. Hell, no, thank the Lord, I am NOT a member of the American nation, whichever one that is, that you are a part of, Erika. You and I are functionally strangers from foreign countries. Do you know why? Because with a Satanically-inspired level of blood-boiling fury, you hate me. And people like me. If you are not familiar with writer Tim Wise, please google “Tim Wise Open Letter to the White Right.”

Get it? Conservatives have long known how liberals feel about us, and with the ideological ancestry of modern-day leftism having some roots in the interventionist, meddlesome, egalitarian New England Puritan spirit planted in the soil of this very continent, we have known for probably 200 or more years. Some conservatives point to the cultural Marxist writings of Gramsci, Marcuse, and Adorno, and to the Port Huron statement. They’re on the right track but of course they haven’t looked back far enough. At any rate, whether it be by genocide in the so-called Civil War, or by infiltration of all the institutions of psychological and educational influence as prescribed by the Frankfurt School, your eyes are on one prize regarding the American people who stand in opposition to the American Empire: destruction. So enough with the pretense that we are all one nation. We’re not, and never have been, not in the most authentic sense, at least, from Day 1 at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock to the present day. Reynardine is not one of my countrymen, nor Aron, nor Ruslan, nor I any of theirs. In what ways of viewing our community, family members, government, etc. are we alike? None. Look at the dualistic mindset that’s been created in you. You are so blinded with rage against Americans like myself that you still stupidly insist on calling someone who does not live anywhere near the South nor wishes to create a confederacy a neo-Confederate.

Brock, when someone constantly takes the Confederate view of things, denies that hte Constitution makes the federal government supreme over the states, opposes the federal government, calls for a confederacy of independent states, and advocates secession and “states rights” they are a neo-confederate.

And honey, America isn’t perfect but its the only country i got. My family has been here since before 1730 so i’m not going anywhere because i have no place to go. If you do not like it, you are perfectly free to move to any other country that will take you. Because that is the only way that you can stop being an American. Secession will never happen because the people do not support it. The people really didn’t even support it when the Confederacy tried to leave – only a minority of people in the South supported the Confederacy (which is why the Confederacy quickly turned increasingly tyrannical as their unsuccessful rebellion progressed)

and i’m not going to be a good girl by your definition either because i’m never going to just sit there, be quiet, have no mind of my own, and let you mysognistic men control everything.

Brock, I’m going to break my vow to ignore you on this thread because I really have to ask you something.

How does the American Civil War fit the UN definition of a genocide? Save for your buddy Nate Forrest’s actions at Pillow, there were no major race- or creed- based massacres.

Granted, the actions at Pillow and Andersonville counted AGAINST the secesh score, but that doesn’t really count, right?

And honestly, if you hate the current state of America, please secede. Go and proclaim the Great Brock Pokemon Refuge and Sovereign House of Pancakes. We won’t stop you.

But don’t expect any help from us or any other government, either. I can get my Pokemon and pancakes elsewhere.

I’ve been waiting for this moment as it approached with tedious inevitability. Brock has completed his transformation into Ignatius J. Reillly. ( ^[6])

Brock, dammit, when you were a wee badgerling in your sett, didn’t your mama tell you what a diet of fire ants and toadstools would do to you? Now look what you’ve got for a brain: an omelette not even a trashcan maggot would eat. Aren’t you ashamed to parade that in front of us? Well, we’re embarrassed, because however much you deny it, we *are* your countrymen, and damned if we appreciate the way that reflects on us and the *one nation, indivisible*, to which we owe our allegiance.

” Far from it. I was making a distinction between such free enterprise and profit-worshipping corporatism.”

No such distinction exists. The problem is that your understanding of the past is simply a romantic fairy tale that you were taught by parents and probably schools as well. If you actually lived in those times(or had studied history a little deeper from books whose covers don’t consist of a stern-faced middle-aged white guy in front of an American flag), you would find that those captains of “free enterprise” were even more rapacious and greedy than those of today(although they’re certainly getting there).

Your articles by and large are very informative. I do object however to you portraying people who support the bill of rights and constitution as “hate groups”. Is everyone who disagrees with your leftist ideology a hate group?

You are also inaccurate when you lump all hate groups as right wing. Nazis are socialists which is a leftist hate group. You need to correct your site.

“Your articles by and large are very informative. I do object however to you portraying people who support the bill of rights and constitution as “hate groups”. Is everyone who disagrees with your leftist ideology a hate group?

You are also inaccurate when you lump all hate groups as right wing. Nazis are socialists which is a leftist hate group. You need to correct your site.”

Well, Brenda, you should read these articles a little more closely, because they pretty clearly analyze how the organizations they describe as “hate groups” do indeed, practice hate as a matter of policy and value.

And you should read your history a little more closely, because the Nazis were not “socialists,” despite their egalitarian trappings and use of the word “socialist” in their title. They were “national socialists,” a right-wing nationalist and fascist organization, allied with large business, rabid nationalism and racism, and Germany’s generalitat. If anything, they were anti-labor and anti-leftists, suppressing the unions and left-wing parties at home, and then going off to kill more than 20 million Russian Communists alone!

If you need to understand this further, get your hands on the three books by Professor Richard Evans, “The Coming of the Third Reich,” “The Third Reich in Power,” and “The Third Reich at War,” and these three books, meticulously researched and well-written, will pretty much give you the full story of the Third Reich, from Hitler’s bunker to housewives in Hamburg, including the euthanasia programs, the sadistic medical experiments, the use of slave labor to support big business, and the destruction of German intellectualism. Go and study.

And as for “everyone who disagrees with your leftist ideology a hate group” sneer, show me where SPLC has condemned Mitt Romney, or the Republican Party in general in this blog?

I don’t think you really find these articles “by and large informative.” If they had, you would have understood those points.

” I do object however to you portraying people who support the bill of rights and constitution as “hate groups”.”

So you object to something nobody did? Brilliant.

“You are also inaccurate when you lump all hate groups as right wing. Nazis are socialists which is a leftist hate group. You need to correct your site.”

No, Nazis weren’t “socialists.” If you knew anything about the history of the NSDAP and interwar Europe you would understand perfectly as to why they happened to use the name “socialist” in their party’s official title.

Brenda,

The Nazis were not socialists. At least not after 1934.

And Socialism is not a hate group.

Well, Brock, I haven’t answered your comment aimed at me, mostly because I have a lot more important things to do than address the words of an internet troll.

However, I have a few minutes, so I’ll answer you.

No, you are perfectly correct. The Constitution does NOT specifically state that secession is forbidden. You were obviously expecting me to say “The Civil War settled that,” which would play into your arguments that America is an empire held together with bayonets, and give you smug satisfaction.

However, the Supreme Court, which under the Constitution, interprets the Constitution, decided in the case of Texas v. White that states could not secede from the Union. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase delivered the majority opinion, and his decision is actually referred to by the White House in its response to the petitions for Texas to secede from the Union. Look it up.

So the Supreme Court has spoken. Now, if you believe that is wrong, there are numerous remedies to that situation, and we have seen Supreme Court decisions overturned by federal legislation and the Supreme Court itself. Plessy v. Ferguson fell to Brown v. Board of Education, for obvious example.

I suggest that you explore the appropriate remedies to this gap – unite with like-minded secessionists, chip in your dollars, and either elect representatives who will support your position, or undertake legal action to address this situation. You could, of course, also take the path of previous secessionist attempts, but that would only provoke the response you probably desire, of being the object of massive force, which would certainly at least give you an opportunity to become martyrs to your cause.

However, I am more interested in your views on child labor, feminism, and civic discourse.

Your comment on child labor, verbatim:

“No, Hayes and McKinley didn’t do anything to abolish child labor according to my knowledge. They’re so reprehensible for that, aren’t they, Aron? A kid learning the value of hard work and – gasp! – becoming a disciplined ADULT at an early age! . . . how evil that is!! Everyone knows nowadays that children are supposed to be bored, angst-ridden, spoiled-rotten classroom drones exploring their sexuality and playing iPhone games. Thank God that the past is past!”

So you seem to think that the world – or at least your corner of it – would be a better place if children were removed from the classrooms at an early age and sent to work in steel mills, coal mines, shipyards, and sweatshops, and denied an advanced education. At what age should they start punching clocks? Sixteen? Fourteen? Twelve?

According to historian Walter Lord, in his book, “The Good Years,” published in 1960, but still highly accurate: in 1913, “Twelve-year-old Owen Jones tore and bruised his hands in the breakers of a West Virginia coal mine. Tiny Anetta Fachini twisted the stems for artificial flowers under the lonely lamp bulb of a New York tenement sweatshop. Eleven-year-old Sam Bowles did his best in the weaving room of Georgia’s White City Manufacturing Company – for 40 cents a day.

“At an Atlanta cotton mill one nimble-fingered boy stretched three thousand flour bags a shift; but he had plenty of practice, for he worked a 60-hour week. In Pittsburgh, an unknown little girl rolled 1,000 stogies a day – which meant, looking at it another way, that 1,000 times a day she had to bite off the end of a cigar.”

Mill-owner Frederick Gordon considered working children 60 hours a week to be a matter of “charity.” There were no federal laws affecting this, and when asked, President Woodrow Wilson declined to take action. He said it was a matter of “states’ rights,” so I’m sure you would approve of his position.

I can see from your position that these kinds of labor conditions offer many advantages to business. They certainly improve profits for the small “capitalists” you admire but also for the large “Capitalists” that you despise. Either way, it opposes socialism in any form. And you have a considerable point in that these child laborers learned valuable lessons about hard work and discipline. They also lost arms, legs, eyes, and lives in the machinery they operated. They also did not gain access to higher education, so their career opportunities were severely stunted.

On the other hand, they probably had a good deal of “angst” from the harsh conditions, were probably “bored” from the repetitive nature of their work, very likely explored their sexuality at an early age, but they certainly were not “spoiled-rotten classroom drones” and absolutely did not have Iphones.

I read this and thought about how you will apply this theory when you have led the secession effort in California and the Stars and Stripes are replaced with that of the “Bear Flag Republic” or the “Brock Henderson Republic.” Obviously you will have child labor for all at an early age, and you won’t have kids who will suffer the pain and agony they have today, and you will have a thriving and productive industrial economy.

And to be sure, there are examples of such states in both fiction and reality. Suzanne Collins offered us “Panem,” which had starving kids in the various industrial and agricultural districts working in a state of slavery and starvation to provide the inhabitants of the Capitol with all their supplies, and regular “Tributes” for the “Hunger Games.” Another novelist, George Orwell, gave us “Oceania,” in which children worked in the coal mines and factories, supplying an endless war whose purpose was to be continual, destructive of production, and aimed at its own people.

I was also reminded of Herr Hitler’s directives for the occupation of Poland, in which he ordered the creation of a “leaderless labor force” to serve Germany. Polish children were not to be taught to read or write. They would learn to count to a maximum of 500, write their names and “that it is God’s command that he should be obedient to Germans, honorable, industrious, and brave.” (Source: “Blitzkrieg,” by historian Len Deighton)

That’s fine. Sounds like a plan. It supports industry, business, profit, and it maintains order, production, and obedience.

Of course, there are a number of problems: the workers of these various ages may not be too productive…they might be annoyed or rebellious against their conditions… they might even oppose the system. But I think the big problem with this diktat or ukase is that if we close the schools, eliminate higher education, and put all the kids in factories, we will effectively eliminate all but the simplest professions.

I mean…we’ll have no doctors, no dentists, no surgeons, no nurses, no engineers, no architects, no mathematicians, no scientists, and no inventors. We’ll also have trouble generating military leaders. We will also lack bankers, corporate executives, and business leaders. We would also lack artists, lawyers, judges, teachers, philosophers, writers, musicians, but I don’t think you’d consider folks like that much of a loss.

But we’d be short of a host of other professions: pharmacists, agronomists, traffic engineers, and geologists. Have you thought about that part? Where will your republic find them? Will you bring in “guest workers” to do these jobs? Or will you limit access to those professions to a financial, religious, or political elite? Will that ensure that you have the best minds tackling these issues? What will happen when your knowledge bases fall off and people just simply don’t know how to do things?

Well, at least we know one thing: your society won’t have women involved in it. As you say: “Oh, and I despise feminism, an ideology which you claim to subscribe to. That’s the reason for the misogynistic pet-names. If I can say or type something which I believe just might tick off a feminist and really drive her into a rage against the “oppressive right-wing patriarchy,” you can bet I will. An ideology which states that women can do the same things as men, or vice versa, is worthy of ridicule, as are its most assertive and unabashed followers.”

So according to you, women cannot do the same things as men. Interesting. Well, I’ve never heard of a man getting pregnant, so that’s certainly true. But I’d like to hear precisely what, in fields that are not divided by physical attributes, men can do that women cannot do. Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize, Indira Gandhi and Boadicea led their peoples into victorious wars, and Phyllis Schlafly and Sarah Palin went into the political arena and gained immense following and support…as conservatives, I should note.

But what I’m really interested in is your writing…and your solution. See, you come here and berate the folks in this discussion group, using a mix of sarcasm and condescension, mixing the styles of a sneering bully and an overbearing teacher trying to correct a class of unruly fourth graders, trying to elicit from them the “correct” answer in a twisted Socratic dialogue. However, you fail.

What actually comes over is dripping hatred and contempt for your opponents, which is standard for radicals, a spatter of rhetorical gunfire aimed at your various straw men, and the usual determination to frame the debate only in the terms that you set.

Well, you’re not winning friends and influencing people here. I’m sure that when you go back to the web pages you normally haunt, you will probably brag about how you stood up for secession and against the evil conspiracies of the Frankfurt School, and your pals will applaud.

But it doesn’t accomplish anything, does it? I mean, none of us are going to join your cause.

And you portray us as follows: “Because with a Satanically-inspired level of blood-boiling fury, you hate me. And people like me.”

I don’t hate you. I think you’re pompous, arrogant, smug, condescending, and sarcastic, but I don’t hate you. Never have. Never will. Hate is a useless emotion. The people you hate either don’t know or don’t care that you hate them. Both the Mob and the Bible teach you not to hate your enemies. Nor do I waste that much time on you – as my delay in answering you shows.

What I think you should do is stop wasting your time, lucidity, and passion here, on Hatewatch. You’re not going to gain California’s secession from the Union, you’re not going to restore child labor, and you’re not driving me into a rage.

Nor can you really say you’re gaining ground for your cause. If you think child labor is truly a moral and admirable practice, go argue the point with the National Child Labor Committee, which was founded in 1904 to end the practice. They’re still around, located at ^[7] I think they’ll be most impressed by your views and the energy, force, and gravity with which you present them.

You should unite with your like-minded secessionists, pool your funds, and begin legal and actual proceedings to separate from the Union. Find a pro bono or public advocacy lawyer and argue your case. Don’t just sit behind a computer keyboard and hurl sarcastic cracks about Benedict Arnold and Nathan Bedford Forrest – get up and fight the battle. Forrest wasn’t a superman. Neither was Arnold. Nor, for that matter, was Thomas Jefferson. Do something about it, instead of whining and sneering. Don’t just sit there. Is that all you can do? Pound a keyboard?

So my real question to you is this: has anything you have done in this cause actually improved your world, your county, your neighborhood, or your life? Do you have an actual, realistic, implementable, solution that will make your life better?

Or is whining on the web really all you’ve got?

Brenda, dear, your health would improve if you would cease to first swallow, then regurgitate, that which has already passed through so many other digestive systems. Alimentary, my dear Brenda.

Brenda, maybe you should meet Brock, you seem to be his type :P

And if you want to see a real attack on the Bill of Rights, look up the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton. Or see the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Or read some of those lovely opinions by the Roberts and Rehnquist courts before then. And then wonder how come despite all of these blatant attacks on the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eigth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments do not get a reaction from those so called “Oath Keepers” who keep in mind are mainly law enforcement professionals which is to say the driving force behind most of the real attacks on the Constitution (see Amendments Four, Five, Six, Eight, and Fourteen) – while a notion that perhaps some restrictions on guns equals treason.

So if the cops kick down your door and take your personal mail and seize your property to be sold for their benefit without ever charging you with a crime its okay, but if you can’t buy a 30 round magazine its tyranny. That is despite the fact that the SEcond Amendment expliticitly calls for a “well regulated militia” which is much weaker than the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law”

And then try to learn some history from someone who isn’t Glenn Beck or David Barton. Then get back to us.

Thanks :)

This is the first & last time i’ll post on this board. Almost everything i’ve read is by, hateful, agenda pushing radicals attacking the American constitution.

Reynardine and Erika, demonstrate for all of us what world view, common principles, and culture you and I have in common. Provide proof with conclusive evidence that as far as the actual definition of a nation goes, Brock and Reynardine and Erika belong to the same one. This will be a difficult task for you, I understand, because you worship the state as God. The state is to be the tool used for consolidating authority over all those who stand in the way of the inexorable march toward the destruction of Western Civilization, and eliminating them in whatever way they stand as a force of opposition. So if we are both under the jurisdiction of the government headquartered on the Potomac, then as far as your silly little shrunken minds are concerned, we are members of the same nation. Because the nation is the state, and the state is the nation. The Almighty State is our God. In order to truly make a case that you and I are members of the same nation, you’d have to use the real definition of the word “nation.” You’d have to show that we are three people who live for the same goals and live by the same principles. You would have to realize that the main premise of left-wing thought – that there are only two dimensions of human existence, the individual and the state – is of course provably false. You will never do so. But take a crack at it, you two. Prove that you do not HATE conservatives.

Once again, your culture is different from mine. The way you approach life and the many questions it poses to us is different from the way I do. I started monitoring this website a little while before I made my first comment, and the tone that you have always taken towards conservatives is that of someone communicating with a sworn ENEMY. So say it, loud and proud. I understand that it’s true. Now open your own minds just enough to be able to admit it to me. I am your enemy. You are my enemies. We are at war with each other. Why else would you be followers of an organization dedicated to monitoring people like me as though we are threats to the achievement of some kind of goal, and as such ideally need to be eliminated? Members of one nation do not view each other that way.

Erika, we’ve been over your stupidity that is immediately debunked and discredited upon reading the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, and ratification documents. I pay my respect to the authority of the Feds over the states wherever it is undeniable that said authority was GIVEN to the Feds by the states – the entities which of course created the Feds. Uh, wow, did you REALLY just say that people who simply “oppose” the Feds are neo-confederates – a term which you obviously use not in its real literal sense but simply as a marginalization tactic? Not call for secession or nullification, but just simply OPPOSE? You have just proven yourself to be an extremely dangerous person as far as your relationship to your fellow “countrymen” is concerned.

Ruslan, I have not been told any fairy tales. No part of life is a fairy tale, because contrary to what you maintain, man is not God and hence can never become anywhere near perfect, not in the antebellum Southern U.S. or in your horrific dream society. Neither my parents or public school teachers – the only kind I’ve ever had, by the way – have played a part in my view of history. Yes I did use the word “romanticize” a few comments ago, and you can go ahead and disregard that. That was just a little too positive a spin to put on it.

Aron, I do not give a rat’s tail what the U.N. say about what is and is not genocide. The people of the North declared war against the people south of them whom they declared to be their own countrymen. The next four years saw the U.S. government achieve a status which only the empires of history most famous for the terror they inflicted upon the world can claim: one which turned its guns and cannons on ITS OWN PEOPLE. It waged war AGAINST ITS OWN CITIZENS. Since the war between the North and the South was so horrifically untraditional in that way, this was indeed an act of genocide, in the real sense of the word. The soldiers of a country’s army were ordered to kill their own fellow citizens, and they definitely did. The U.S. and Mexico were already two separate sovereign governments at war between 1846 and 1848. Ditto Japan/Germany and the U.S. in WWII. That’s just war, plain and simple.

But anyway, now your precious American Empire founded by St. Lincoln is all over the globe, ridding Middle Eastern countries of excess population, most prominently. How do you like your Empire now, Aron?

It is not appropriate to label patriots as hate groups. I would say someone upholding their oaths is an honorable thing. Anyone attacking that aspect of our traditions and values it in fact the intellectual aggressor. People need to wake up and realize that its not just who is in power that are at fault its those who continually denigrate each other including the publisher of this group. To truly recognize the culprits of the problems of society we must look around to the failure of those to execute the policies of the people who put them in office from GWB to BHO and for the most part modern presidents in general. In layman’s term everyone needs to grow up and recognize that our problems have been because we have “ignored” the “principles” of our founding documents.. nothing more and nothing less….

All right, rabid badger and sanctimonious Mr. Stewart, if we were the haters, we would be invading your websites and spewing invective at you constantly, wouldn’t we? We don’t. If memory of some past link serves me, Ruslan has gone on a hostile link and made a cogent argument, without resorting to the kind of verbal viciousness that you display here.

As for you, Brock, I have had cause to study all the aspects and parameters of citizenship. Until you go elsewhereand formally renounce your citizenship, the United States of America is your sovereign, to whom you owe allegiance and which owes you protection in return. The First Amendment of that sovereign you scorn is exactly what enables you to engage in that speech, and you know it, because I believe you are otherwise too craven to endanger yourself, but if ever you act on those sentiments, you will find that your citizenship brings you under the treason jurisdiction of your sovereign.

” Provide proof with conclusive evidence that as far as the actual definition of a nation goes, Brock and Reynardine and Erika belong to the same one. This will be a difficult task for you, I understand, because you worship the state as God.”

Oh good, the old libertarian chestnut: “You STILL question my totally unproven claims about economics and my totally unsubstantiated historical narrative? WELL YOU MUST WORSHIP THE STATE AS GOD!!!”

Sorry but that doesn’t fly in the real world.

” The state is to be the tool used for consolidating authority over all those who stand in the way of the inexorable march toward the destruction of Western Civilization, and eliminating them in whatever way they stand as a force of opposition.”

Gee I don’t know if you heard, but “Western Civilization” had quite a few states, many of them far more authoritarian than say, the post Civil War United States. In fact since civilization appears right around the same time in human history as the development of private property and thus class-base society, you could almost say that all civilization went hand in hand with a state.

” So if we are both under the jurisdiction of the government headquartered on the Potomac, then as far as your silly little shrunken minds are concerned, we are members of the same nation. Because the nation is the state, and the state is the nation. The Almighty State is our God.”

You seem to enjoy telling other people what they think or believe. The truth is that since the world is divided into nation states, for all intents and purposes you belong to the same “country.” Nation? Perhaps not, depending on how you define it. However, while you seem to be skirting around the topic, I have a feeling I know exactly why you think that we are not members of your “nation.”

” In order to truly make a case that you and I are members of the same nation, you’d have to use the real definition of the word “nation.” You’d have to show that we are three people who live for the same goals and live by the same principle. ”

Why should that be the definition of “nation?” It would be clearly suitable to describe many things which are not nations. Your definition is totally arbitrary.

“You would have to realize that the main premise of left-wing thought – that there are only two dimensions of human existence, the individual and the state – is of course provably false.”

“Left-wing thought” is a big place, buddy, what sort of “left-wing” thought preaches that sort of dichotomy? Also, do you realize that a major advance in the concept of nation states came from the left-wing French Revolution?

” But take a crack at it, you two. Prove that you do not HATE conservatives.”

The fact that most of us are laughing at you suggests we don’t necessarily hate you. Also do you realize that you just asked us to prove a negative?

” I started monitoring this website a little while before I made my first comment, and the tone that you have always taken towards conservatives is that of someone communicating with a sworn ENEMY.”

Why? Just because we don’t buy into your BS historical narrative that doesn’t stand the light of examination? Is it because we refuse to accept your arbitrary definitions for various things?

So say it, loud and proud. I understand that it’s true. Now

“Erika, we’ve been over your stupidity that is immediately debunked and discredited upon reading the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, and ratification documents. ”

I didn’t really follow your “debate” with Erika but I happen to know that Erika is a trained lawyer whereas you, well, haven’t really established yourself as trained in law.

“Ruslan, I have not been told any fairy tales. No part of life is a fairy tale, because contrary to what you maintain, man is not God and hence can never become anywhere near perfect,”

I have never asserted that man was god, and the antebellum south was far from perfect. In fact, perfect wasn’t really necessary. I’d settle for not owning people as property.

“. Neither my parents or public school teachers – the only kind I’ve ever had, by the way – have played a part in my view of history. ”

While I’m not sure they would have helped, it seems to me your view of history was shaped largely by internet sites about the New World Order, various pamphlets handed out at gun shows, and books which have a stern-looking middle-aged white guy on the front standing with his hands on his hips in front of an American flag.

“Aron, I do not give a rat’s tail what the U.N. say about what is and is not genocide. The people of the North declared war against the people south of them whom they declared to be their own countrymen. ”

The South fired the first shot.

And while one can argue over whether the UN definition of genocide is appropriate or inadequate, it is pretty clear that putting down an armed insurgency is not genocide.

“The next four years saw the U.S. government achieve a status which only the empires of history most famous for the terror they inflicted upon the world can claim: one which turned its guns and cannons on ITS OWN PEOPLE. It waged war AGAINST ITS OWN CITIZENS. ”

And how about how the South treated its own citizens…you know the ones they didn’t call citizens?

Mr. Stewart, no one is “labeling patriots as hate groups.” What are being identified as hate groups are the fake self-styled patriots who use lies and misrepresentations of what American democracy is all about to advance an agenda of insurrection.

You’re quite right when you say that “upholding an oath is an honorable thing.” When you take an oath you’re *expected* to honor it. That’s what makes it an oath. You don’t have to take another oath saying that you’ll honor the first one, or join an organization that claims to unite people who really really really plan to honor their oaths. That would be superfluous and silly. So clearly, Oath Keepers isn’t about keeping oaths, it’s just a far-right political pressure group.

Brock,
Well, that was quite the manifesto of outraged immaturity. I haven’t the patience of Ruslan so this will be brief.

For starters, you did not debunk Erika. Your argument consisted mostly of fantasy and wishful thinking, hers consisted of 200 years of American jurisprudence. In short, she kicked your ass. Maybe you could have accepted defeat with more grace if her name was Erik, rather than Erika, but we know that you have problems with women.

As for your infatuation with secession, I doubt you could fill a Volkswagen with like minded rebels. You do have an option, however. Simply find a country that meets your fantasy and go, because the US will never be that country. Of course, you will have to leave the confines of your parent’s basement, but isn’t that a small price to pay for the liberty that you crave?

Beautifully said, Gregory!

Gregory, don’t shoot the messenger. T’was not I, Brock, that made any argument with Erika. It’s the evidence, Sherlock. The transcripts of the debates that took place amongst the representatives of the American States over the proposed Constitution do all of the necessary debunking and discrediting of Erika the Circus Clown’s silliness for me. It’s pretty easy to do since that “200 years of American jurisprudence” hogwash you mentioned is itself one big 200-year journey of removal from that Constitution, as far away as possible.

Sigh, alrighty Ruslan, hmm, where to begin . . .

Oh yes, the definition of a nation. Generally that’s true – a real nation must consist of people with at the very least SIMILAR goals and principles. Ones which are not at total odds with each other. Culture, customs, and traditions are the most important, though. Where observable segments of a society possess polar-opposite views about these things, there is no nation of people, just masses of people under the jurisdiction of the same government, usually by brutal totalitarian means. This is common knowledge, not an arbitrary definition. Concerning the request to prove a negative, that’s fair enough. That begs the question, though: What binds you together in common cause with radical right-wing Americans? What values do you share with us? Which American historical figures do we AND you look up to as heroes – and for the same reasons? This goes for all of you, by the way. This ought to be good.

But Ruslan flunks U.S. History 101 for actually calling secession a type of insurgency. Please, dear boy, submit for our consideration, transcripts of the requests for aid from the Feds, submitted by the legislatures of the Southern States, for the purpose of quelling their several insurgent rebellions. Again, this ought to be good.

And you answered your own question about the South’s treatment of its non-citizen population, if there is at least a piece of a brain behind that skull. Otherwise, here it is: Generally, people in a country who are not citizens of that country are . . . . wait for it, I love surprising people! . . . NOT treated the same as its people who ARE citizens! Don’t you just love learning new things?!

Moron.

Brock, as i told you before, your interpretation of the Constitution cannot survive past the first line. And if the first line of the Constitution wasn’t enough there is always the Supremacy Clause which makes the Federal government supreme over the states. The Constitution also requires state officials to swear or affirm allegence to the Federal government. And if there was any doubt after those things that the Federal government is the supreme sovereign it is removed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

When the text of the Constitution makes it clear that the Federal government is a union of people and supreme over the states you do not need to look outside of the plain language of the Constitution. The most fundamental rule of statutory intepretation is that unambiguous plain language always carries the day.

In fact, you hold a view that has been rejected by everyone. i mean, even the actual Confederates favored a system of government where there was a central government with a President and a Congress. In fact, ultimately the Confederate States of America government became more and more powerful as the war progressed. The Confederacy created the first income tax and instituted the first draft – and overall the Southern government became extremely tyrannical. There were many instances where people who opposed secession were summarily executed or imprisoned. And in many portions of the South (especially in the mountains where the rich flatland planters were much less popular than the federal government), more men joined the Union Army than the Confederacy. The Confederate Army when it started to lose the war and retreating would take everything that it could and burn the rest (much of the burning has been wrongly blamed on the Union Army which lie should be easy to see through – why would someone burn what you just captured? Seriously, take Atlanta, why would the Union after fighting for months to capture the rail center of the deep South at Atlanta then burn it? That makes absolutely zero sense as a strategy – and of course, it didn’t happen. It was the retreating Confederates that burned the cities like Atlanta – but as part of the “Lost Cause” Myth the Union Army got the blame for what the Confederates did). During Sherman’s March to the Sea the Union Army was often welcomed as a relief by whites (and obviously the freed slaves viewed them rightly as an army of liberation). That is why especially in the deep south and west there were many cases where Confederate soldiers would desert and then actually go to the Union Army and join it.

Of course, being steeped in the mythology of the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” you do not know any of that. Instead, the South merely wanted to go their own way. Just ignore that their own way was a government founded on the principle of “White Supremacy” and would deny all rights to the majority of its occupants (remember that in the South poor whites were one step above slaves and essentially had no rights). In fact, the existence and experience of the pro-Union southerners who were often summarily executed should be sufficient to show the error of your ways. It is in fact, the large number of Southerners who remained loyal to the Union – or maybe initially joined the Confederacy and left during the war to rejoin the Union as has been well documented – whose rights were totally violated and as mentioned above often were imprisoned or executed who show that secession is never pretty and simple. The creation of West Virginia where several western counties in Virginia seceeded from Virginia and petitioned to join the Union also shows that secession is not going to be a simple matter.

The problem that you face ultimately is that the only way that secession can ever take place is that if you have a democratic society with a clean line between distinct ethnic groups with the assurance of minority rights after the division. That can happen – the split of Czechoslovikia is the one peaceful example ever. The Czechs and Slovaks were always distinct groups who got artificallly grouped together after World War I. Both sides essentially lived in distinct areas and were committed to democracy and human rights, That is rare. That is also not at all the case of the U.S. where there are many different ethnic groups, political views, social ties. Ultimately you do have a point in saying that where i am from has very little in common with you – Georgia and California are vastly different places. But yet, we are both Americans and this is the only country we got. And in case of a split, there will be no clear lines – i live in Virginia now and Virginia comprises about 5 distinct areas which all have very little in common with each other. In fact, the only thing those areas really have is that they all see themselves overall as loyal Americans first and Virginians second.

By contrast you have the former Yugoslavia where you had a much more mixed population, much less commitment to democracy and minority rights, and no fixed dividing lines between ethnic groups. You also had a longstanding terrorist movement by secessionists. That is a much more common situation – and the result was war and genocide.

The U.S. does not have neat lines – the states are all mixed ethnically to some degree and many are mixed ideologically as well. The U.S. does not have near universal support for a split. In fact, one of the real ironies of you pushing secession as a right wing wacko is that if California in fact did become its own country it is likely to be much more liberal than the government you are leaving. The vast majority of Americans support the continuation of the Union. If put to a vote, the number of people who really want to leave the U.S. could probably fit in one county or a small island. Maybe you need a couple of counties that no one would miss much (like in southern Georgia or western Kansas) and then put all of you secessionist freaks together and let you have your way.

And yes, Brock you are a neo-Confederate – your view of the Civil War is entirely lifted from the myth of “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy” – you support secesssion, and you claim that states have the right to leave the Union (despite the fact that there is no provision within the Constitution allowing for secession (there is a provision allowing states to enter the Union) and despite the fact that the plain language makes the Constiution a Union of the People and not the States). You also ignore that the majority of Southerners actually opposed secession – and that the Confederate States was built on a foundation of slavery and systemically violated the rights of the pro-union white minority (with the exception of mountain areas like eastern Tennessee where the Nashville government had little control). Even defeated, the formation of the Ku Klux Klan showed that there were still Southerners who were fighting for White Supremacy (and note that in many cases, the KKK was strongest in areas where the support for the former Confederacy was weakest and most of their victims in those areas were white southerners (not blacks and carpetbaggers which were mainly targeted by the KKK in areas with large freed slave populations – these are areas where there were very few slaves and the Confederacy if they allowed voting would have lost the vote in 1861) who had always opposed the Confederacy.

It is your worship of the Confederacy (seriously, you’d think that you went to public schools in Georgia or something) in addition to your support for secession which makes you a Neo-Confederate. The evidence is overwhelming that you are such.

And Brock, if you really want to seceed you can do what some people have done – namely get your own island and have the Brock Republic. It doesn’t even have to be real. In fact, i think the guy who had Sealand recently died so perhaps you can take it over. It might get rather lonely living out in the middle of the ocean and you have to watch out for hurricanes (especially Hurricane Erika) but you would get what you want – a government completely under your control. Seriously, it is pretty clear that the governmental system you actually favor is a dictatorship in which Brock is absolute dictator. You may well figure that is the only way you could be with a woman – and based upon your attitude it is probably right.

And Gregory, while i’m sure that Brock’s mysogny plays some role in his reaction to me, the guy has basically proven himself to just be a jerk. He pretty much hates everyone who doesn’t see Brock Henderson as the special snowflake that is right while everyone else in the entire United States is wrong. He might even hate himself, i don’t know. But while i’m sure that he has a special hatred for intelligent women he does seem to pretty much hate everyone. Maybe he’ll grow out of the juvenile mysathrope act someday and be willing to share and join us here in the real world – but until then, it seems like he’d be happier on an island.

“successionist”

Ladies and gents, I present to you, the brilliant legal mind of this blogroll at work (look at Erika’s comment right after Mr. Potok’s comment on Vermont secession).

Really, Erika? SUCCESSIONIST? And you’re a lawyer?

You have just confirmed yourself to be a total moron, Counselor. Congratulations.

@Brock: correction people who enslave others and oppress and kill people based on the color of their skin and or religious beliefs are not our countrymen. They are nothing more than poisonous seeds inhabiting what would be a great and prosperous garden of civility.

And some people are just born with wonderful Souls they are gifts from God and yes Morris Dees is a good man and I believe would have been a good man no matter what color God made him.

And then there are those men who are like the bad seed “devil children” and it is our human plight that we must exist amongst them while we walk the earth.

@ Erika: I believe you posted this:

“What a charmer this Brock is. Seriously, we have a guy here who is pro-child labor and wants to bring back the Articles of Confederation (and also thinks that the states have free reign to do whatever they want to people including allowing people to own slaves). If his positions weren’t truly world class nutty in and of themselves he is also a complete misogynistic jerk.”

What’s scary is that there are whole communities who buy into this sort of thought. They also believe in burning books while sipping out of the communal beer bong.

The vantage point of OKs and IIIpers is understandable – NOLA, less than a decade in the past. First-hand knowledge, this poster was present when it happened. USMIL (USAR, USNG and USA) forcibly confiscating lawfully held weapons. Unfortunately, the marginal few, on the periphery (of all groups), cast the longest shadow.

Regardless of circumstance, the pretext is set. Never let a crisis go unleveraged. Sandy Hook, the same as Katrina. Right or Left, it simply doesn’t matter. What matters to the unaccountable political class, (just like the bourgois, the royalty, the communists, the CEOs, and dictators of all stripes before them) is the preservation of their power and authority. To the detriment of everything and everyone else. Benevolent human leadership is an oxymoron, as is truly altruistic job performance.

I believe our nation and it’s founding principles are the only hope left for humanity. Only in America can you stand and act. The rest of the world is indeed a very dark place, in that regard. Having broken bread on 5 continents, in mud huts and 4-star hotels, with a good sampling of modern race, religion, and sociopolitical groups, – as both friend and adversary, I can say I truly see the benefit of human existence under divine law, and innate rights and dignity unassailable by the gerrymandering, interpretation, and meddling of men.

poor brock, what a burden it must be to be a special little snowflake who is right when everyone else is wrong and no matter how much evidence to the contrary there might be he can always fall back on “brock is always right.”

Odd that this supposed defender of the Constitution winds up sounding like nothing as much but an old school royalist speaking about the “divine right of kings.”

Erika, you silly little airhead, we’ve been over this before. The indisputable fact that states – independent nation-states, that is – were the parties responsible for ratifying the Constitution is discussed explicitly between James Madison and Patrick Henry. Remember those quotes from the Debates I posted? Now don’t you make me post them again, young lady, I don’t want to have to make you look like an even sillier little girl. There’s also a couple of things called logic and reason: Let’s see, the entities that arose from the War for Independence from Great Britain were independent STATES. You know, like France, and Italy, and Sri Lanka. If another government exerts full and unlimited power over a collection of STATES, then they ARE NOT STATES ANYMORE. Provinces, counties, prefectures, territories, they could be called any of those things, but not states. I missed the part where the United States GAVE UP their STATEHOOD to the government they created in 1789. To give up all of the independence fought for just a few years prior would be nothing short of self-inflicted masochism. That’s why they DIDN’T. Like it or not, and I know it’s definitely the latter for you, there is that “pursuant to the Constitution” caveat attached to the Federal Supremacy Clause. There is nothing FEDERAL about a government which exerts top-down unlimited authority and power over the lower forms of government under its jurisdiction. That is an explicitly and exclusively NATIONAL government. After all – and please, Erika, for your own intellectual well-being, read the following line very carefully – the STATES created the FEDS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Only in that way would an unaccountable, all-powerful national government which you pine for, make any sense. And once and for all, there is this one type of government principally defined by its assertion of nation-state status by way of bullets instead of ballots: an EMPIRE.

As for your description of the vices of the Confederacy, wow! You’re saying that governments tend a little towards tyranny during wartime, and their people tend to flee in order to avoid the paths of destruction? Brilliant! Didn’t know that! I thought freedom and liberty absolutely FLUORISHED during war!

Moron.

Brock: you have refuted not one of Erika’s arguments. All you can come up with is that, in a long and detailed response to you, there was one misspelling or misprint of a word otherwise spelled and used correctly at least a dozen times. Otherwise, her arguments were cogent and well stated, and you did not endeavor to refute a one logically.

We do gather that the freedom you feel was infringed upon was the freedom to deprive others of theirs. You have stated it was an unbearable infringement of your human dignity not to be able to treat others with indignities normally visited on livestock. To you, treason is the refusal to obey traitors, and your right to bear arms appears to be to threaten others with weapons of mass murder if they refuse to bow to your will. You have the right to believe these things; though you have no right to publish them here, they are being so published. What you do not have the right to do is put your ideas into practice by force. The day and hour you defy the guarantees of your sovereign thus, you will find that you and we indeed owe our allegiance to the same sovereign, and that sovereign will indeed extend its protection even to those of your fellow citizens whom you despise most

ZOMG! Erika misspelled a word?

Really, Brock, grow up.

Erika, you possess a law degree and you are female, indeed, but you are not intelligent, nor are you a woman. Learn to spell and cease your feminist war against both manhood and womanhood, then you might qualify. I’m a jerk, you say, because of the way I address you on this blog? Erika dear, just one question for you:

How does it feel?

I mentioned awhile back that I started monitoring this blog perhaps as long as 6 months before I started posting comments. What I gathered from my perusal of the mind-numbing stupidity emanating from these cyberquarters is that a “jerk” is the exact way YOU act towards people with opposing views who comment on this blog.

I guarantee you, Brock, that you will never get a chance to find out if Erika is a woman or not.

We’ve been over this before, Reynardine. Many a blog ago. I have an arsenal of weaponry at my disposal called The Debate on the Constitution. It includes the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, statements of ratification from the statehouses, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution. I guess you don’t remember where Erika made the argument that – haha, pardon me while I laugh – the Constitution is a document ratified by PEOPLE and not STATES. Meaning, of course – and the Federalist Party spared no drop of ink or breath during their speeches explicitly reassuring the Anti-Feds that the proposed document would do NO SUCH THING – that the government does in fact remove and eliminate the state governments as barriers to its reach and scope. How MANY excerpts from the speeches made during those debates do you want me to post here, Reynardine, where Madison or Hamilton explicitly refute such nonsense?

Brock, do you have a job?

And exactly, Brock, how does any assignment of gender to Erika play into this? You state you have been lurking for some time. Did those peach bottom jokes drive you into a darkened theater in Onancock?

Aron, you are pathetically desperate to marginalize people you hate, aren’t you? Well, you have found good company with the SPLC . . .

Brock,
You lost your argument because history is not on your side. By “history”, I mean the factual/actual events and decisions that shaped the course of events, rather than the fantasy world that you inhabit. Quote all the speeches and papers you wish, they have little effect on what actually happened.

As for the rest of your tiresome shtick, basically you are an Internet Tuff Guy ®. Your provocation may seem brave on your side of the screen, but what the rest of the world perceives is a pathetic little boy, evoking more pity than fear or hatred.

In the current vernacular, Epic Fail. I can say, with some certainty, that you would not behave this way in my presence, as I am an old man with little tolerance of the behaviour you seem to consider “manly”.

I will repeat my previous admonition; Grow up. Get a clue.

two responses – first my flat out mean girl response:

Oh it looks like that special little snowflake Brock has melted down. What an adorable little temper tantrum as the strong armchair commando gets in a tizzy due to the mean girl. Maybe he can run upstairs to his mommy to comfort him :P

Okay, my more serious response (but its still kind of mean, sorry to the little fragile teacup, but the real world can be like that),

Brock, you are one hostile person. You are also extremely ignorant. You need serious help in both categories. More for the hostility actually, because hostility will always destroy you in the end. Your ignorance may well be terminal however due to your arrogance.

And i’m sorry that you apparently believe that if a “female” has an opinion contrary to yours that she can’t be a woman. You seem to have no problem calling me a girl though. Apparently you think that belittles me. Silly boy you have no clue about that either. You have long past the point where you are just pounding the table :P

its pretty obvious that your view of women is as twisted as your view on the Constitution.

Brock, I suspect the part you wanted me to get was “arsenal of weaponry”, because the stuff you cited was just not dangerous. There is no use citing law to you, because you make up law and you make up cites. No one is going to put up with your Gish gallop, and no one is impressed by your threats. Get some psychiatric attention before some court sends you on a quilted vacation.

Brock, as a I said before, I don’t hate you. I dislike and pity you.

I was merely asking if you had a job as you strike me as someone who would be unable to function in the real world. Not that I’m belittling you (you’ve already done that for me).

If you’ve actually paid attention to my posts, you’d see there’s only one thing I hate. And it’s a brassica. Not a person.

Well, maybe one person. And he has commented on other posts. But I won’t mention his name.

Aron, has anyone provided conclusive evidence that Brock Henderson is not a brussels sprout?

Gregory, should I be a Yankees fan and not a Phillies fan since, you know, history has gone in one direction and not in the other? Oh, and you have been in the habit of behaving like a total jerk towards others, mocking people you disagree with, much longer than I, here on this blog. If you think your older age than mine gives you license to do that as opposed to somebody in his late 20s, then your level of maturity and wisdom is much lower than mine. It’s about teenage-level, in fact. Respect for elders? I’ll save it for my elders who exhibit behavior worthy of it, like my grandfathers. Being counter-exemplars to the likes of you in the way they address their peers, whether leftist or rightist, they can vouch for my reputation as a youngster who has respect for the wisdom of my elders. Because THEY have earned it. I save my persona you have encountered here on this blog, Gregory, for people like YOU. Take it as flattery if you want. I’d prefer that you take it as encouragement to piss off.

Reynardine . . . uh, threats? Didn’t realize I was in the habit of making threats. Especially those I can’t follow through with. I haven’t even threatened to start a secession movement, I’m pretty sure. Your knee-jerk leftist mind may register my beliefs I’ve thus far communicated on this blog in that way, but all I’ve said is that I’m in favor of it. By knee-jerk mental reactions I mean “He does not sufficiently flatter or validate the existence of the American government in its current state, therefore he hates black people and wants to enslave them.” Sound about right?

Erika, I save my hostility for people like you, and my arrogance is in response to YOURS.

Folks, I’m beginning to think Brock isn’t worth our time.

He obviously thinks he knows everything, and nothing is going to change that. And he is now becoming dangerously stalker-ish to Erika.

From now on, let us simply ignore him. Like the Internet bully he is, perhaps he will simply go away.

Uh, Aron, more stalker-ish to Erika than to, say, yourself? I think I’ve directed more than a few comments at EVERYONE on this blog all this time.

Brock, you have me pretty well convinced you are someone who is going places. My only degree of uncertainty is whether you are going someplace with soft walls or someplace with hard ones. And I do believe you are jealous of Aron.

My my, you people from the SPLC sure do have a lot of time on your hands to blather on about how the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights is no good. Anyone who comes here and attempts to defend the Law Of The Land is disparaged for months, much like a pack of hyenas stalking and attacking their prey. Let me tell you something. The Second Ammendment has served this country very well for over 200 years, and people who don’t agree with it are labeled “domestic enemies” in its very structure, that is if they pretend to be citizens living under its protection. If you don’t like our gun laws, you are free to move to another part of the world more suitable to your liking. You don’t have to stay here trying to screw things up for us red blooded nephews and nieces of Uncle Sam. Take a hike and don’t let the door hit you in the rump on the way out.

Your name is Bobby Joe… Poe? Either that, or you can’t read.

They prefer to ignore the freedom and justice for individuals unless they have some type of collective base. The freedom to own weapon to me is the same as the freedom smoke weed its a natural right giving by whatever we came from at originallity its the same as the freedom as the government uses for themselves. if you want to be scared your neighbors shut up and look at the weapons our own government is buying. American Citizens need to have whatever freedoms we can get and cant afford to let majorities keep down minorities. No matter who it is and when i say minorities i mean the real minority the individual not racial or religous or cultural i mean the independent individual. Someone please look up SOFEX It is the special operations forces exhibition in Jordan. Please learn freedom people its not chaos its nature you cant stop it and its been here since the beginning of time and its not going to stop. oppression can only last for so long.

Is there any evidence of the Oath Keepers being hateful?

I love how “Kiwi” compares American Constitutionalists to “Mad Max” characters. As the former brother-in-law to a NZ-born deserter, it’s interesting to read how one, like himself, can have so much contempt for both the US and his other cousin, Australia. Good luck in South Africa, mate.