Skeptic comments on my last post:
Oh, spare me all the guns bullshit. Guns are worthless without the will to fire them, and if anything has been proven in the last year it’s that those vaunted gun owners don’t have the will to fire. We already have tyranny and nary a shot has been fired. They will usher the rest of the cattle cars before getting on themselves.
I read the best explanation on what that is, just this morning. It came from a comment to this article, and reads like this:
The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone.’ They try, so very hard to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know the moment they fight back, the lives as they have lived them, are over. The moment the ‘Men who wanted to be left Alone’ are forced to fight back, it is a small form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be.
Perhaps the Declaration of Independence said it even better:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Remember that the founders of this nation endured the abuses of the King for decades.
- 1763: The Grenville Acts (taxation without representation) were passed
- 1765: The Stamp Act, the Virginia Resolution, and the Quartering Act were all passed.
- 1766: Parliament rescinds the Stamp Act, but then passes the Declaratory Act, and subsequently disbands the New York Legislature.
and so on. This went on until 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed. It took 14 years of increasing hostilities, ever more despotic action, and escalating violence for the war to start.
The reason it took so long was as stated above: As soon as a revolution begins, the way of life that existed before is over. No matter what happens, all that you knew before is over. People aren’t ready to throw all of that away lightly.
This is where patience and perseverance are important. There is a time to let things play out, and this is it.
