"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

[WiolentOne]

Wandy is not just black, but apparently a Malcom X fan? Colour me surprised.

Just for the record I'm not black. But contrary to what people like berimblowjob would want you to believe, blacks don't have a monopoly on slavery.

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

But but tyranny and ethics

You obviously hate Liberty.

 

[lfd0311]

He actually said that? That's fucking hilarious. Just lol'd at work.

Something like that. I paraphrased. I do remember specifically Woogie Boogie White People, Pepper your angus and Hussein Obeezy.

 

[ncordless]

This thread title makes me want to plant a tree where Levoy Finecum died. Test Tommy J's theory.

 

[mrbaapt]

Thomas Jefferson's word have never felt so true. Never in my 37 years have I felt America is as divided and struggling to hold onto her true nature as she is now.

I view the religious far right and the progressive left as equally dangerous groups. Right now, though, it is the left which is clearly a more present danger to the country. They have openly advocated for censorship, there has been calls for violence against conservative voices, and with Hillary you have a rabid leftists, anti-gun, anti-2nd Amendment, anti-patriarchal she bitch who is going to forever take us left.

Clinton is a neoconservative. She and her policies do not border on anything progressive.

Don't be afraid.

 

[Final Rehab]

c

Normally I would address these individual quote by individual quote, but there really isn't much of a need for that with these. You don't leave rural Nebraska very often, do you? You're so completely isolated in this ridiculous notion that you can stand up to the government/police/military that I actually feel bad for you. I mean that sincerely. I'm sure you're a good and decent person, and I'm often condesending towards you when I shouldn't be, but this bubble you live in drives me crazy. I live a single State to the east of you, my mother was born on a farm in Northwest Iowa that is still in my family, has been a century farm for almost 30 years, and has had an unbroken chain of my family living on it since my great great grand father first broke ground on it as a young immigrant. I'm sure you work hard, I'm sure things have been tough at times, but you don't even stop to take into account that in the grand scheme of things you have it very, very good. You live in the single best country in the world, possibly one of the greatest in human history. You're a farmer, I have no doubt that is hard work. You don't take into account that the part of the world you live in is literally the best, most fertile farm land in the entire world. Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota produce most of the world's food. The WORLD. How many millions of dollars do you have tied up in equipment to plant and harvest your crops? That's somewhat of a massive luxury, don't you think? Depending on what you raise, you have corn, soybeans, and wheat in plentiful supply right outside your back door. Do you raise livestock? Count fresh beef and pork into that mix too. Do you turn your cows out to graze? Why is that? could it be because there is zero chance of any large predatory animals killing any of them?

Now let's apply that same lense to the Middle East. Some of the most inhospitable ground in the whole world, even the part that isn't desert, and is considered "the Fertile Cresent". Didn't look all that fertile to me. In fact, it's coarse, dry and flinty as hell, but you can at least plow deep enough that roots can take hold. The rest of the land will barely allow roots to anchor. In these conditions, the farmers grind out a megre living. Their day for the most part consists of camping on their fields in an attempt to keep birds out of it, or making sure some random A-hole doesn't decide to take a short cut through their field and dislodge their entire year's crop. No fancy machinery, if you're lucky just an old plow blade hooked to a mule or a cow. If you're lucky. Do you know how they harvest crops in Iraq and Afghanistan? They carry a hand held sickle blade and cut the plant off at the base, then pull the roots and throw them to the side. They're pretty proud of that old cow they have too. It makes it much easier to plow a row than their shmuck neighbors over there trying to do it with the plow hooked to his wife (not even joking) or out there with his brother and his sons with a couple of shovels and a pick axe. They don't even have the luxury of eating beef. Think about that for a second. What livestock they do have consists almost exclusively of sheep, which they herd like it's 2000 years ago and have to have 3 or 4 men or boys with at all times to protect them from the roving packs of feral dogs that roam the countryside.

You also mentioned things like Education, access to food and superior infrastucture as "pros" in your argument as to why Americans would somehow be more successful in this fantasy revolution of yours, but again, the fact that you live so much in fantasy has horribly cut you off from reality. The reality of the situation is that all of those things make people weaker, not stronger. While we have a far more advanced society because of those things, the people within that society are far weaker because of them. Rome was the single greatest civilzation in the world, and what is today taught by academics as the Roman Empire stood for 507 years. It was the the height of Military and intellectual power, and it was destroyed inside of 50 years by illiterate barbarians. When a society has the emphasis taken off of the struggle of day to day survival, when access to food becomes as simple as getting in your car, driving to the grocery store, and buying some pre-packaged meat, when you aren't actually accountable for providing for yourself in any meaningful way, you naturally become weak. Drive to Omaha, Lincoln or Papillion some time and take a look around. How many of those people know how to catch a fish? How many know how you dress out a deer? how many of them know how to do anything truely practical other than surf the internet? How many of them are willing to give that up for this arbitrary notion of revolution you carry around with you?

Now, let's move on once again to the people of the Middle East. I realized on my very first foot patrol in Iraq that if you locked your average 14 year old Iraqi girl and 17 year old American boy in a room together and told them only one of them is coming out alive, that boy wouldn't last 5 minutes. He's for the most part never had to struggle. He's never had to survive. That girl has been struggling and surviving since the day she hit the ground. Girls in that culture are put to work at 5, doing back breaking manual labor, nevermind dodging assault at the hands of the lurking sexual predators that permeate that culture. Look at the lives your average Iraqi or Afghani live. They've been living in war torn countries, with very little food or opportunity to get food since the 70's. It's a daily, desperate struggle to survive. Take a look at an American of the same age, who would have been a teenager during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His life is a daily, desperate struggle to beat the other dudes in his office to work to get the good parking spot.

As someone who spent 8 years in the Marine Corps infantry, I'd like to now address the "abundance of ammo" comment, but first, let me give you a little background info on me. I left for Boot Camp on October 7th, 2001, which I only remember because of it's historical significance as the day we began bombing Afghanistan. I was 18 then. I'm 34 now. Me, and men like me, have literally grown up in war. To quote Bernard Cornwell, we are young men who are old in war. Yet the reason there is an abundance of ammo, as you put it, in this country, is because of guys like you. You stock that stuff up in your house because you think it's really "neat". It's a hobby for you. It's cool. It gives you something to do. You and your buddies read guns and ammo, get together and debate which one of you would be Patrick Swayze if your Red Dawn style masturbatory fantasies ever actually did happen. You see guns as a toy. I see them as a tool. They're a part of my trade. Being proficient in violence is something that is neccessary to do my job, nothing more. To you, it's something that is an avenue to sounding bad and talking about revolution and fighting off the government on the internet. You have this fantasy that if some sort of general uprising were to occur led by guys like you, guys like me would be there to follow while you lead. We wouldn't. We find you annoying, for the reasons stated above. I don't disagree with many of your arguments in theory, but the practical application of them is beyond ludacris. Do you know what an A-10 is, or what it's capable of? Just one? There is a reason I keep bringing them up. Until you're capable of combating a single one of those, or of grasping the concept that the Government considers them outdated technology that they're doing away with, you're fantasy of armed uprising is sad and delusional at best. Better yet, just learn about some of the technology stored right there in Nebraska, at Offut Air Force Base, where dudes have been killing people in Afghanistan from an air conditioned trailer for 8 or 9 years now, and where they keep missiles that are so accurate that we can hit a road cone in Afghanistan with them from Nebraska. But you and your posse of shotgun/pickup combo revolutionaries are going to take on that. Or just read about what the SEALS did on the Bin Laden raid, like fast roping out of a helicopter at night, with a German Shepherd strapped to your chest, assaulting a building full of Jihadists, shooting Bin Laden in the head, and then just waltzing out and going home like it's no big deal. But those dudes probably can't find you on your farm in Nebraska and close you out or anything, big shooter.

Let's talk about that "infrastructure" for just a moment. Who controls that? The government does. Ask those dudes in Oregon how well that whole "we've got the best infrastructure" thing worked out for them earlier this year. The government came along and shut it off like a light switch, because they were bothering them.

Lastly, you brought up the insurgency in Afghanistan. Just to give you a little history of the warrior culture of Afghanistan, they're the only people in the world to beat Alexander the Great, The British and The Soviet Union on the field of battle. Not one of those three groups have ever been beaten by anyone else, the Afghanis beat all three of them. Over the last 15 years, we've beaten them to a bloody pulp, while being distracted for a good chunk of that time with the war in Iraq. Those guys are on the other side of the world, what do you think we're going to do to you?

That's one hell of a post man. In the midst of enjoying the read I did get a good laugh out of one thing though. The argument you were addressing in one paragraph (and libertarianism in general) is ludicrous. This is Ludacris-

Anyway, one hell of a curb-stomp of a post hombre, respect.

No ones taking anything from anybody by force.

It's a libertarian thing, "taxation is by definition theft by the threat of force".

Yeah, I know, I know.

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

No ones taking anything from anybody by force.

That's taxation.

 

[Gutter Chris]

That's taxation.

Yea thats not theft thats taxes.... you know the whole no taxation without representation thing. Did you vote on a representative ?

Perhaps you need to read less fantasy and more history.

 

[Greoric]

Yea thats not theft thats taxes.... you know the whole no taxation without representation thing. Did you vote on a representative ?

Perhaps you need to read less fantasy and more history.

Do I have an option to represent myself?

 

[Greoric]

According to that dude because he's required to have a permit to carry a gun.

Its already unethical enough to the extent that its massively curved the trajectory of growth. The objective though, is to not let it get to the point where you wouldn't even dare ask that question on a public forum.

 

[Gutter Chris]

Do I have an option to represent myself?

 

[Greoric]

Stopped reading and taking this post seriously right there. How have they managed to shoot down so many helicopters with IEDs? You and that shotgun you've got propped up in back of your truck aren't fighting off the US Government. Oh, and an area smaller than Texas you say? I'm guessing you think that's like really small and stuff, huh? Unfortunantely for you, if Texas was a European Country, it would be the third biggest country in Europe in square miles behind only Russia and Turkey, and the largest country in Western Europe by 50,000 Square miles. To put that into perspective, Texas is roughly the State of Iowa bigger than France. And LOL at "10,000" at it's peak. Man, get a clue.

There's a nuanced point there that has significant weight. Typically insurgencies haven't been able to win without foreign aid. However, Farmer's larger point is valid. We were a full strength force with an entire citizenry funding an overseas objective against fighters living in absolute shit conditions, with shit education, and with shit training. They were good fighters only to the extent that there was an accelerated natural selection for the dumb ones.

Now compare that to a fractured US military force without the full funding of a citizenry taking on an insurgency that has much better equipment than the others along with the same training as anyone they're fighting in the counter-insurgency. Then subtract some of the munitions we were even using overseas. No government that wants to win against a domestic insurgency is going to be employing any A-10s and Apaches. In a word, the government would be fucked.

 

[Greoric]

May your chains lay lightly across your skin.

 

[7437]

Do I have an option to represent myself?

Yes you do, and to represent others

 

[Greoric]

Yes you do, and to represent others

No I don't. Then taxes are voluntary?

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

I'm sure you're a good and decent person, and I'm often condesending towards you when I shouldn't be,

Thank you for this well thought out post. I don't agree with everything you posted, but I appreciate that fact that you're willing to give this subject the consideration it deserves.

The greatest problem of our time is people being unable to disagree without being disagreeable.

but this bubble you live in drives me crazy.

Awww, come on, why did you have to add a "but" to such a nice statement?

I live a single State to the east of you, my mother was born on a farm in Northwest Iowa that is still in my family, has been a century farm for almost 30 years, and has had an unbroken chain of my family living on it since my great great grand father first broke ground on it as a young immigrant.

(Single finger wave off my steering wheel to a fellow farmer)

I'm a 5th generation Nebraska farmer. My family has been raising seed corn since before World War 2.

I'm sure you work hard, I'm sure things have been tough at times, but you don't even stop to take into account that in the grand scheme of things you have it very, very good. You live in the single best country in the world, possibly one of the greatest in human history.

Being the best isn't a reason to not strive to be better.

Our Nation still violates personal and individual liberties. The NSA wire tapping scandal alone proves this.

You're a farmer, I have no doubt that is hard work. You don't take into account that the part of the world you live in is literally the best, most fertile farm land in the entire world.
Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota produce most of the world's food. The WORLD.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. I take it you haven't looked at Nebraska soil very often. Our soil is a mixture of Sandy soils, clay, and if your lucky, Crete silt loam. We have to fight for ever micronutrient in our soil. It's NOT the rich, black Iowa soil you likely enjoy.

How many millions of dollars do you have tied up in equipment to plant and harvest your crops? That's somewhat of a massive luxury, don't you think?

It's the accumulated efforts of five generations of my family. So no, I don't think of it that way.

Depending on what you raise, you have corn, soybeans, and wheat in plentiful supply right outside your back door. Do you raise livestock? Count fresh beef and pork into that mix too. Do you turn your cows out to graze? Why is that? could it be because there is zero chance of any large predatory animals killing any of them?

Wrong. It's the main reason people in my area carry firearms. Coyotes will kill calfs, and in just the last few years, the wolf is starting to be sited more and more in my state. Beyond that we also have nuisance pests like raccoons, badgers, and skunks. They will dig holes in my fields that can cause someone on my field Crews to fall in and break their leg.

Now let's apply that same lense to the Middle East. Some of the most inhospitable ground in the whole world, even the part that isn't desert, and is considered "the Fertile Cresent". Didn't look all that fertile to me. In fact, it's coarse, dry and flinty as hell, but you can at least plow deep enough that roots can take hold. The rest of the land will barely allow roots to anchor. In these conditions, the farmers grind out a megre living.

Not to make light of their plight, but just an interesting comparison. The soils you're describing in the "Fertile Crescent", sound like the soils in an area of Nebraska we call "the Badlands".

Their day for the most part consists of camping on their fields in an attempt to keep birds out of it, or making sure some random A-hole doesn't decide to take a short cut through their field and dislodge their entire year's crop. No fancy machinery, if you're lucky just an old plow blade hooked to a mule or a cow. If you're lucky. Do you know how they harvest crops in Iraq and Afghanistan? They carry a hand held sickle blade and cut the plant off at the base, then pull the roots and throw them to the side. They're pretty proud of that old cow they have too. It makes it much easier to plow a row than their shmuck neighbors over there trying to do it with the plow hooked to his wife (not even joking) or out there with his brother and his sons with a couple of shovels and a pick axe. They don't even have the luxury of eating beef. Think about that for a second.

This does beg the question, how were people that were living in such squalid conditions able to hold back the world's greatest fighting force for over a decade?

You also mentioned things like Education, access to food and superior infrastucture as "pros" in your argument as to why Americans would somehow be more successful in this fantasy revolution of yours, but again, the fact that you live so much in fantasy has horribly cut you off from reality. The reality of the situation is that all of those things make people weaker, not stronger. While we have a far more advanced society because of those things, the people within that society are far weaker because of them.

I think this is where we're getting into bit of a disagreement, or were simply having two different discussions. What your highlighting seems to be a problem with general decadence. While that tends to be a problem in big cities, you're painting an entire population with too broad of a brush.

If any population has been better fed and educated throughout its life, that population will generally have a higher IQ, better complex problem solving capability, and (less important in the era of firearms) hearty frames.

Even with all the issues of decadence, the problems of an insurgent population hiding among a general population doesn't disappear.

Rome was the single greatest civilzation in the world, and what is today taught by academics as the Roman Empire stood for 507 years. It was the the height of Military and intellectual power, and it was destroyed inside of 50 years by illiterate barbarians.

The fall of Rome is one of my favorite subjects and one that I could go on for quite some time. I'll just leave it at the true fall of Rome came because they began to debase the currency, they increased taxation, which caused people to flee from the cities, that would shrink their tax base which left them less able to pay their barbarians.

When a society has the emphasis taken off of the struggle of day to day survival, when access to food becomes as simple as getting in your car, driving to the grocery store, and buying some pre-packaged meat, when you aren't actually accountable for providing for yourself in any meaningful way, you naturally become weak. Drive to Omaha, Lincoln or Papillion some time and take a look around. How many of those people know how to catch a fish? How many know how you dress out a deer? how many of them know how to do anything truely practical other than surf the internet?

Again this seems to be a problem with big city decadence, but that's not an indictment on the entire population.

Now, let's move on once again to the people of the Middle East. I realized on my very first foot patrol in Iraq that if you locked your average 14 year old Iraqi girl and 17 year old American boy in a room together and told them only one of them is coming out alive, that boy wouldn't last 5 minutes.

Again you're painting with too broad of a brush. There's no way to prove or disprove such a statement so we'll just move on.

As someone who spent 8 years in the Marine Corps infantry, I'd like to now address the "abundance of ammo" comment, but first, let me give you a little background info on me. I left for Boot Camp on October 7th, 2001, which I only remember because of it's historical significance as the day we began bombing Afghanistan. I was 18 then. I'm 34 now.

I oppose war, but I respect those who serve. Thank you for your service.

Yet the reason there is an abundance of ammo, as you put it, in this country, is because of guys like you. You stock that stuff up in your house because you think it's really "neat". It's a hobby for you. It's cool. It gives you something to do. You and your buddies read guns and ammo, get together and debate which one of you would be Patrick Swayze if your Red Dawn style masturbatory fantasies ever actually did happen. You see guns as a toy. I see them as a tool. They're a part of my trade. Being proficient in violence is something that is neccessary to do my job, nothing more. To you, it's something that is an avenue to sounding bad

I do find it troubling that you would take the personal protection of both life and Liberty, and couch it in such dismissive terms.

Rights are the necessary conditions of one's proper existence.

It's a condition of one's proper existence to be capable of defending themselves from the initiation of force.

You have this fantasy that if some sort of general uprising were to occur led by guys like you, guys like me would be there to follow while you lead. We wouldn't. We find you annoying, for the reasons stated above.

As I've said in previous posts, Revolution is an individual choice. I do find it strange that you seem to think that you speak for the military as a whole?

I don't disagree with many of your arguments in theory, but the practical application of them is beyond ludacris.

What evidence do you have to support such an assertion? Just using words like "ludicrous" or "fantasy" doesn't really prove anything.

Do you know what an A-10 is, or what it's capable of? Just one? There is a reason I keep bringing them up. Until you're capable of combating a single one of those, or of grasping the concept that the Government considers them outdated technology that they're doing away with, you're fantasy of armed uprising is sad and delusional at best.
Better yet, just learn about some of the technology stored right there in Nebraska, at Offut Air Force Base, where dudes have been killing people in Afghanistan from an air conditioned trailer for 8 or 9 years now, and where they keep missiles that are so accurate that we can hit a road cone in Afghanistan with them from Nebraska. But you and your posse of shotgun/pickup combo revolutionaries are going to take on that. Or just read about what the SEALS did on the Bin Laden raid, like fast roping out of a helicopter at night, with a German Shepherd strapped to your chest, assaulting a building full of Jihadists, shooting Bin Laden in the head, and then just waltzing out and going home like it's no big deal. But those dudes probably can't find you on your farm in Nebraska and close you out or anything, big shooter.

Yet with all of this equipment the world's greatest fighting force ever assembled was unable to defeat shoeless, goat herding fundamentalists with little more than Soviet Surplus artillery, improvised explosives, and Rusty Kalashnikov rifles.

Let's talk about that "infrastructure" for just a moment. Who controls that? The government does. Ask those dudes in Oregon how well that whole "we've got the best infrastructure" thing worked out for them earlier this year. The government came along and shut it off like a light switch, because they were bothering them.

What you're talking about is an internet and cell phone tower complete kill switch. If any government were to cut communication to the entire population in such a way it would prove that government to be tyrannical.

Lastly, you brought up the insurgency in Afghanistan. Just to give you a little history of the warrior culture of Afghanistan, they're the only people in the world to beat Alexander the Great, The British and The Soviet Union on the field of battle. Not one of those three groups have ever been beaten by anyone else, the Afghanis beat all three of them. Over the last 15 years, we've beaten them to a bloody pulp, while being distracted for a good chunk of that time with the war in Iraq. Those guys are on the other side of the world, what do you think we're going to do to you?

I still find it unusual that you think of the military in terms of "we". The military isn't some hive mind that agrees with you at all times.

Any government that would turn its artillery and/or Security apparatuses on its population in mass is a tyrannical government.

 

[Gutter Chris]

May your chains lay lightly across your skin.

 

[Greoric]

@Gutter Chris And may posterity forget you were our countrymen.

 

[Gutter Chris]

@Gutter Chris And may posterity forget you were our countrymen.

 

[Deleted member 196663]

Thomas Jefferson's word have never felt so true. Never in my 37 years have I felt America is as divided and struggling to hold onto her true nature as she is now.

Get off the internet. The world will look much different.