“These Are No Ordinary Times”

Yesterday, April 19th, 2014, was Patriots’ Day. It was the 239th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which marked the beginning of the War of American Independence.

Below are excerpts from the Patriot’s Day speech given by Mike Vanderboegh yesterday in Bunkerville, Nevada on the occasion of awarding Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) the 2014 “Incitement to Civil War Trophy”:

“History is written not by the historians but by the people who lived it.”

So says William Hallahan, in his book The Day the American Revolution Began about the 19th of April, 1775. And as I stand here today in the Nevada desert, I see a whole host of historians who lived it — and wrote it.

Now what Hallahan says is true, but I would refine it further. History is written not by the historians BUT BY THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IT AND WHO MADE IT HAPPEN.

This is nothing new. Throughout our own history, these self-made historians are most often just simple, ordinary people, people who are nothing special – not rich, not powerful in and of themselves, not influential, not even respected by those who claim to be their betters — but people who know who they are; people who know who God is; people who know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, tyranny and liberty and cannot be persuaded otherwise by all the seductive lies that others tell to hide their evil intentions behind.

In ordinary times it takes very bad behavior on the part of a government to provoke such people into action for they are first and foremost pragmatic realists. Knowing who they are, and how the world works, and of the chronic follies and corruptions of man, they don’t expect much from governments, content to live their lives, raise their families, enjoy life and love and friendship, to worship God, to work hard and make a living around and despite those follies and corruptions, because they understand that THAT is what makes life important and worth living.

When a father sees his kids at play, learning with breathless excitement the everyday miracles that make up God’s world — when he sees his wife’s love and care for them in a million ways despite all the aggravations and distractions of daily life — when at the end of a long day he sees her exhausted and distracted — no longer the young girl he married but with this inner core of steel wrapped in boundless love — when the light hits her mussed-up hair and her careworn face just right — well, a man will do anything to protect those moments, to shield those people he loves from the evil that he knows always lurks right outside the door. He will do anything — ANYTHING — to protect their future and the time-tested principles that secure that future.

And I tell you now — and I proclaim to the world — to all the would-be tyrants in this country who would victimize such honest, simple people with their evil corruptions, their follies, their schemes of power and their insatiable appetites for other people’s liberty, property and lives —

YOU MESS WITH SUCH PEOPLE AT YOUR OWN DEADLY PERIL.

Yes, history is written by the people who lived it and made it happen, but it is also true that such people , at any time in our history, never have been more than a determined minority. In the war of independence that we celebrate here today, there were never more than three percent of the American colonists who actively
took the field against the forces of the King. Although this was long before opinion polls, they probably represented no more than a third of the total population. Another third supported the King of England and a further third blew with the wind and took what came. When I founded the modern Three Percent movement it was this determined minority that I had in mind.

Today’s Three Percent have drawn a line, just as you here drew a line, that we will not cross. We Three Percenters state very plainly to would-be tyrants that we will not disarm. They cannot convince us. They cannot intimidate us. They can kill us, if they think they can, but they should remember that we’ll shoot back. That is the calculation that you presented the federal government the other day. They came to force you with state-sponsored violence. They came to bend you to their will. But they discovered that you would not be bent. On that day, they didn’t like the odds. But the odds would have meant nothing without your determination. And you WERE determined.

As I said, in ordinary times it takes very bad behavior on the part of a government to provoke such people into action — BUT THESE ARE NO ORDINARY TIMES. You know that — in your head and in your gut — or you would not be here today. You would not have accomplished what many thought was flatly impossible a few days and weeks ago. You know why you came here and stood in the gap, interposing with your own bodies, at the risk of your lives, that dangerous ground between liberty and tyranny.

You know in your inner hearts why each of you came here, I need not explain it to you. Nor am I going to waste your time running down the particulars of the general indictment of the very bad behavior of the federal government and their lackeys at the state and local level over the past two decades by the corrupt leaders of both political parties. Others have done so, as I have done myself in other places and times. It is not necessary here, today, to bore you with the litany of evil actions and malign intent of the self-appointed Mandarin class of collectivists who have been quietly and slowly overthrowing the rule of law and the Founders’ Republic for generations now.

What IS necessary is to state the obvious conclusion of that indictment very plainly — that our present-day so-called leaders have demonstrated themselves to be the domestic enemies of the same Constitution that they swore an oath to uphold — they are, in fact, the same domestic enemies that the Founders warned us about, that they knew in their wisdom — from their study of history and their knowledge of fallible men — who would one day come to try to wreck the enterprise of liberty that the Founders fought and bled and died to secure. And one further point — being domestic enemies of the Constitution and the rule of law these evil men and women have declared thereby that they are the enemies of ALL the futures, of ALL the lives, and of ALL the families of those simple, decent people — of you and me and all who have until now tolerated their increasingly bad behavior.

Indeed, it is because we never effectively pushed them back when we could do so without violence that we find ourselves here, today, with the Founders’ original choice on that 19th of April so long ago: are we going to submit and be slaves or shall we fight? And you, you self-made historians, answered that question here, in the desert, in direct confrontation with the paid lackeys of the most powerful government on the planet. You were ready to fight, and to die, in answer to that question. For you are free Americans, all of you. And as you stood, the other side blinked, and hesitated, and then ran.

You know, we ourselves are as responsible for the present sorry state of affairs as the collectivist revolutionaries who now hold the reins of power and who sent the BLM thugs against the Bundys. For decades we never punched them in the nose when we had the chance so they kept pushing us back from the traditional exercise of our God-given, natural and inalienable rights to liberty and property that the Constitution doesn’t create but merely codifies. We never punched them in the nose, politically or otherwise, we just backed up, grumbling.

Now our backs are to the wall, and it is going to take more than a punch in the nose to recover our lost rights and to dispel this clear and present danger to ourselves, our children and all of our futures. The collectivists — who respect and obey NO law that they disagree with — have skillfully used our “law-abidingness” against us. But now they have mistaken our previous inaction for a license to further oppress us. Now, it will take more than a punch in the nose to discourage them.

From Nevada to Colorado to New York and various places in between, they have decided to declare us “law breakers” thinking that once again we will knuckle under. They discovered here in the Nevada desert — and they will continue to discover it elsewhere — that the law protects them from us far more than it protects us from them. The only question is, what will be the cost of their education now compared to what it would have been had we come together and acted earlier?

They blinked and retreated here, for now. They will try again, if not here then in some other place for some other flimsy tyrannical excuse, some other evil wrapped in an allegedly benevolent lie. Rest assured, they will try again. And we must be ready. We must remain vigilant.

But however we arrived at this place, we ARE here, now, and there is no changing it. When you stood beneath the bridges we — all of us, all across the country — in those long moments we were staring civil war in the face. All over this country at this moment WE ARE STILL STARING CIVIL WAR IN IT’S BLOODY FACE. To believe otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history. We have, to use the blunt words of my Michigan farmer Grandpa Vanderboegh, arrived at “nut cuttin’ time.”

John Locke said it first and best in his Second Treatise on Government:

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence.”

Now Locke wrote that in the 18th Century, but is there a better description of what the federal government is trying to do here in the west in the 21st Century than that? Is there a more accurate description of what the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York are attempting to do to their own people with firearm registration and confiscation? They have “put themselves into a state of war with the people” and we, the people, are absolved by their tyrannical actions from any further obedience.

This is not about tortoises and cattle. It is not about who controls the vast lands claimed by the federal government. It is not about “the children” or “common-sense gun safety” or any of the many lies that are spun to conceal the iron fist of arbitrary power.

It is about control. It is about who serves whom. We are divided now, as they were in 1775, by the answer to the most fundamental of questions: Does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government? Who serves whom? What do you think?

Right. Now we believe, as did the Founders, that government should serve the people. It is evident that many others believe differently. But this is not a question whose differing answers can be compromised, or negotiated or finessed. It is one or the other — that of individual liberty codified by the Constitution and the rule of law under the Founders’ republic, or the rule of man as represented by the law of the jungle backed up by the iron fist of tyrannical government.

Harry Reid understands this. You all saw what he said the other day: “This isn’t over,” he threatened. And you know what? He’s right. It can never be over until one side or the other wins. And don’t think he’s just talking about the Bundys. He is promising us all civil war on a vast scale because state-sponsored violence is the only way they can win the argument with free people, especially free people who are armed and willing to use those arms in defense of liberty. Ole Dirty Harry understands that. But he mistakes the character of the people he wishes to victimize and subjugate. He mistakes you. He mistakes the true nature of all free Americans who intend to remain free. And history has shown that mistake to be a terminal one for many tyrants. For there are laws higher and older than any of Harry Reid’s unconstitutional “laws,” one of which is the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Read the entire speech at Sipsey Street Irregulars.

5 thoughts on ““These Are No Ordinary Times”

  1. Well said.
    As a retired cop, I can state with certainty that at least some of our police (particularly the ones with a military background) are beginning to realize that they have an obligation to The People which is even more important that that which is rendered to the ones who give orders. As an aside, a few day ago I noted this about the photos and video of the standoff-
    The cops/agents apparently WERE NOT given the order “Prepare to receive cavalry”.

  2. Just before the eve of the Great War, so-called European intellectuals talked incessantly about Europe’s advanced civilization. After the war, many people opened their eyes to the dire situation of human species. Many asked : How could European countries plunge themselves is such a mess?
    Some people today see a similarity between the western countries and the 1930s the years that led-up to The Great War. Some wise people point out to the majority how their actions and speech and discourse will lead to horrible civil wars and worse. But they do not heed, nay they think that “the wise people” are eager to wage wars.
    This type of behaviour when it is so weird and irrational has been explained by saying that these people are possessed by devil.
    How can you explain such horrible, irrational diabolical tenor of mind, when they clamor for more immigrants, more muslims, more imams, more of everything that is detrimental to the west’s culture and way of life.
    How could governments become so inimical towards their own people and be so blind not to see that. And why similar situations in the past have continued to the point where wise talk did not solve the problem but only the blood of martyrs.
    Why is this life so cruel that to achieve the good and the just you have to sacrifice souls for?
    And why wise people are so few and far between. In every western country you see just a few wise people in each and who fight an uphill battle alone. They are looked upon as weird, insane, racists, islamophobes and war mongers. Strange, very strange indeed. The wise, who see danger coming 30 years before hand are insane. And the sleep-walkers to perdition are the ideal human models. How can people live together like this? Democracy was invented to reconcile such terrible tenor of minds and to fight king’s and emperor’s irrational whims. Democracy was not invented to help Islam spread to every inch of the planet. It was invented to help the wise rule. Why are today’s elected rulers worse than the kings and emperors of yesterday. Why do they act with the same mentality of those tyrants. Why does a western ruler blame Hitler while he is worse than him in many ways. Hitler, to tell the truth, did not invite invaders. Although he cooperated with them to invade Britain and some other countries. Is it written in man’s forehead to create misery for himself when there is none.
    Why are the people of the so-called developed countries so blind to the abstract ideas and dangers. Frequent demonstrations in the west asking for Lesbian and gays’ rights. When are we going to have demonstrations asking the governments to name who was behind Madrisd London, Boston bombings. Not to ascribe it to that vague meaningless word— faceless, shapeless misguiding word “terrorists”

    • Since the French Revolution, the ideas of secular humanist religion have taken a large place in most people’s lives.

      Live today, pay tomorrow, preferably with somebody else’s money.

      “for the love of money is the root of all evil” and election to House and Senate is now a passport to untold wealth…..

    • I’ve criticised some of your comments, Murad, but I’m happy to endorse much of what you say here.

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