“It is madness in extremity to hope that a government founded upon Liberty and the free choice of the assertors of it, can be supported by other principles; and whoever would maintain it by contrary ones, intends to blow it up, let him allege what he will.”
— Thomas Gordon (1722)
There is fear from the Left that veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces are joining citizen militias across the country and that these groups will be at the beck and call of President Donald Trump.
It will come as no surprise that the New York Times uses words like “steeped in racism,” “antigovernment zealotry,” and “domestic terrorism” to describe the more than 20,000 Americans believed to belong to local militias. Such a corps of men and women exercising their natural right to protect their lives, their property, and their liberty is anathema to the Marxist dream of Americans being nothing more than herds of cattle to be driven, milked, or slaughtered, depending on the needs and wants of the warlords and their establishment lieutenants.
While the story in the Times estimates that only “a small fraction” of the country’s 20 million veterans have enlisted in militias, they admit that, given the nature of these groups of citizen-soldiers, there’s no way to gauge with any certainty the degree of participation by veterans. Of note, though, the article does estimate “that veterans and active-duty members of the military may now make up at least 25 percent of militia rosters.”
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The very existence of armed Americans is contemptible in the eyes of the Left, but the militias highlighted in this New York Times story is particularly abhorrent to them. Why? See if you can detect the source of their magnified madness:
While militias and other paramilitary groups have been historically hostile toward the federal government regardless of the party in power, many have turned their animus in recent months toward Black Lives Matter activists as well as local leaders who enforced restrictions to combat the coronavirus. A notable example was in Michigan, where protesters, some armed, stormed the statehouse this spring in opposition to pandemic rules. Some have begun adopting the language Mr. Trump uses to preemptively cast doubt on the outcome of an election.
Did you catch it? Can you find the magic word in that paragraph? That’s right: “Trump.”
You see, when armed mobs terrorize the men, monuments, and values that the Left would see destroyed, they have no problem with armed mobs. In fact, they typically insist that everyone has a moral obligation to support them or be branded a racist.
In this case as in nearly all others, intellectual consistency is not a habit the Left would like to develop.
Remember, these are the people who, should they be given the opportunity of weaponizing their political ideology, would see every weapon confiscated from every civilian in the United States. Likewise, remember that these are the people who heap compliments and cash on armed civilian Americans, their armed civilian Americans.
Guns and “domestic terrorism” aren’t repulsive to these people. They supply the former and justify the latter when it suits their mission. Guns are only a problem when in the hands of someone who actually knows how to arm and fire them, particularly, remember, if that person shares President Trump’s worldview. Once more from the “paper of record’s” propaganda:
The movement has accelerated during Mr. Trump’s time in office. In 2015, Brandon Russell, a member of the Florida Army National Guard, formed the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group. One of its members, Vasillios Pistolis, a private at the time, participated in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, bragging on social media about injuring people. (He was later kicked out of the Marines.)
After that rally in 2017, Joffre Cross III, a former private in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg and a member of the newly formed Patriot Front, was charged with multiple weapons felonies.
Next, note the shift in tone in this one sentence describing the growth of the “movement;”
“Many groups have proclaimed themselves as enforcers of Trump administration policies, and more recently, as protectors of businesses in cities with protests, often antagonizing those protesters.”
The “groups” are “antagonizing” “protesters,” and they are doing so as “enforcers of Trump administration policies.”
Ask yourself this question: What’s the difference — in terms of unit cohesion and weaponry — between a “protester” and a “domestic terrorist?”
One thing: the party whose policies they are enforcing with those weapons.
Finally, the New York Times closes its attack on the militia movement with a dire warning issued by Seth G. Jones, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After remarking that the militia movement will probably carry on after President Trump leaves the White House and heads back to the penthouse, the article quotes Jones saying:
In the immediate aftermath of an election, I don’t see this ebbing. In fact my concern is there will be a range of organizations that don’t support the legitimacy of a Biden president and that administration will have to think about how to disarm militias. That will be a dangerous situation.
I’ll leave you with this question: Do you think these people will go about disarming the scores of Marxist gangs should Trump be reelected?
Image: Arseniy45 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
