"Gunner Asch" wrote

Gunner Asch wrote:

Sometimes one simply has to kill the enemies of America.

Gunner:

And just who gets to decide who lives and who dies. And what gives
them the authority to make such a decision?


Ask that of those that fought against the British in bloody revolution
and those that lived and died.

Who gave THEM the authority?

Ill be waiting for your response.

As for me...shrug...Ill have to make the same decisions that the
Founders did. Lets hope I, like them, will do the right thing. And for
the right reasons. To rid the nation of tyrannts and enemies of the
People is a last resort..and the time isnt here quite yet..but it will
be...soon..very soon.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Thank you. I recently saw the tree of liberty quote on a t shirt, and liked
it, but had not heard it in context. I agree with you that there will be
armed rebellion or insurrection soon, as more people are getting desperate.
And more people are getting shafted by people they voted for. Thank God the
forefathers and the people of that time were not as wishy washy and like
Martin Short's character "Ed", who could never do anything he was so
indecisive and second guessing himself.

We'll see soon.

Steve

"SteveB" wrote in message
...

"Gunner Asch" wrote

Gunner Asch wrote:

Sometimes one simply has to kill the enemies of America.

Gunner:

And just who gets to decide who lives and who dies. And what gives
them the authority to make such a decision?


Ask that of those that fought against the British in bloody revolution
and those that lived and died.

Who gave THEM the authority?

Ill be waiting for your response.

As for me...shrug...Ill have to make the same decisions that the
Founders did. Lets hope I, like them, will do the right thing. And for
the right reasons. To rid the nation of tyrannts and enemies of the
People is a last resort..and the time isnt here quite yet..but it will
be...soon..very soon.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Thank you. I recently saw the tree of liberty quote on a t shirt, and
liked it, but had not heard it in context.

You still haven't. The righties always clip off the last couple of
paragraphs. Here's the one they wish Jefferson hadn't written:

"The want of facts worth communicating to you has occasioned me to give a
little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot
inform."

In other words, it was tongue-in-cheek.

In the letter to William Smith (the "tree of liberty" letter), Jefferson
confirms some things he said to James Madison concerning the same
rebellion -- Shay's. Jefferson didn't want the rebels to succeed. He just
thought it was good for their spirit if they took up arms and did a little
shooting from time to time. In the Smith letter, you'll notice that
Jefferson says the rebellion was:

"...founded in ignorance ... The people cannot be all, and always, well
informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the
importance of the facts they misconceive."

But, he says, "Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to
facts, pardon & pacify them."

After a few of them were killed, of course. g

To Madison at about the same time, Jefferson said: [Shay's Rebellion was]
"absolutely unjustifiable," [but] "did not appear to threaten serious
consequences." We need a little rebellion now and then." In other words, let
them blow off steam, kill a few of them and get it over with, and then
"pardon and pacify them."

Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, was appalled. He wanted to
bring in the troops, or the militia, and put the insurrection down.
Jefferson eventually came to agree with Madison that open rebellion was not
a good thing. Some time later, he wrote to the Dutch ambassador: "Happy for
us, that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure
the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of
philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must
have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions."

So much for rebellions.

You're probably aware that Madison, Washington, Adams, Franklin, and the
rest of the Founders thought that Jefferson had a few wild hairs. This was
one of them. Madison and Washington made clear that the purpose of citizen
militias was to *put down* rebellions, not to foment them. Washington did
just that in 1794, when he assembled 16,000 militiamen from three states and
marched them into western Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

I agree with you that there will be armed rebellion or insurrection soon,
as more people are getting desperate. And more people are getting shafted
by people they voted for. Thank God the forefathers and the people of
that time were not as wishy washy and like Martin Short's character "Ed",
who could never do anything he was so indecisive and second guessing
himself.

We'll see soon.

Steve

Obama's approval rating right now is about 53%, about the same as Ronald
Reagan's at this time in his term and a couple of tenths higher than
Reagan's average approval for both of his terms. Insurrection seems
unlikely. But if there is some, it will be pacified, a few of them will be
killed, and they'll be either pardoned or hanged, depending on what they do
in the meantime.

And since you like that Tree of Liberty T-shirt, you'll find it comforting
to know that is exactly what Timothy McVeigh wore on the day he bombed the
Murrah Building. Since the letter is selectively clipped on the T-shirt, it
might be more accurate to call it the Timothy McVeigh T-shirt.

Wear it in good health.

--
Ed Huntress

SteveB wrote:
"Gunner Asch" wrote

Gunner Asch wrote:

Sometimes one simply has to kill the enemies of America.

Gunner:

And just who gets to decide who lives and who dies. And what gives
them the authority to make such a decision?


Ask that of those that fought against the British in bloody
revolution and those that lived and died.

Who gave THEM the authority?

Ill be waiting for your response.

As for me...shrug...Ill have to make the same decisions that the
Founders did. Lets hope I, like them, will do the right thing. And
for the right reasons. To rid the nation of tyrannts and enemies of
the People is a last resort..and the time isnt here quite yet..but
it will be...soon..very soon.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which
is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of
the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such
misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Thank you. I recently saw the tree of liberty quote on a t shirt,
and liked it, but had not heard it in context.

Context is it that you want?

Here is the context surrounding Shay's.


The American revolution, it seemed, had almost gone too far. General George
Washington wrote:
"I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread
over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country... What a triumph
for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing
ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely
ideal and fallacious."

Others in the political elite held the same opinion -- even Massachusetts'
onetime Revolutionary agitator, Samuel Adams:
"Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man
who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."

Only the young Thomas Jefferson -- reflecting more philosophically and from
a safe distance in Europe -- disagreed:


This is what Shay's bought for his band Steve.

The critical point of the rebellion was Shays' march on the government
arsenal at Springfield in January 1787, the only means of standing off
troops who were advancing from Boston under General Benjamin Lincoln. At the
arsenal, the defending militia commanded by General William Shepard
unexpectedly fired their cannons into the ranks of the advancing rebels,
killing four and wounding 20.

Crying "murder" -- for the insurgent farmer-veterans never supposed their
neighbors and fellow veterans would fire on them -- the Shays men retreated
in disarray, pursued by Lincoln's government soldiers. (See the Bibliography
at the bottom of the page for a link to a new, downloadable study of the
Springfield fight.)

Well into 1787, the farmers' resistance took the form of isolated flareups
of violence against men such as lawyer and future Federalist statesman
Theodore Sedgwick, who was briefly captured by those he called "violent
desperadoes." Sedgwick's reaction was to organize an independent county
force and defend his town against insurgent attacks, though his home was
ransacked and his law apprentices taken hostage in their underclothes.

But the rebellion was now broken. Shays himself fled to Vermont, not yet
part of the union and therefore not bound to heed Massachusetts' appeals for
extradition of offenders. Some other insurgents followed him there,
including Jason Parmenter.

Trials for treason, 1787
Shays' Rebellion was over, but Massachusetts' officially declared state of
insurrection continued. A special court indicted more than 200 rebels --
including Parmenter, who had been caught returning to Massachusetts one
night -- and prosecuted them in formal trials. Parmenter's court-appointed
defenders included conservative attorney Caleb Strong, a prominent state
senator who was almost as hostile to the rebellion as the prosecution. In
April 1787, five Shays men charged with treason were condemned to hang

In the election of June 1787, Governor Bowdoin was roundly defeated by the
state's most popular politician, John Hancock, famous signer of the
Declaration.

With a new administration in place, the question of clemency was now a
symbolic issue debated by a divided public. General Lincoln himself, the
subduer of Shays' Rebellion, came out in favor of mercy. On the other hand
Samuel Adams, the influential Revolutionary patriot and head of the
governor's advisory council, called for the execution of convicted traitors
to the republic.



--
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"SteveB" wrote in message
...


And since you like that Tree of Liberty T-shirt, you'll find it
comforting to know that is exactly what Timothy McVeigh wore on the
day he bombed the Murrah Building. Since the letter is selectively
clipped on the T-shirt, it might be more accurate to call it the
Timothy McVeigh T-shirt.

Wear it in good health.


They should have gone ahead and hung the 7 sentenced to death.
You wouldn't see Jefferson misquoted by anyone, not even by McVeigh.

--
John R. Carroll

Since Gunner and the boyz have been posting this stuff about the impending
insurrection, a funny thought has been crossing my mind: What would these
geezers look like hanging from a noose?

I can't see Gunner offed with an intravenous injection. It just doesn't look
right. On the other hand, maybe SteveB, Larry, or Tom would be better
candidates for that.

Who knows? Maybe they'll pull up their socks, get up the guts to do what
they seem to want so much, and we'll find out.

d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"SteveB" wrote in message
...


And since you like that Tree of Liberty T-shirt, you'll find it
comforting to know that is exactly what Timothy McVeigh wore on the
day he bombed the Murrah Building. Since the letter is selectively
clipped on the T-shirt, it might be more accurate to call it the
Timothy McVeigh T-shirt.

Wear it in good health.


They should have gone ahead and hung the 7 sentenced to death.
You wouldn't see Jefferson misquoted by anyone, not even by McVeigh.

--
John R. Carroll