Reading an essay on the dissemination of ideas in the Revolution, it was depressing (for our situation) to read that the Founders' ideas were also held by almost totally all the printers in the colonies. The printers were very much in sympathy with overthrowing the Brits. That made disseminating of the ideas much easier. Unlike our own situation.
That is, the ideas of individual rights and liberty. I can't help but note that there's a lot more depressing differences besides lack of "media" support.
1.) The Colonists had the enormous advantage of a great distance -- they could organize in large numbers and build an army over several years with little fear of being stopped. In our country today you couldn't organize 10 people for a few months without FBI SWAT teams arresting everyone.
2.) The Colonists hadn't even a millionth of the surveillance that we have today. A few spies. We have the entire internet and telephone networks and U.S. mails monitered, our cell phones and GPS units and automobiles (with features like "On-Star") and wireless toll passes all report the exact locations of large numbers of most people 24/7. RFID chips in our credit cards track everything we buy and even where we go. The Feds have 100% access to any record, including medical and purchases. Throw in low-cost traffic surveillance cameras on a growing number of streets (soon we'll be like Britain -- they'll be on every street), security cameras inside every business, and god knows what else. (One British town even put cameras inside recycling bins to make sure people aren't mixing the bottles with the baby diapers.) A video camera with a microphone and a transmitter can be smaller than a shirt button (less batteries) and literally put anywhere (ever see the movie "Truman"?), and post 9/11 there are virtually no legal obstacles.
3.) The public education system has a death grip on the minds of most people in this country, brainwashing them from almost birth with dogma, ignorance of their birthright, and a psychology of dependency. Very hard to overcome.
4.) A much higher percentage of the population today supports encroachments on freedom than the Colonists ever did or ever would, including the Tories. Even those who oppose what is being done to enslave us are of such mixed premises that they can easily be manipulated, as the health care vote demonstrated, when Obama handed out "favors"--that is, the removal from the health care bill of threats to destroy them--to the AMA, AARP, and the drug and insurance companies. (see http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/66717-obamacare-endorsements-what-the-bribe-was)
For now. In the name of such pragmatism are we being enslaved. Who says philosophy doesn't rule the course of history? Read Atlas Shrugged if you need to understand this more clearly. Wait a few years if you need to grasp it more palpably.
Should true dictatorship come to this country in the near future (or any future), all four of these points, and more, make it impossible that we will ever be able to use the Hollywood approach to save us (aka, Star Wars). I'm afraid that there is very little historical precedent for overthrowing dictators with brave bands of rebels led by a charismatic leader and moral superiority. The United States was utterly unique in the annals of time.
There are three kinds of people in the world at any epoch of time: those who want to be free, those who want to be enslaved, and those who want to enslave free people. A much higher percentage of people today want to be in those last two categories than ever have in the history of this country. Marxism and public education breeds slaves and enslavers very efficiently. They are "Borg".
There's much more one could say to dissuade potential "Revolutionaries". Anyone in this country who might be thinking of organizing opposition to the "Crown" in Washington in the manner of America's Founders will find it is an impossibility in this day and age--so long as the government has the money to pay people wedded to being slaves or enslavers to do their bidding. If I ever met a wannabe "Revolutionary", my advice would be: never fight a battle you're going to lose. Far better to grit your teeth and bide your time.
If there is to be any way out of this mess, in the long run it is only going to be by spreading the right ideas to a much larger number of people, and in the short run by rallying the great mass of outraged citizens around single issues like health care or voting bad politicians out of office.
That said, right now I'm very pessimistic. Despite the galvanizing effect he has had in building an opposition, with Obama in office I think our odds are poor. He is smart and evil in a degree that's never been seen in this country, in that office. I thoroughly expected what happened with the passage of the health care bill--feign weakness and pass in the dead of night. Watch for more of the same in the Senate. And the same for Cap and Trade. This is why I was so opposed to Obama's election. He is too slick and too good at manipulating people and the system, and he's got way too many behind-the-scenes advisors and puppetmasters. (There's a reason he uses those teleprompters so slavishly.)
Right now my thinking is that if nationalized health care passes, Cap and Trade will soon follow and we will enter a free fall towards dictatorship within the next 5 years. We can debate what "dictatorship" means, but I submit that when everyone is forced to buy a $15,000 government-mandated insurance policy as a condition of citizenship or face large fines and 5 years in prison, then the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and any restraints on government power have been thrown out with the bathwater, the swimming pool and even the Atlantic Ocean. We are at the waters edge and the rip-tide is strong and the bottom deep.
If it can happen fast enough, I think a general uprising in the country could stop it. We aren't Europe. Yet. A bald-faced attempt to seize real dictatorial powers (read those "Executive Orders" in my previous post ) would be a good thing: I do not think the military and police and intelligence agencies and others in government would go along with it. I think the majority take their oaths seriously and believe they are the good guys, like super-agent Sidney Bristow from the TV show Alias -- they would be aghast to find themselves working for "SD-6", an organization of murder, larceny and terrorism, the very people they thought they were working against.
Most people will scream bloody murder if the danger is thrust on them wholesale before their spirit is broken with the Chinese water torture of incrementalism. But if the result isn't Obama's impeachment, the end of the sudden dictatorship scenario is potentially bloodshed, possible civil war, and the very good chance of replacing one dictatorship with another. We must avoid that at all costs.
It is far better to find ways to do the most effective job we can to disseminate the right ideas--the legacy and meaning of individual rights and the mantle of reason--and teach more people in this country what it stands for and why it's worth fighting for now, with pen and voice and marches and phone calls and ballots, rather than post-poning till it's too late. We must teach them what they were never taught in the government-run schools which teach dogma, obedience and servility.
But unless we get a lot better at this and a lot better organized--and more creative--in how to reach and persuade large numbers of people of the extreme danger we are facing in the very near future, I think the odds are low that any kind of uprising (peaceful or not) against a real dictatorship can succeed. For more on this, read the history of Rome.
In the short run the best possible chance to stop Obama would be court cases. At least gum up the system temporarily and get injunctions to halt the implementation of the health care bill and Cap-and-Trade and any number of other things Obama is ramming through. Even if these cases eventually lost in the Supreme Court, they can be dragged through the appellate system for awhile, hopefully till there is a big turnover in Congress--one year!--and then we can get those bills rescinded.
What frustrates me is that I don't see anyone filing or speaking of filing court cases! Surely there's someone in this country who has noticed that there is no authority in the Constitution for Congress to force Americans to buy something (such as health care insurance) as a condition of citizenship. Surely there is someone who has noticed that national health care enslaves the entire medical profession. Surely someone has noticed that the government is seizing our right to the most basic decisions about our lives and thereby destroying the concept of rights. Surely someone has noticed that Congress and Obama are making a mockery of the Constitution (Nancy Pelosi's "Are you serious? Are you serious?" when her power was questioned even momentarily the other week.)
There are so many legitimate grounds to challenge these laws that it astounds me there isn't a single lawyer in the country who isn't contemplating a legal challenge. At least, I haven't heard them speak out. (They didn't when Obama took over the auto and banking industries.) I haven't read of any briefs being filed. Why? Are they that afraid? Are they that indoctrinated? Are they so poor they can't band with others to raise the money for the cases? Are they so impoverished of spirit that they don't even care?
For anyone willing to file the case, I'd like to suggest one ground that I've never heard before, and attempt to get it established as precedent: I would like to see charges brought against any Federal official and Representatives and other officers of the government who are guilty of willful and knowing violation of the Constitution of the United States in supporting the passage of legislation that is egregiously unconstitutional. Obama and Pelosi and every member of Congress have taken an oath to "preserve and defend the Constitution". We can debate whether honest mistakes are made for routine legislation, but I submit that an abomination such as the health care takeover constitutes such an egregiously "willful and knowing" breach of fiduciary duty to their oath that it is treason to the people of the United States. I would like to see them prosecuted as such. Legislators and officers of the government should not have carte blanche "see if they can get away with" whatever they want. As representatives of our government, they should be held to the highest standard possible, or no standards are possible.
Moreover, I would like to test a second principle: If any act of legislation is found to be unconstitutional, members of Congress and the President of the United States should be personally liable for any damages that are incurred to the citizens of the country and subject to civil and criminal suits. I can't think of a better brake on unbridled power.
At the very least, breach of trust in the execution of the oath is grounds for immediate removal from office. Can the Supreme Court, or at least the Chief Justice who administered the oath to the President, make that call? I don't know. But it would make an interesting case.
Another, less likely way to obstruct Obama's agenda, though not out of the realm of possibility, would be to make enough people in police and intelligence agencies (and career prosecutors) realize the danger of what Obama is doing (a communist, bent on communist rule with foreign assistance, in my opinion), and start bringing down the people around him on corruption and espionage charges, starting with people like Rahm Emmanuel and Obama's inner circle. Congress at present won't support impeachment, but you can weaken Obama tremendously by taking down his lieutenants and shock troops.
There will be tremendous battles if this was started. Obama and his cohorts will do everything in their power to stop investigations, and fire and punish investigators who are attempting to frustrate a plan--the takeover of the Presidency--that has been dreamed of by the Left since Roosevelt.
I would not be surprised to see even worse happen. These people play for keeps. The evidence, which I'm sure exists, would be best acquired covertly to protect the investigators. You'd need a "Fifth Column" of people in the government to do this in secret, but it could probably be done legally as long as it stayed secret. I have no idea how you get this done, but it would save the Republic--in the short run.
The First Horseman of the Apocalypse was "Conquest". I say, find a way to throw the rider off his mount before he leads his charge against us.
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