A response to those advocating violent Tea Party revolution

Bob Owens, who blogs as Confederate Yankee, posted the following on Sunday, titled A Nation on the Edge of Revolt. It's stunning in that he admits what many progressives have long felt, that the Tea Party and it's affiliated movements are not peaceful, but in fact are threatening violence. the reasons are irrelevant - they are threatening violence and bloodshed.

I'll lay it out bluntly for you; either the American people—not extremists, but good and decent patriots like your neighbors and yourselves—will revolt and destroy the ruling class and reform our government based upon first principles, or the United States we know as our forefather conceived it is dead. (...)

We can dispose of this government, and restore the Constitution that has served us and the rest of the world so well for so long. (...)

Revolution is a brutish, nasty business. Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt, and success is not assured. (...)

The question for you, my fellow Americans, is simple.

Will you fight, or will you surrender your liberties?

I pray for peace.

But I prepare for war.

Prepare for war. Gather your armies. He's not the only one. Media Matters notes other instances, including "Sarah Palin telling the Tea Party convention that 'America is ready for another revolution and you are a part of this' and Glenn Beck asserting that 'the second American revolution is being played out right now.'"

Predictably, the progressive side didn't take Owens' encouragement of sedition lightly. Media Matters, for one, chose to shed some light.

Owens responded with a threat:

I hope they do feel threatened. Attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives of those would not sit quietly by. Perhaps it will take a serious review of our capacity for violence to get them to realize we shall not surrender our individual liberties to their lust for power.

Here is where I realize that we are two different countries. Why these people oppose Obama is almost irrelevant at this point. I will submit that it's because of race, but mostly it's because of fear. These are the growing pains associated with the change that most people of these people so fear. I also know, from working with kids, that very few of them share this fear that their parents so obviously suffer from. As we move into a multi-racial society, people like Owens will simply die off and become discredited by history, much as the beliefs on race held by many middle aged whites in the 1950's have died away.

But... the hate and fear of change that these people feel for Obama has so warped their world-view that they see violence and bloodshed as the answer. "Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt" .

Their views are not rooted in reality. Ask a Tea Partier how Obama has subverted the Constitution and you won't get a coherent answer. They might cite the health care act, which was passed through an act of a dually-elected Congress as specified in the Constitution. They might cite "activist judges" that he's appointed. Never mind that he has every right to appoint judges, as every president has as specified by the Constitution. The answers you do get will be speculative and without any real proof other than the feelings of the Tea Partier: "he's taking away gun rights", "he's taking away OUR America", "he's not a citizen". No real proof, but it's enough for them to threaten violence.

Americans lost real rights under the Bush Administration, but the Tea Party was nowhere to be heard. Start with thew ultimate act of an activist court, the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision which took the election out of the hands of the people and put it in the hands of the court. The Patriot Act, which allowed the government to spy on its own citizens without a warrant. The repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was enacted after the Civil War to prevent the federal government from using troops as law enforcement. The 2001 act that allowed NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. Allowing the government to monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity. Secret detentions of hundreds of people without charges. Government encouragement of bureaucrats to resist public records questions. The seizure of papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation. American citizens jailed indefinitely without a trial, without being charged, or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Those are real rights infringements. But not a peep out of the Tea Party. They never lifted a finger until a black Democrat came to power.

When this paranoia takes the form of fomenting revolution, something has broken. They have the ability to change government without revolution, through the Constitutionally mandated electoral process. But that's not good enough for them, because that process produced the election of Barack Obama. The group that claims to love the Constitution wishes to overthrow the free, fair and Constitutional election of a president, since they lost the last 2 elections by running on their principles.

Apparently loving the Constitution means subverting the Constitution.

This isn't even about views anymore, because to Owens and his ilk, progressives are "statists", who want more government. Never mind that we share many of the same views, that we are disgusted by the politics of Washington as well. Never mind that we don't want more government, just better government, that cares for the rights of all of its citizens, even you. When you advocate criminal activities to get what you want, we have a break. I cannot work with you. In fact, I want the government to protect me by arresting you and charging you with the crimes you've just committed.

Owens and his crowd obviously do not understand history. They cite the Sons of Liberty and the Founders, but fail to understand the differences in situations.

The founders revolted over a litany of minor taxes because those taxes were placed by a government over which they had no say. It wasn't the taxes, it was that they had no say in those taxes. There is a HUGE difference here: as English citizens, they were used to paying taxes. The growing problem was a lack of say in the government that placed those taxes.

Further, it was frustruation that those taxes were going to pay for England's wars in Europe that were accomplishing nothing good here. These wars were sucking us in to conflicts (The French and Indian War) that had nothing to do with this continent. They were wrecking our economy and we didn't think we should be obligated to fund them.

But it was also about many events besides taxes. It was the feeling that, after almost 170 years here we had earned the right to self-determination (as Thomas Paine said "It was absurd for an island to rule a continent"). It was about alienation from Britain and a feeling that we were really no longer English. Any ties we had were residual.

It was about mercantilism, that England was using us as a cash-generating ATM. They told us who we could buy from and who we could sell to and at what prices. Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts, over which we had no electoral say, caused a lot of law-abiding families to have to resort to criminal smuggling.

The American Revolution was about a lack of representation in Parliament. The Boston Massacre and the propaganda created by Paul Revere, silversmith and member of the Sons, was the spark that blew the powderkeg.

Argue the merits of the Revolution all day, but there is no tax or law on the books in America that has not been lawfully passed by your representatives in Congress and signed by the President as proscribed by the Constitution.

They might not like the laws. But that doesn't mean I get to cry "unfair! illegal!". They have representation in Congress that they are allowed to petition for redress of any perceived grievances.

This situation of "I don't like the laws, so they must be illegal and therefore I can take up weapons against those with whom I disagree" is so different from the complaints of the Sons of Liberty. The American colonists literally had no representation in Parliament. Not representation that they disagree with. They literally had no representation.

I wonder, then, since they're willing to take illegal extra-Constitutional means to get what they want, then what next? How can we trust a group that would usurp the Constitution to overturn a free election and restore power to themselves to then follow that document once they've regained the power they crave? So what next? Executions of anyone who doesn't subscribe to their point of view? Jails for progressives and liberals and immigrants? Re-education for faggots and union members? Elimination of inferior races?

As one of the commenters on Owens's site noted:

You're openly supporting violent takeover because you don't like how the majority of people in the country voted a couple years back. What gives you the moral standing to say that your preference is more valid than theirs, or to forcibly replace it? Absolutely sickening. I'm ashamed to share a country with you.

As I quoted earlier, Owens is upset that their "attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives".

How can you not be met by mockery and questioning of your motives? You are advocating criminal sedition and usurpation of Constitutional law in order to enforce your vision of what you think it says. You indict Obama for violating the rule of law and yet advocate violating that same rule because you supposedly know better; because you haven't been able to persuade the majority of Americans to agree with you at the ballot box.

Isn't THAT how tyrants operate?