Tripwire

The Tripwire
by
D. van Oort & J.F.A. Davidson
From The Resister

"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?"-- Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago

What would be the tripwire resulting in open rebellion? Examining the Bill of Rights, and considering EXISTING laws only, and not failed attempts, you will find that every clause has been violated to one degree or another.

Documenting those violations would fill volumes, and it is important to remember that only government can violate the exercise of unalienable individual rights and claim immunity from retribution. We omit martial law or public suspension of the Constitution as a tripwire. The overnight installation of dictatorship obviously would qualify as "the tripwire," but is not likely to occur. What has occurred, what is occurring, is the implementation of every aspect of such dictatorship without an overt declaration. The Constitution is being killed by attrition. The Communist Manifesto is being installed by accretion. Any suggestion that martial law is the tripwire leads us to the question: what aspect of martial law justifies the first shot?

For much the same reason, we will leave out mass executions of the Waco variety. For one thing, they are composite abuses of numerous individual rights. Yet, among those abuses, the real tripwire may exist. For another, those events are shrouded in a fog of obfuscation and outright lies. Any rebellion must be based on extremely hard and known facts. Similarly, no rebellion will succeed if its fundamental reasons for occurring are not explicitly identified. Those reasons cannot be explicitly identified if, in place of their identification, we simply point to a composite such as Waco and say, "See, that's why; figure it out." Any suggestion that more Wacos, in and of themselves, would be the tripwire, simply leads us back again to the question: what aspect of them justifies rebellion?

For the same reasons, we leave out a detailed account of Ayn Rand's identification of the four essential characteristics of tyranny. She identified them quite correctly, but together they are just another composite from which we must choose precipitating causes. These characteristics are: one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalisation of private property, and "above all," censorship.

With regard to the first characteristic of tyranny, what is the real difference between the Fabian socialist Republican Party and the overtly [Bolshevik] socialist Democratic Party? Nothing but time. Regarding the second we have the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team and the ATF's enforcement branch. In action they simply avoid the embarrassment of a trial. Regarding the third, we have asset forfeiture "laws," the IRS, the EPA, the FCC, the FDA, the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, and a myriad of other executive branch agencies, departments, and commissions whose sole function is to regulate business and the economy. Regulating business for the common good (fascism) is no different in principle than outright nationalisation (communism).

However, the fourth characteristic of tyranny, censorship, is the obvious primary tripwire. When ideology and the reporting of facts and how-to instructions are forbidden, there is nothing remaining but to fight. Freedom of speech and persuasion -- the freedom to attempt to rationally convince willing listeners -- is so fundamental an individual right that without it no other rights, not even the existence of rights, can be enforced, claimed, debated, or even queried.

Does this censorship include the regulation of the "public" airwaves by the FCC, as in the censorship which prohibits tobacco companies from advertising -- in their own defense -- on the same medium which is commanded by government decree to carry "public service" propaganda against them? Does it include federal compulsion of broadcasters to air politically-correct twaddle for "The Children"? Does it include the Orwellian "Communications Decency Act"? Does it include any irrationalist "sexual harassment" or tribalist "hate speech" laws which prohibit certain spoken words among co-workers? The answer: unequivocally yes.

Although the above do not pertain to ideological or political speech, yet they are censorship and are designed to intimidate people into the acceptance of de facto censorship. We say that any abrogation of free speech, and any form of censorship, which cannot be rectified by the soap box, the ballot box, or the jury box, must be rectified by the cartridge box -- or lost forever.

Americans have been stumbling over tripwires justifying overt resistance for well over 130 years. On one hand, we submit that gun confiscation is a secondary tripwire only. It is second to censorship because if speech is illegal we cannot even discuss the repeal of gun control, or any other population controls. If only guns are illegal, we may still convince people to repeal those laws. On the other hand, gun confiscation may be a sufficient tripwire because the primary one, censorship, can be fully implemented only after the citizenry has been disarmed.

Resistance, in the context of this article, means those legitimate acts by individuals which compel government to restrict its activities and authority to those powers delegated to the Congress by the people in the Constitution.

The distinction to be drawn here is that the objective of patriotic resistance is to restore original Constitutional government, not change the form of government. To this end we believe: The enforcement of any laws -- local, state, or federal -- that through the action or inaction of the courts makes nugatory the individual means of resisting tyranny, justifies resistance.

The operative terms of the above statement are the parameters that must be defined and understood if resistance to tyranny and despotism is to be honourable, and for the cause of individual liberty, rather than anarchy resulting from a new gang of tyrants. Rebellion can never be justified so long as objective means of redress are available, which are themselves not subverted or rendered impotent by further or parallel subjective legislation.

The goal of patriots throughout the country must be the restoration of objective constitutional law and order. The failure to enforce a subjective law (i.e. the Communications Decency Act) does not justify that law existing, but it also does not justify resistance. This is because non-enforcement leaves avenues of redress, including the forbidden activity itself, still available. Should a lower court uphold or ignore a case that challenges subjective law, peaceable means of redress are still open by higher or lateral courts in another jurisdiction.

However, should the U.S. Supreme Court uphold subjective laws, or refuse to hear the cases challenging them, then the legislative, executive, and judicial branches have all failed to guarantee individual liberty, from the widest principles to the smallest details. A single refusal by the highest court in the land to overturn a whim-based subjective law, or to refuse to hear the case, is sufficient to justify resistance to that law because there is simply nowhere left to turn for further attempts at redress. At such time nobody is morally bound by that law. Tyranny gets one chance per branch.
America is either a constitutional republic or it is not. If we can restore our republic it will ultimately occur through reason, and reason will then lead our representatives to make unconstitutional those laws which, by any objective standard of justice, should have never been considered in the first place. However, we cannot assert our claim to restore our liberty if we but accede to a single socialist construct. Freedom and serfdom cannot coexist. We cannot have it both ways.

Life, and the means to preserve it, cannot coexist with disarmament. Liberty, and its rational exercise, cannot coexist with subjective constraints. Property, and its acquisition, use, and disposal cannot coexist with expropriation. The federal government's first task is to obey the Constitution. It has refused. Our first task as free men is to force the government to obey it again. The Constitution of the United States of America is a constraint on the federal government, not on the individual.
Likewise, the constitutions of the various states are constraints on the state governments, not on the individual. The Constitution contains many provisions allowing the violation of our natural rights as free men by immoral and unethical men in government. The true heroes of the ratification debates were the Anti-federalists, who secured Federalist guarantees that the Bill of Rights would amend the Constitution.

To their undying credit, the Federalists lived up to their promise. Nevertheless, only after constitutional limitations on government have been restored in their original form can we consider amending the Constitution to redress its very few remaining defects (for example, the absence of a separation of state and the economy clause).

Laws that make nugatory the means of resisting tyranny and despotism determine the tripwire. The creeping legislative erosion of the 2nd Amendment is not the only tripwire that justifies resistance. We submit that any gun control is a secondary tripwire. Not only because it can be effortlessly evaded, but also because it strengthens our cause. It is second only to censorship. If speech is illegal we can discuss neither repeal of gun control, or the repeal of any other unconstitutional "law."

Censorship is not a tripwire, it is THE tripwire. Thus, by default, censorship morally justifies rebellion.

Under censorship, no other rights, including the right to be free from censorship, can be advocated, discussed, or queried. It is incorrect to say that after censorship comes utter subjugation. Censorship is utter subjugation. There is no greater usurpation of liberty while remaining alive. After censorship come the death camps, and they are not a prerequisite of censorship, they are merely a symptom of it. Censorship qua censorship is sufficient in itself to justify open rebellion against any government that legislates, enforces, or upholds it.

However, that is not the half of it. Censorship is alone in being the only violation of individual rights that does not require actual enforcement or challenges in court, before rebellion is justified. When the government forbids you to speak or write, or use your own or a supporter's property to address willing listeners or readers, that government has openly and forcibly declared that the art of peaceful persuasion is dead and will not be tolerated. Upon that very instant, all peaceful avenues of redress have been closed and the only possible method of regaining that liberty is force. Whenever we give up that force, we are not only ruined, we deserve to be ruined.

Censorship is already being "legally" imposed through accretion by compromisers, appeasers, and pragmatists within government at all levels. Note the demands by "progressive" organisations and self-appointed "civil rights" groups to ban so-called "hate" speech (they mean thought and debate), or "extreme" language (they mean principled dissent), or "paramilitary" books (they mean the knowledge of how to resist). When our government imposes censorship, it will be because our ability to use force to resist censorship no longer exists. Buying copies of The Resister is not yet prohibited; buying machine guns already is. Unwarranted search for unlicensed books has not yet occurred; unwarranted search for unlicensed weapons has already begun. As your unalienable right of peaceable discussion and dissent is being daily abridged, your right to peaceably assemble and associate in advocacy of your own self-defence, according to your own free will, has already been outlawed (courtesy of ADL's "model" anti-militia legislation).

Unconstitutional federal agencies now arm themselves with weapons that you may not own, and train in tactics that you are prohibited from mastering. Before a government is sure you won't resist, it will make sure you can't resist.

The most irrational, contradictory, short-range, whimsical notion possible to men who claim the unalienable right to resist tyrannical government is the notion that they must first let their ability to resist be stripped from them before they have the right to use it. This is the argument of so-called conservatives who pish-tosh the notion of legislative "slippery-slopes," and sycophantic adherents of a supreme Court that has no constitutionally delegated authority to interpret the Constitution in the first place. We reject the notion of mindless compliance with subjective "laws." Subjective laws must be resisted on metaphysical and epistemological principles, moral and ethical grounds, and on constitutional and historical precedence.

No rational man desires ends without means. No rational man can be faced with his own imminent subjugation and truly believe that, once things are as bad as they can get, "sometime" "someone" will do "something" "somehow" to counteract that trend. Any man who counsels another to appeal to those mystical equivalents of "divine intervention" for "deliverance" from tyranny is our enemy by all principles conceivable within the scope of rational human intelligence.

The time to organise resistance is not after censorship, but before it. The time to prepare resistance is when our ability to resist is being threatened. The time to begin resistance is when that threat has been upheld or ignored by the courts. The unalienable rights that safeguard our ability to resist are limited to those which, if not violated, allow us to plan and use all materials necessary for resistance. We submit that only the following meet that criteria: freedom of speech and of the press, and the right to peaceably assemble--so that we may advocate ideas, report and discuss news, and instruct others how to carry out resistance activities (1st Amendment); the right to keep and bear arms -- so that we may have appropriate force in our hands should we need it, and be trained to use such force as necessary (2nd Amendment); the right to be let alone -- so that we may be free of government intrusion in our lives, liberty, and property (3rd Amendment)); the right to be secure in our persons, dwellings, papers, and property from unwarranted, unaffirmed searches and seizures -- so that our records, ideological materials, and weapons will remain in our hands (4th Amendment).

For the purpose of this discussion, we believe that no other rights are relevant because if every individual right other than those four were violated -- although it would be an unspeakably evil act on the part of the government, justifying immediate and unforgiving resistance -- their abridgement would not effect our ability to resist. If any of the first four amendments are infringed by legislation, enforced by executive power, and their abrogation is upheld or ignored by the courts, unremitting, forcible resistance, and aid and comfort to its citizen-soldiers, is a moral imperative for every single person who believes that life, liberty, and property are unalienable and self-existing, and not grants of government privilege.

"The United States should get rid of its militias." -- Josef Stalin, 1933

"The foundation of a free government begins to be undermined when freedom of speech on political subjects is restrained; it is destroyed when freedom of speech is wholly denied." -- William Rawle, LL.D. Philadelphia, 1825

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson (1764) -- Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment

 

The Unpunished Crime Of William Jefferson Clinton

We identify The Holocaust as the evil act it actually was.  But we're looking at The Holocaust objectively.  From the subjective viewpoint the perpetrators of The Holocaust believed they were the good people doing good things and that their victims were evil.  We, the advocates of Liberty take the objective position and identify The Waco Massacre as the act of state terror that it actually was.  But the common narrative has taken the subjective point of view and identifies the perpetrators of massacre as the good guys.

 What has happened is a clearly unpunished crime.

 Here's two thousand words why I will never vote for The Democratic Party.

There's a right way to with deal someone like Koresh and it wasn't followed.  An Objectivist has to oppose David Koresh and his followers, but was it necessary to kill them?  No.

Today is the anniversary of the event commonly known as the Waco Massacre.

What happened?

The local office of the BATF received a report of automatic weapons fire at the residence of Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas.  No inquiry was made with the local law enforcement agencies.  Nor did they as allowed under the current regulations send agents out to inspect the federally licensed firearms dealer residing on the site.  And they could've arrested Koresh as he made his morning run but didn't do so.   With his past history of cooperation with local law enforcement they could've simply asked him to come down to the local sheriff’s station.  Instead they attempted to stage a military style assault, code named Operation Showtime, in order to impart a positive impression of the agency upon the current administration in Washington.  Some Federal bureaucrats apparently wanted to feel important.  After the task force was driven off the Hostage Rescue Team of the FBI descended upon the Branch Davidians and laid siege to the residence.

On April 19th the HRT used armored vehicles to destroy the exits from the building and to allow the wind to blow through it and then injected CS gas, known to be inflammable and toxic to children and elderly persons, into the wooden structure.  The HRT fired CS rounds, which are incendiary devices into, the building.  A tactic to commit mass murder used by the SS-Einsatzgruppen in Poland and Russia was to confine civilians, especially women and children, in wooden buildings and set the structures on fire.  To this day the perpetrators remain at large or have been allowed to die in peace.

 

The U.S. Army rifle platoon I trained with in 1982 could have secured the structure without killing any of the children or the elderly adults.  Yes it was possible that some of us actual soldiers could have been wounded or killed in the action.  But that's part of the hazards of the job. 

The Waco Massacre was a demonstration on the part of Big Bubba of the existence of the means to carry out Marxist style state terror and the existence of the will to use it.

 

There are some who believe that because I don't believe in God or Jesus Christ I shouldn't object to the Waco Massacre.  But from an objective perspective an act of state terror, like the Waco Massacre, remains an act of state terror.

The other anniversary today is of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.  Timothy McVeigh who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing was a white racial collectivist and was acting out the white racial warrior martyrdom fantasy depicted in The Turner Diaries.

The novel, if I recall reading it correctly, depicts the conquest and subjugation of the white population of the United States by a self appointed elite group that called itself "The Order."  All non-whites, including Jews, were exterminated.  Any white person who refused to obey The Order was executed as a race traitor.  The actions of The Order as depicted in the novel were very much like the practice of Islam without the claim of divine sanction.  Unlike today's political Right, but like all known collectivists, such as the National Socialists of Germany, The Order rejected all of the Rights of Man and killed anyone who served no place in their collective.  Fortunately, I read it on a website where the text was posted. So apart from the fee for Internet access, I didn't have to pay a cent to read it.  I would later describe the experience of reading it as being the intellectual equivalent of the act of swimming in raw sewage.  The website and text is gone now.  I think this is somewhat unfortunate because I believe that no rational person should have to pay a cent for the privilege of reading a book that calls for their own murder.

.
I reposted on THE NEW RESISTER an article about the Waco Massacre that was originally published on the Libernet Mailing List in 1993.

My Editorial Introduction.

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Part Four.

Part Five.

References.

We have to understand that a firearm is simply a tool.  A firearm is simply a means to a Human end.  The Human end is freedom, this is the opposition to tyranny.  Tyrants want and need to disarm their victims.  Tyrants need victims.  Victims don’t need tyrants.

 

Koresh, if he was alive, would clearly be an enemy of an Objectivist.  But someone has to speak for him.  The massacre of the Branch Davidians was a deliberate act of state terror which was carried straight out of the collectivist ruler handbook. The purpose was to demonstrate to all the consequences of disobeying the collectivists who then occupied the White House.  Comrade McVeigh and the current occupant of the White House, Comrade Biden, are firmly seated on the Collectivist side of the aisle.  If we have anything to thank subsequent Republican presidents for it's for doing nothing.  Our so-called president, Joe Biden, wants to appoint a perpetrator of Waco Massacre to head the BATF.

 

And if you think that attitude and ideology is uniquely Clintonistic I will you disabuse you of that notion:

"Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty."

-- President Woodrow Wilson

Since then the name “Democrat” has become in my mind synonymous with the concept of “murderer.” If there's one complaint I have about President Bush or President Trump it is that they've done nothing to bring the perpetrators of this atrocity to justice.

Nothing. At. All.

We are still waiting for justice.

Here's another six thousand words why I will never vote for The Democratic Party.

 

 

 

 

Sugestions

David Shipman (one of perpetrators of the Waco Massacre) our so called president's Joe Biden's appointment for director of the BATF should be hanged slowly with a noose made of steel wire.  I know that the United States Constitution explicitly forbids inflicting suffering, but I want this piece of excrement (I know I'm insulting excrement) to suffer.  Comrade Shipman has made a career of violating the United States Constitution.

The BATF needs to be disbanded and no salaries or pensions should be paid.  As an agency the BATF explicitly violates the United States Constitution.  I would also suggest that member of the BATF should be put to death.  We as patriots should treat members of the BATF as if they were members of the SS.

 

A Rant On The Internet Outage

The Internet went out in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities area in general.  I don't if the outage was national or worldwide yet.

"As I write this The Internet is down.  How many people have died as a result of the loss of The Internet?  The Internet didn’t exist when I was growing up.  The computers that did exist were large things that were owned by major corporations and universities.  Supercomputers took advantage of the speed of light.  Data processing consisted of using IBM punch cards.  How many people remember IBM punch cards?  Programing languages were simple and taught by math departments.  Military orders were typed out on manual typewriters, I copied my travel orders on to a file (which may be found on my Flickr site) as a result of the Killian Memos fiasco.  Books were purchased at physical “brick and mortar” bookstores.  How many bookstores have gone out of business because of Internet retailers?  The Internet is simply a tool.  A tool is simply a means to an end.  The ultimate end is Human Life.  We must understand that a fear of tools is simply irrational.  An employee of the Healtheast Care System in St. Paul was afraid of an image of several firearms on a coffee cup used by one of the security guards.  A customer at a supermarket was afraid of the light of a bar code scanner touching her groceries.  A firearm and a bar code scanner are simply tools.  There is no reason to fear them.  Alcoholism wasn’t caused by a supply of alcohol, but by the alcoholics.  The Holocaust wasn’t caused by a supply of Zyklon-B, but by the beliefs of the perpetrators.  Zyklon-B was developed and marketed as an insecticide.  The Oklahoma City Bombing wasn’t caused by a supply of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, but by the beliefs of perpetrators.  9/11 wasn’t caused by airliners and box cutters, but by the beliefs of perpetrators.  Any horror wasn’t caused by the tools that were used but by the beliefs of the perpetrators.  There is simply no reason to fear a tool."

 

Quote

If there's one myth that I'd really like to bury, it's the myth that National Socialism is a right wing ideology.

Quote:

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler

(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or an ordinary Leftist could repeat the above statement word for word and no one in the usual audience or the Mainstream Media would call them out on it.

 

 

Anniversary

On March 10, 1982 I enlisted in the United States Army.

Conscience is the expression of the ego in the moral realm.  To make a moral judgment and to act on it are basically selfish acts.  It's the self that sees through its own eyes and acts on its own knowledge of right and wrong.  You couldn't be selfish if you can't live with yourself.  Rational Selfishness as defined and advocated by Ayn Rand was limited to acts which benefited one's self but caused no harm or inflicted a cost on another person.  The narcissist, especially in the political realm, isn't concerned with the injuries and burdens inflicted on other people.  In fact, the more destructive the consequences of obedience to those who obey the narcissist, the better.  Human sacrifice with beating hearts cut out and victims flayed alive, that's great.  Millions worked to death in slave labor camps in Siberia, as far as the narcissist is concerned that's better.  In order for me to say, "I, Leslie Bates, do solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America..." I have to say "I". That was my ego speaking when I took the oath of enlistment.

Some people have a problem with persons acting on their conscience.  I don't.

Thought For The Day

When I was enlisted in the United States Army the Army was going though several transitions.  The Army was transitioning from the M1 steel pot to the first generation of the K-pot helmet.  The Army was transitioning from the M60A3 tank to the first generation of the M1 Abrams tank with the 105mm rifled gun.  The Army was transitioning from the M113 APC to the first generation of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  The Army was transitioning from the Huey helicopter to the first generation of the Blackhawk helicopter.

I'm sometimes compelled to explain why I don't believe in the concept of God.

Let's start with the age of the universe.

According to the current idea (we call concepts a theory because someone may come up with a better idea) the universe is 13.5 billion years old.  The galactic core is 30,000 light years away. It takes 30,000 years for light from the galactic core to reach Earth.  That's five times the age of the universe according to the Book of Genesis.

I once chewed out SFC Steve Barry, one of the founders of the Special Forces Underground.

Steve,

What the Hell is your major cognitive malfunction?

You know damned well what Objectivism is. You created The Resister as an essentially Objectivist publication. If you had not done so, I would never had taken the trouble to post the text on the internet or to contribute to it.

And if you bothered to remember correctly you would know that every Objectivist, from Ayn Rand on down to the newest reader, ABSOLUTELY LOATHED COMMUNISTS. Collaborating with that species of vermin is never an option.

And killing Mussolini was not an act of murder. Killing Mussolini was an act of tyrannicide. And tyrannicide is nothing more than hunting down and killing a predatory animal.

If you are going to get this disconnected from reality then you may as well go all the way and convert to Islam.

Physical force, like fire, can be useful, but the use of physical force, like fire, must be limited.  Libertarians, and some Republicans, understand this fact.  The people running the Democratic Party, and their servants in Anti-fa and BLM, refuse to understand this fact.  The facts are facts and aren't subject to a popular vote.  Those who have an instrument of coercion will use it to obtain what they need or believe they need.  Mussolini was explicitly clear on this point.  As far as a self-styled "progressive" is concerned, if a person can't be used they're garbage to be disposed of.  They could be elderly people or little girls confined to wheelchairs and they'll feel good about it.  The so-called "progressive" politicians and their willing servants want to disarm us, the decent and productive people, so we can be used.  They have a need for us but we have no use for them.  We, the decent and productive people, must identify and treat the so-called "progressive" politicians and their willing servants as mortal enemies.