Less guns, more TYRANNY
Tom Kovach
October 22, 2006
On Saturday, 21 October 2006, I got an e-mail with a sneak preview of a
news article that will officially appear in
The
Weekly Standard at the end of the month. The article is an
eye-opener, even for long-time students of terrorism issues. The title
is "A New Terrorist Haven — The frightening advance of Islamists in
Somalia." The authors are Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (author of The New
Taliban — my year inside radical Islam, and senior consultant for
the Gerard Group
International) and Bill Roggio (military
blogger and US Army veteran).
I do not want to steal the thunder of that article, because everyone
that is interested in the topic of international terrorism (and, that
should be everyone) should read it in its entirety. The focus of
this commentary, based on information in that article, is actually only
one small part of that important report. I have simply taken what is
already happening in Somalia, and applied it to the American political
landscape. (If you think that "it can't happen here," then you are my
intended audience!)
Earlier this year, a coup began in Somalia. It was largely ignored by
the global news media. The coup is almost complete now. About the only
thing protecting any shred of the elected government of Somalia is the
presence of pockets of soldiers from neighboring Ethiopia. The new
junta in Somalia is called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). They
seized control of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, back in early June.
The population of Somalia is tired — having been trampled by various
warlord factions for more than a decade. (Victims of Outcome Based
Education might need to be reminded that our American military was sent
to Somalia in 1992-93 in an attempt to protect American relief workers.
The country was in such chaos then — it's even worse now — that our
Rangers got bogged down in an incident that came to be known as "Black
Hawk Down.") As the article reports, the ICU has taken advantage of the
war-weary condition of Somalia's population and economy. The ICU is
rapidly taking steps to impose Islamic law, shari'a, upon the
citizens of Somalia. Even many of the resident Muslims feel that the
imposition of shari'a is going too far, but they have become
powerless to resist.
How did that happen?!
And, now we come to the thrust of this commentary. The citizens of
Somalia have become powerless to resist the Islamist Courts Union
because the ICU has engaged in the systematic disarming
of the population. That's right. Even the majority of Muslims
in Somalia want to resist the imposition of Muslim law, but they no
longer can. They are powerless, because their fellow Muslims have
disarmed them! There are some powerful lessons that need to be learned
from this, and we'd better learn them before Election Day here in
the United States!
The first lesson should be obvious, especially in the wake of "9-11,"
but it bears repeating until it becomes the American mantra.
"Islam is not a 'religion of peace'!" Go ahead, say it to
yourself, and then say it to others.
Next, "The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting." The
Second Amendment is the final check in our American system of checks and
balances. (For victims of Outcome Based Education, the word "check" in
this context is not something that comes from the government each
month. It is something that citizens do to the government to stop
the government from trampling upon our human rights.) The title of this
commentary is an intentional spin of the title of Dr. John Lott's
seminal study, More Guns, Less Crime. Back in 1994, I was on the
dais (in between
Lt. Col.
Robert K. Brown [USA, SF, Ret.] and
G. Gordon Liddy)
at the national Second Amendment Rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial
when Dr. Lott discussed his book with the 10,000 patriots that assembled
there from across the country. (The
video is available from C-SPAN. The crowd was much larger than was
reported by the liberal media.) Dr. Lott proved beyond a doubt that an
armed populace is the best deterrent to crime. Another author that spoke
that day was Aaron Zelman, author of Gateway to Tyranny. His book
showed that every totalitarian regime in the last hundred years
began its reign by disarming the populace. That lesson is too late for
Somalia, but not too late for Americans. Or, is it?
beware the "spin" vortex!
James Madison warned us of the "silent encroachments" against our civil
liberties. A modern example that is not so silent anymore is the
ideological war against arming one's self. Our children are taught that
"zero tolerance" and "gun-free zones" are good things. (Oddly, the
government schools teach children to have extra tolerance for
things that their parents teach them are sins, but zero tolerance for
things that our Constitution says are required for the defense of home
and liberty.) Children are taught that only the "unenlightened" would
carry a gun to protect themselves or their family. (And, that is how
robbers are able to "lighten" our pockets with increasing success!)
The spin against guns has become so successful that, now, the political
Left is able to brazenly spin the facts against
resistance to tyranny. Why would they want to do that? Hello!
As I've written many times before, one of the most dangerous groups of
people within the borders of this country is the
Progressive Caucus — a group of Socialists that comprises
more than ten percent of our US House of Representatives. That group
is at the leading edge of the movement to disarm the American
population. Their end goal is to
turn the United States into a third-world economy, so that we will
be ripe for the final takeover of global Socialism. If that sounds like
wild-eyed, foamy-mouthed ranting to you,
then you simply haven't been paying attention to the changes in
America since Bill Clinton took over the White House. Those changes are
so pervasive that even
many Republicans
are now riding the Socialist bandwagon — perhaps without even
realizing it, but some in an effort to pander votes and save their
political jobs. If you still don't believe that your vote matters to the
future of America, just note that
the Communist Party has advised its members to vote for Democrats!
That is
how "mainstream" the concepts of Socialism have become in America.
Vladimir Lenin clarified a key point by saying, "A Socialist is a
Communist." And, the proponents of Socialism within America know
that they can never succeed until the population has been
disarmed. So, they've engaged for the past dozen years or more in an
effort to convince Americans to disarm themselves. But, just in case
that doesn't work, there are those within the power base of those
"Democratic Socialists"
that stand ready to earn their paycheck by
helping you
to disarm.
Only after our population has been disarmed can the Communists achieve
their goal of global domination. The main thing that has been stopping
them for the past 90 years is an armed American populace. They are
afraid to face the "sleeping giant" of Admiral Yamamoto's commentary
during World War Two. But, if the giant can be tied down by the
Lilliputian strategies of the Communists (and their willing shills in
the Democratic Party and the Left-tilting news media), then the
Communists can take over America. And, after the Communists take over
America — and
turn our economy into one like Mexico — then they can achieve
world domination.
"You mean you'd shoot an American?"
If you think "it can't happen here," then consider what happened in New
Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The Democrat governor of Louisiana,
and the Democrat mayor of New Orleans, conspired to send in police and
National Guard units for the specific mission of disarming citizens.
(Listen closely to the final words of
this news video segment. The ABC reporter asks a soldier, "You mean
you'd shoot an American?" The soldier answers, "Yeah.") Tens of
thousands of firearms were confiscated,
thus
leaving law-abiding homeowners defenseless against looters. (That,
in turn, enabled an unofficial "redistribution of wealth" — one of the
key tenets of Communism.) A year after the hurricane, most of those
firearms are still in government hands — despite the passage of
a new Federal law on this topic. And, were it not for the hard work
of the National Rifle
Association and their political-action committee (the
NRA-ILA), there would have been no means for
citizens to
retrieve their firearms. (A dozen years ago, many of us were warning
the American public that government home invasion and gun confiscation
would happen. The "mainstream" media called us "right-wing extremists."
Oddly, we were trying to protect one of the most basic civil liberties:
the right to be secure in your home. Protecting civil liberties has been
"deemed" the realm of the Left wing. So, where were the Left-wing
activists in New Orleans?)
spin and more spin
Knowing that some of us will resist them — both in word and in deed —
the Left has already come up with an interesting spin program. They are
trying to blame conservatives, and President Bush, for creating
"a new
terrorist haven" in Iraq. Now, my regular readers know that I have
plenty of disagreements with President Bush — especially on the topic of
border security. But, regardless of his other problems in Iraq,
President Bush has neither created a terrorist haven in Iraq nor caused
the terrorists to hate us more. The terrorists hate us with their entire
heart and mind. That is because it is their religion that teaches them
to hate us. No president can overcome that. And, it seems that most
Americans understand that concept — even if only recently.
What Americans don't understand, and why this column is necessary, is
that there are people within our own borders — people that were born
here, and who grew up among us — that hate America almost as much as do
the Islamist terrorists. That is why this column is necessary: to cut
through their spin, and to sound the warning. It bears repeating that
the Communist Party has told its members to vote for Democrats in the
2006 elections. And, if this warning is not heeded, and if the
Democrats seize power (keep in mind that
ranting Nancy Pelosi has long been a member of the Progressive Caucus),
then you can expect a quiet coup in the United States, and the
Communist-style disarming of the American populace. So, if you think
that it can only happen in places like Somalia, think again!