Obama: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’

What is your internet broken?

Not at all. We weren't talking about a difference of opinion, we were talking about custom, tradition, Law, etc.

Well if you thought that last post was bad - don't read this letter. It's a few hundred years old now but you can still get the jist.....

Paris, January 30th, 1787

Dear Sir,

My last to you was of the 16th of December; since which, I have received yours of November 25 and December 4, which afforded me, as your letters always do, a treat on matters public, individual, and economical. I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late troubles in the Eastern states. So far as I have yet seen, they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those states have suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their commerce, which have not yet found other issues. This must render money scarce and make the people uneasy. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power that their administration of the public affairs has been honest may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those characters, wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth or experience.

Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable: (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one; (3) under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics.

To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

If these transactions give me no uneasiness, I feel very differently at another piece of intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest westward of the Allegheny; and I will never have any. But I have had great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who inhabit that country; and I will venture to say that the act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation between the Eastern and Western country. It is a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States; an abandonment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining those debts on our own necks, in perpetuum.

I have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions of those who concur in this measure; but I lament their want of acquaintance with the character and physical advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that part of the confederacy in possession of present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons, or rather, to be themselves the subjects instead of the perpetrators of the parricide.

Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done. They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own territory. They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will bring on a war between them and Spain; and that will produce the question with us, whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with them in the war in order to reunite them with us and thus correct our error. And were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I should predict that the inhabitants of the United States would force their rulers to take the affirmative of that question. I wish I may be mistaken in all these opinions.

Yours affectionately,

Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes what one believes is indeed worth fighting for.

I hate to break this to you, but this isn't the 1700's any more. We're not fighting the British, or the French or the Spanish. It seems about the only thing we have to worry about is terrorists, and domestic wackos with guns.

...And frankly, right now I'm more concerned about domestic right-wing wackos with guns than foreign terrorists.

I hate to break this to you, but this isn't the 1700's any more. We're not fighting the British, or the French or the Spanish. It seems about the only thing we have to worry about is terrorists, and domestic wackos with guns.

No. This isn't the 1700's any more. In the 1700's - the violent rebellion would have happened much faster - freedom loving Americans had a much less patient attitude towards tyrannical power structures. They were quicker to defend their freedom.

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.

God forbid - he said - that twenty years would pass without a rebellion. Sounds to me like we are a bit overdue.

We, the citizens of the United States, have access to the ballot box to duly elect our political leaders. That some here would subvert that process by the use of murder and violence to deny the people their duly elected leaders in order to impose their minority views on others sounds like the actions that Thomas Jefferson was speaking against, a government not elected by the citizens but one imposed by force, such as you are advocating.

Here is the crux of Jefferson's thoughts:

"Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable: (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one; (3) under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. "

Your actions would deprive the citizens of the elected representatives by the force of murder and violence if those elected representatives do not follow the strictures of your particular view point. This is not the intention of the Constitution nor of those who founded this country. Your course is that of cowards and bullies, using violence to subvert the constitutional process of electing our representatives. What is worse is that there are others here who refuse to condemn your desired course of action.

[sarcasm]Yes, I keep forgetting that his words came down from the mountain on stone-tablets and all are divinely inspired...[/sarcasm]

Wow... I also keep forgetting how gullible some of you are that words written during a revolution 230 years ago seem to apply today--exactly as written...

I hope you grow up soon.

Just as there are others here who refuse to condemn the actions and words of LJ.

BearMtnHIB, your words and ideas are nothing short of treason against this nation.

Nmysys wrote: Just as there are others here who refuse to condemn the actions and words of LJ.

which are sweetness and light compared to the naked hate and treason of BearMtnHIB, can we assume you agree with her as you have assumed of the left?