I’ve stayed aloof from the flying fur up to this point, mostly because I’ve been preoccupied with critically important holiday activities. So many pubs, so little time! But the holiday season is now past and I find myself in stable condition and on the road to full recovery… so it is time to roll up the sleeves and get blogging.
Everyone seems to recognize that Ruby Ridge and Waco were important. I think some writers have skirted the edge of just why that is so without actually stating it: they were liberty’s canaries.
No one who has read about the Branch Davidians will argue David Kouresh was other than a wacko. He was a religious nut. He was at the outer limits of American society, His death showed us precisely where that limit sat and was a clarion call to those of more moderate beliefs. It showed them they had better join in holding the line or else soon find themselves on the wrong side of it:
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.
Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)
I am not saying that the government actions were equivalent to the full blown horror of Nazism. They were not. They were however equivalent to the earliest, most tentative steps of it. Americans are not quite as sanguine about their governments’ motives and actions as Father Niemoller, nor are they disarmed or unwilling to fight if push comes to shove.
We need armed nuts; they serve a valuable purpose. To quote myself from a discussion on the politics of space over a decade ago and why we needed our own unreasonable extremists in that endeavour:
The ends define the middle
David Khoresh provided us a warning. He showed each of us exactly how far from the edge we stood and left us to decide what to do about it. The fact that American citizenry are armed means there is a very real set of checks and balances between citizen and government. The founders and the framers of the Constitution intended this to be so and that is why there is a Second Amendment in the hallowed Bill of Rights.
This is why I do not believe the United States is even remotely near a revolutionary situation. There are no problems there which cannot be dealt with in a civil and civilized Constitutional manner. I would go so far as to say no sane person should wish the line be crossed. Revolutionary results are unpredictable. Once a society has broken down into factions that solve all problems by weight of arms rather than by law, it can be beastly difficult to recover civil society.
