Where Do Virginia Patriots Go After Richmond?
BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 2 months ago
I don’t really want to write this entry, it’s strong medicine. If you don’t want that medicine, stop reading now. It won’t hurt my feelings one bit.
As long as you’re here, pull up a hard back chair, grab a strong cup of coffee, and ponder what I’ve said. Before you pound the keyboard to reply in anger, read it again, and ponder what I’ve said again.
Richmond was by my estimation a huge success. Why I believe this will become apparent as we go along through this dose of medicine. I’ve seen no end to the cringe-worthy throwdowns at Virginians and other attendees to the rally for doing nothing of any use, failing to end the intent to infringe on our rights, and failing to tear down the fences and burn Richmond to the ground. Or some sort of worthless blather like that.
I warned (as did others) that this could be a setup for both false flag events and provocateurs, and while I feel certain that such things were planned, the event, the degree of control over it, and the attention to detail of the attendees made it a completely unfit atmosphere for such things.
I glad it went as well as it did. The event has its detractors, and the objections usually fit into one of the following categories: (a) We don’t get to vote our way out of this, (b) nothing good came of it, (c) the .gov now has face recognition for all attendees, as well as car plate numbers, and probably names, of most of the attendees (i.e., anonymity has been compromised). So let me address these items and then outline why I think we’re where we are and what comes next. I’ll have to do so in headings.
Anonymity
No thinking man can honestly object that attendees have lost anonymity. There was never any to be had, and even if there was, there cannot be in the future.
If you believe, after pounding the keyboard for years like you have, purchased guns and ammunition like you have, turned in tax forms like you have, and worked within the system like you have, that you have even one iota of anonymity left, you don’t understand how all of this works. The .gov is directly tied into trunks of the internet at key locations throughout the nation, and if you don’t think the right (or wrong) folks know what you’ve been writing or saying, you don’t understand the internet as it exists today.
I know it may make you feel better to use some sort of nom de guerre, like you’re really secret and hidden from direct view, and it may make you feel empowered to be a jerk behind the screen, but it’s all an illusion. It’s not real, and if you believe in it, you’re naive.
Moreover, the founders risked their lives, families, fortunes and honor to found a new country. If you don’t understand that, you don’t even understand what it means to be a patriot, much less are you in the game. If you’re not in the game yet, go ahead and keep pounding the keyboard like it means something, and stop reading this now. If you try to do any of the things I’ve suggested so far to press forward with the recovery of our heritage, like approaching your CLEO for a meeting about what it means to him to be a sanctuary county, and try to hide or conceal your name, please send me a note and tell me how that goes. Introduce yourself to your local Sheriff as “Brutus Maximus the keyboard warrior,” and then try to fisk his ideas on God-given rights. Tell me how long the meeting lasts. It will be nothing but a joke.
The things I’m saying about anonymity are directed at both military (esp. former SpecOps) and non-military, cops and politicians, professionals and blue collar workers. No one is exempt, and all of your commitment will be required to make it through what’s coming. If you want to pound the keyboard in angry reply to this, go ahead, but I’ll just laugh when I read your nom de guerre while I use my real name. You’re committed or not, but don’t be a pretender. Pretenders aren’t serious people.
Politics
There is no voting our way out of this. Well no, not at the moment. Not as the voting public is currently constituted. As a nation we lost our way a very long time ago.
We (Americans, and I point my finger particularly at the church and Christians) watched the soul-polluting garbage that comes from Hollywood; we sent children to public schools for indoctrination into communism; we allowed the communists to infiltrate the halls of academia and take control of the academy; we looked the other way when the communists infiltrated the seminaries to teach social justice and lies rather than the incarnation, justification and the doctrines of grace; we kept giving to the churches when they sent their money to those dens of the Satan; we trusted the FedGov when they said that the judiciary would be unbiased and they could be allowed to control the law schools and judicial nominees; we shrugged when corrupt politicians ensconced in that pit of vipers, Washington D.C.
We were too busy wearing the jerseys of our favorite thug who desecrated the Lord’s day sabbath, or hunting, or sleeping, or trying to make a fortune in business, to pay attention to the fact that Bolsheviks were increasingly running things. Virginians, in droves, stayed home on election day, and those who did show up lacked the world and life view necessary to vote intelligently.
Now they are paying the price for it. You see, politics is war. If you don’t understand that, your mind is empty and your ideas vapid. It may not be shooting (or it may be, if you refuse to dishonor your God-given rights and receive a visit from the local police for it), but it is war nonetheless. It is a war of ideas and world views, and while it may be at one end of the spectrum, it is still war. Politics is war. Always remember that. Loss of that war may mean the end of your wealth, honor, dignity, families, fortunes, and even lives.
I have a friend who was once interviewed for a position as a professor of philosophy. His team of interviewers asked him to outline the branches of philosophy, and he responded, “(1) Ontology / Metaphysics, (2) Epistemology, and (3) Ethics.” Then he added, “Sometimes ethics is called and categorized as politics.” His idiot team didn’t even know the categories themselves, but he got the job.
One student in a particular class complained about his instruction on the differences in world and life views, and he had the students re-seat and leave a row of chairs in the middle of the class empty. He then knocked over that entire row (like dominoes), and said, “That is the gulf between Christianity and paganism.” You’re one or the other, but not both, and choosing no side is not an option.
My friend got it. When God created us, He made us to take dominion of His creation, to claim it for His glory, in its entirety. That means the arts, sciences, government, business, engineering, and everything. Telling me that you don’t care about politics is the same thing as telling me that you don’t think God has anything to say about how men live together, and that you don’t care about ethics. We are in the very position we are because of our failure to engage ethics and politics, our failure to teach our children, our failure to hold fellow men accountable, our failure to hold our society accountable.
Thus, Hollywood promotes homosexuality, government steals from us, the public turns to the state as god, and 70 million babies have been murdered. Don’t believe for one second that the country can do this and avoid the wrath and judgment of the Almighty. You may (falsely) find yourself blameless in all of this. Yes, I too home schooled my children and taught them, read the Bible to them, and tried my best to hold my public officials accountable. But I could have done more. So could you. Either way, God’s judgment is not just personal, but corporate, and entire peoples get caught up in the entirety of His righteous judgment upon men and countries. I am a theonomist and Christian reconstructionist, and believe in having a Christian republic. We’ve come a long way from that, if we ever had it to begin with.
So don’t give me that tripe any more about how you care nothing for politics, while you go back to fondling your rifle. If that’s your attitude, you’ve done nothing but harm the cause, and your rifle won’t save you. No, we can’t vote our way out of this. Voting is the end of the process of teaching and training a people, not the beginning of it. Get the right order and get clear-headed about this thing.
What Richmond Accomplished
Richmond was a morale-booster for patriots. It showed that they can come together on fairly short notice and focus on and achieve unity of action. Whether it did anything to dissuade the communists from pursuing their goals isn’t the point. I couldn’t care any less about that. “Can a leopard change its spots?” What it did do is give patriots the moral high ground.
It took many years of deliberations, thousand upon thousands of letters, endless debates, and numerous local meetings to send word back to the continental congress, to achieve unity of action for the war of independence. What makes anyone think that recovery of the liberties we squandered will be any easier? But it gave the continental congress the moral high ground. That brought the people along with them.
The founders needed the moral high ground. Without it, and without unity of action, it would have been anarchy. Anarchy is bad. It means, in today’s parlance, Bosnia on steroids. No one wins. Your family won’t survive, you won’t survive, and if anything comes of it, the .gov will pick patriots off one by one.
The moral high ground for Virginians was attained on Monday. That’s good for the psyche of patriots, for the planning stages for going forward from here, and for implanting the knowledge that they’ve once again told the planners, “This is the last warning – we won’t live be these edicts.” To be sure, Virginians were asleep at the wheel, like a lot of us, but they are awake now, and they don’t need our bitching, griping, moaning and complaining about what they did or didn’t do. They need ideas. With that in mind, I’d like to propose a few starters to get the ball rolling. I’ll pose it in the form of questions / comments.
Practical Suggestions
Where are you going to shoot now? You know you need to engage in the shooting sports with your children, wife, colleagues and co-patriots, but you also know that the state is going after your ranges. Where do you go now? Do you have land? Do you know like-minded people who have land? Are you partnered with anyone who is like-minded?
Do you think it’s impressive to show up at the rally so fat that your tactical vests cannot even contain the fat rolls? Is that the image you want to present, and how intimidating do you think that is? Do you understand the bad optics of that sort of presentation? How useful would it have been to show up with 6% body fat, muscular, fit and trim, wearing kit that becomes you, carrying impressive weaponry (more on that in a moment)?
I was reading Tom Ricks some time ago (whom I dislike), and was reminded of something that happened in Mogadishu. History will show that the Marines were in Mogadishu before the Rangers / Delta. The warlords there saw the Marines, their unity of action, their intent, their heavy kit, and the desire for a fight, and told their people to stand down. Besides, if 20 Marines would have been killed, based on their history, they would have sent 20,000 to take their revenge. That’s just how they are.
I won’t go into too much detail, but having a son who was a Marine, I know the Corps to be almost sociopaths and literally paranoid, individually and institutionally. It’s incorrect to say that the Marines aren’t scared. They’re scared of everything, including (and most of all) that the institution won’t exist. The thing they are most scared of is their own NCOs. They fear them more than they do the enemy, whomever that is determined to be. Optics, optics, optics, optics, optics. It’s more important than you know.
I’m not claiming that the Marines were capable or trained to do the things that Delta was, that would be nonsense. I’m claiming that the warlords wanted nothing to do with people who hold bitter, eternal grudges (and pass those grudges down through their history) and present themselves as wanting to fight, and willing to stupidly sacrifice innumerable lives to recover reputation. It was only after the Marines left that the warlords took on U.S. troops.
You may disagree with the use of this as an example of optics, but I know many more from my son’s time in Fallujah. I know of battles they never had to fight because of presentation. He cleared many rooms and shot many rounds in Fallujah, but the Marines would rather avoid the fight and stand the enemy down with optics. Wrong presentation can have the effect of emboldening the enemy.
A point about weaponry (I said I would come back to this). I don’t mean any disrespect for readers and their financial capabilities, because God knows I’ve got my own issues. But my question for you is do you have a rack/budget AR-15, or have you saved your money to get a Daniel Defense, Rock River Arms, BCM or LaRue Tactical? There’s a difference, and you know it’s true. If you purchased a rack AR because that’s all you can afford, my respect goes out to you. If you did so because your wife wants to go to the beach this summer, it may be time to tell your wife that you’ve got other priorities at the moment. This is true especially if you live in Virginia. Do you have a sling, good optics, and a good tactical light for that rifle? Have you trained with it lately?
The most significant and immediate effect of the new communist laws will be on FFLs. Have you purchased all you need to purchase? What about ammunition? What are your plans for going out of state to make your procurement in the future? Have you considered the logistics of this thing? Do you know how to spot a poser who wants to arrest you as your cross the state lines back to Virginia with your ammunition, and how to avoid him? You know that ammunition is next in line if the communists have their way.
Are you meeting with like-minded patriots in your community? Do you even know who they are?
Have you made plans to sit with your CLEO and fisk his intentions concerning being a sanctuary county? Is he prepared to arrest agents of the state who come into the county to enforce state laws? Why is this important? Unity of action. You don’t need the CLEO as an enemy while you’re working to retain recognition of your rights. I don’t care how you feel about cops.
Have you made plans to sit with your county commissioners and fisk their intentions concerning being a sanctuary county? If either the CLEO or commissioner claims that it was merely a “symbolic act,” they need to be replaced via politics. Yes, you may have to engage in politics.
If your CLEO and commissioners don’t really intend to honor the sanctuary resolutions they passed, do you have any plans when agents of the state enter your county to enforce state laws?
Have you put on a ruck lately and climbed any mountains? You have plenty of good ones in your state. Make use of them. I include lots of photographs of hills I climb and trails I ride with my bike. Do you think it’s because I’m so narcissistic that I want you to look at me? I’m rarely if ever in those pictures. I’m trying to be an encouragement. If a 60-year old man with severe RA can lose the weight, add muscle and get into shape, you can do it. My oldest son had awful back surgery several years ago. He worked through the pain and his favorite exercise now is dead lift. It can be done. Do you spend time in the gym? Do you go backpacking regularly?
At some point in the future, you may need a fire for cooking and warmth, without being detected by silhouette. Have you practiced making a Dakota Fire Hole?
How capable are you of integrating into a team? If you’re like me, you don’t like taking orders from anyone because you’re smarter than they are. But the commenters over this and other web sites are so dis-aggregated and disagreeable that they couldn’t concur on the color of the grass. What makes you think that anyone will team with you to protect life and liberty if you’re that way?
What does your local preacher say about all of this? Is he focused on social justice, or does he understand the importance of God-given rights? You may need to find a new church, as he is teaching your family. Don’t forget the role that religious instruction played in the war of independence and the thousands of sermons preached about it. The English parliament knew that war as the “Presbyterian Rebellion.” For good reason.
Do you have proper control over your own family? Just how stable, educated and aware are your loved ones? If your family life isn’t stable, you are subject to red flag law home invasions. If you don’t have your family life in order, drop everything else, including guns, ammunition and politics, and tend to the spiritual life of your family.
Last, how spiritually squared away are you? I’m “preaching to the choir” here, because we can all do better. Your family life can’t be squared away if you’re not.
Conclusion
I won’t go on with the next-step practical tips, pointers and suggestions. I’m an idiot (as I’m sure most readers will agree), and I can come up with a number of things that may be helpful. Readers are smarter, and can add to this list. I don’t intend this to be a clearinghouse or repository for tips or next steps. The point is to get you thinking about this.
And the point is also that if you dislike what I said, that’s okay with me. Go back to your nom de guerre like it protects you, and pound your keyboard in anger like it’s going to change anything. But doing that is helping the communists along, and the patriots are the ones who need our help. The fact that they’re not perfect isn’t a reason to moan, bitch and complain. You aren’t perfect either. Just have compassion on your fellow patriots and be helpful for a change.
