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As Saint James teaches, “faith without works
is dead.” God’s grace may be “amazing”; but He
desires men’s active cooperation with it for its full effects to emerge
in changing their lives for the better.
The
same is true—perhaps to an even greater degree—with political
education. How often have Americans heard patriotic pundits tell them that
education is the key to political reform in this country—to returning
it to a true Republic, in which We the People actually govern themselves? But
exactly why and how is that true?
After
all, education can go on throughout one’s lifetime, without any effect
outside of the student’s own mind, unless it inspires him and provides
the intellectual and moral resources for action. So, to what ends—to
what actions—should and must political education be directed at this
moment in America’s existence?
Not
just to winning elections every two or four years. Nothing is more familiar
than the sequence the pundits promote: educate the voters, elect good
candidates, improve government. Yet nothing is more obvious than that this
process is not working as promised. Why? Perhaps because, once they elect
their favored candidates, the voters return to their private lives, taking
little or no further interest in day-to-day politics, let alone participating
personally and directly in them. No wonder, then, that even basically honest
public officials, after the election season has passed, imagine themselves
independent of and superior to the voters—with a “mandate”
to do whatever they want for the next two, four, or six years, no matter what
the voters may really desire, or what their own oaths of office require. And
no wonder, either, that after sufficient election-cycles have come and gone,
all too many Americans are inured to this situation, expect it to happen, and
even assume it to be the inevitable and unavoidable, if not the natural and
just, course of events.
Exacerbating
this problem is that contemporary America cannot count on basically honest
politicians to any significant degree. The “two” major political
parties—aided and abetted by their touts in the big media—have
taken over and thoroughly corrupted the election business. The
“two” parties operate as a central committee of professional
revolutionaries of a rather totalitarian stripe, who purport to act in the
name, but actually against the interests, of We the People. Not that they
give serious consideration to the People’s interests. Why should they?
They hold the People in contempt, distrust the People, deceive the People,
and even openly ridicule and defame the People whenever the People oppose them.
And they assume they can get away with this misbehavior forever, because the
People are ignorant, and more to the point are politically
impotent—except to vote in the manner of zombies for the “party
list” of candidates hand-picked from behind the scenes, so as to supply
a veneer of “democratic” authority to incumbent public
officeholders as they misgovern this country for the benefit of special
interests.
The
overall effect is that America is misruled by a political system not very far
removed from Lenin’s prescription in his book What Is To Be Done?
And if anyone doubts the accuracy of this description, let him consider
simply what has been going on with regard to the “immigration
reform” bill now pending in Congress, and what is happening to Representative
Ron Paul’s bid for one of the “two” parties’
Presidential nominations.
Oh,
yes, after the electioneering hysteria dies down, common Americans may
contact “their” legislators to put in their personal two cents on
this or that particular issue. Precious little good will it usually do them,
though, except to ventilate their own anxieties and frustrations—and
with about as much other practical effect as whistling down a wind tunnel.
But, besides blowing off steam in this way, what else do people do? What else
do they imagine they ought to do, and can do? Not much, if anything at all.
Self-government,
however, is not and can never be a spectator sport. It is not someone
else’s doings that a patriot simply watches on cable-TV from the
comfort of his couch, a frosty-cold beer in hand. Self-government requires
active, personal participation—whenever self-government is necessary.
Because whenever self-government is necessary, and does not assert itself,
some other form of government will. And self-government is always necessary,
everywhere throughout this country, because the Forces of Darkness never
sleep.
Moreover,
self-government requires not simply individual activity, but also and
especially concerted activity. Not just self-education about government, but
also and especially mass mobilization and organization for direct,
coordinated participation in government, so that common people in
overwhelming numbers end up exercising legal authority by and for themselves,
not having legal authority exercised against them by and for someone else.
That
is why “the Militia of the several States” are key to the
reinvigoration of self-government in America at the present moment in the
course of human events. That the Militia are the indispensable institutions
of and for self-government is not simply the hobbyhorse of a lone commentator
on NewsWithViews.com. No, indeed. The Constitution itself teaches that the
Militia are “necessary to the security of a free State.” Even
more tellingly, the Constitution says as much about no other institution or
establishment of government. The Constitution never explicitly describes
Congress, the President, or the Supreme Court as “necessary,” for
any purpose. And certainly imaginable is that all of them could be completely
disabled by a “terrorist” strike, some form of natural disaster
that struck Washington, D.C., or an epidemic—leaving the country to
fend for itself without their direction. Quite unimaginable, though, is what
could disable all of “the Militia of the several States,” such
that somewhere—indeed, most everywhere throughout the
country—sufficient Militiamen would not remain to preserve the
continuity of government and protect social order in their Local areas at
least, without requiring any assistance whatsoever from the Disgrace of
Columbia.
Moreover,
that revitalized Militia have the potential to become America’s premier
political institutions should be obvious to any American who asks himself
what major political issue confronting this country today does not also
present a serious “homeland security” problem.
And,
perhaps most importantly, a movement for revitalization of “the Militia
of the several States” is quintessentially constitutional—which
imparts to it a supreme legitimacy and, in principle, legal invulnerability.
Of
course, in the face of a tyrannical regime, no guarantee of perfect legal
invulnerability exists. Nonetheless, legitimacy remains the most powerful
weapon in patriots’ hands in the long march from oppression to liberty.
For example, in 1905, Father Gapon, an Orthodox priest, led a peaceful and
lawful march of 120,00 Russians through the streets of Saint Petersburg to
the Winter Palace, to petition the Tsar to grant his subjects a few
elementary rights—whereupon the Tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke
Vladimir, ordered troops to fire into the crowd. The people dispersed in
panic. But that event—known thereafter as “Bloody
Sunday”— signaled the beginning of the end for the
Romanovs’ dynasty. What Grand Duke Vladimir imagined would preserve
“homeland security” for the ruling class actually cut the ground
from under its feet, once and for all—needing only the major national
crisis of the Great War finally to dump the regime into History’s
dustbin.
America
has not yet suffered her own “Bloody Sunday.” But enactments such
as the Patriot Act, Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
and National Security Presidential Directive No. 51—together with the
accelerating para-militarization of National, State, and even Local police
agencies, with which every American with open eyes is familiar—provide
ample warnings that no prudent patriot will disregard. More ominously, even
as each brick of this police-state edifice has been mortared into place,
measured layer by measured layer, all too many Americans have simply shrugged
their shoulders, nodding in agreement with the little Goebbels-figures who
host “conservative” radio talk-shows that all this Nazification
is necessary to fight “the global war on terrorism” or some other
Neo-Conzi bogeyman conjured up to rationalize the establishment of
supra-national fascism.
So,
working for revitalization of “the Militia of the several States”
will not be a political picnic. Nonetheless, it offers the best, if not the
only, means to do the job now that America finds herself infested with all
too many Grand Duke (or Duchess) Vladimirs in or contending for the highest
public offices in the land.
What
is the alternative? To play for time—with major crises looming on the
horizon in the Middle East, in the domestic arena of money and banking, and
in the plot to hatch a North American Union? Or to allow the Forces of
Darkness to prevail, and to destroy this country—and with it every
American’s hope for a peaceful, decent life?
If
you have not yet had enough of the Forces of Darkness and everything they
stand for and are trying to do to you, when will you finally become fed up?
When it is too late to do anything about the situation? When your children
ask you, “How did you try to stop this evil from fastening itself on
our country?” —and you must lower your eyes in silence and shame,
while they turn away in disdain and disgrace?
How
much foresight does it require to realize that “too late” is
approaching all too quickly?
How
much courage must be mustered to take a little political action before
fighting for your own life, liberty, and property becomes
unavoidable—and which action, when it succeeds, will obviate any
necessity for fighting?
If
these questions do not answer themselves for you, then you are wasting your
time perusing NewsWithViews. And you most certainly are not material well
suited for “the Militia of the several States.” So, for your own
peace of mind (such as it may be), stop reading these commentaries and go
back to People magazine.
The
time for more, and more, and even more political education is over. Enough
Americans already know enough to pinpoint what is wrong, to identify those
who are responsible, and to recognize what is necessary to correct the mess
in which their country finds itself. Now they need to transform their
knowledge into actions, their actions into results. As General MacArthur
admonished his countrymen, “There is no substitute for victory!”
And, as common sense teaches, no victory can be won without effort.
Edwin
Vieira
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