What the headline says. Now is the time for “liberals,” “progressives,” “lefties,” whatever you want to call us, to take up arms. Literally.
The sad truth is, Republicans and their mouth-breathing tea-bagging base don’t respect us… because they don’t fear us. That’s why, no matter how large our numbers, they continue to laugh off our concerns. See, the only thing these bullies understand is force, and as long as they believe that we don’t have “the guts” to use it, they’ll continue to not only ignore our demands, but to threaten us with violence if we don’t quietly acquiesce.
But imagine if instead of merely carrying banners and signs and legitimate grievances, 70,000 protesters were to converge on the Wisconsin State Capitol proudly and openly carrying rifles and shotguns and pistols and other patriotic symbols of American manhood? Now that might finally earn our side a little respect… and what respect we didn’t earn, we’d at least be in a position to take.
Honestly… think Gov. Walker would be so insulting and intransigent if he knew his office was surrounded by 70,000 angry, well-armed, Second-Amendment-remedying patriots? I don’t think so.
Now don’t get me wrong: This is not a call to violence. As the righties frequently point out, gun ownership is not only a fundamental constitutional right but our patriotic duty, as is its very public display. Indeed, nothing could be more democratic, nay, more American, than to strap on your bandoliers, fling a rifle over your shoulder, and head down to the seat of government to let your elected officials know what you really think of their policies. “Extremism in the defense of liberty,” and all that.
And, if the pro-gun commenters in the threads on my anti-gun posts are to be believed, nothing makes you safer than carrying a firearm. So by extension, wouldn’t everybody on both sides of the conflict in Madison be safer if the protesters were as armed as the Capitol Police?
So come on my fellow liberals, let’s all go out and buy ourselves some good ol’ American, union made firearms, if only to send a message to those on the right that we take this fight seriously. And even if we don’t ultimately prevail in Wisconsin, no doubt the mere prospect of a heavily armed American left might finally win us some of that enhanced gun control legislation for which we’ve long been fighting.
As much as I hope that this was bitingly sarcastic, I do agree that nothing would get gun control laws passed faster than an increase in liberals buying guns…
@47,
No, you meet me at the corner of Rainier & Cloverdale.
@47, how much are you getting paid to troll here? I need a job, especially if I am ever going to be able to legally arm my liberal ass, and I can think of far more demeaning things to do for money than pose as a right winger and make idiotic statements (under a different name, of course, I still need this one to say what I really think).
@51, boy, are you deluded.
It doesn’t have to be a “bloodbath.” Responsibly-armed, respectful protesters do stir fear in the hearts of tyrants. The Black Panthers did it with finesse (and copies of the Second Amendment firmly under their arms.)
LMAO @ naive white Seattle liberals who keep invoking the black panthers!
Would squirt guns suffice? It is winter in Wisconsin still, ain’t it?
A better way than buying a new one is buying a good union made confiscated firearm from an SPD police auction.
Then, bonus points, you’re helping out the city.
Reduce, reuse, reload.
I’m a fairly well-armed liberal, but I’m not a big fan of open carry because I consider it needlessly provocative. That said, a liberal pro-gun rally would be a nice change for once. I’d show up, maybe with my SLR-106.
I won’t argue that armed conflict is the answer, but I do think that some of you ridiculous (that is: worthy of ridicule), arrogant hippies are deluding yourselves at your own peril if you think you’re ever—EVER—going to reason with a Tea-Bagger. Sure, sure, you can live convinced of your own moral and intellectual high-ground, and tout yourselves as reasonable here in cozy Slogland… but the fact of the matter is that you can’t reason with idiots and the mentally ill, so your “high-ground” ends up being more like a “hill of beans”. A little fire-with-fire is sometimes the most efficacious strategy.
POSTING IN AN EPIC TROLL THREAD
@50:
That’s not quite what I’m advocating; for one thing, there’s no real evidence the right-wingers would positively respond to that sort of action anyway, unlike some nervous 20-somthing guardsman.
But I’m not saying we should lie down and roll over either. I’m saying we should stand up and face the gun-toting bastards face on – no weapons, but showing no fear of their weapons either.
@60:
Then, how does that make us any better, or any different for that matter, from those same “idiots and the mentally ill”? Taking the biblical route of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” just leaves everybody blind and toothless in the end.
Might Makes Right ..22 etc thanks..
A liberal gun rally would be Fucking Awesome! ..59
OMG, the Seattle liberal with no comprehension of humor or irony has raised his ugly head once again. Idiot blowhards like Limbaugh and Monson would have nothing to talk about if the “we take ourselves way to seriously” didn’t go knee-jerk each and every time something like this is posted.
In fact, the fuzzy wuzzy liberal set has essentially CREATED right wing talk radio.
I would totally go to a Liberal gun rally!
“Power comes from the barrel of a gun.”
Whether we like it or not, if you’re going to get somewhere in the near future. Being able to defend against the Capitalist Goon Squads is a necessity.
Better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees.
I don’t understand why this would be a problem for teabaggers. They’ve been going to protests and rallies for years armed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpnQAYlQ_…
And just today:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap…
They should be perfectly fine with liberals doing the same thing, shouldn’t they?
@69: Well I suppose we should be grateful you can’t find your caps lock key at least…..
@69
The Tea Party is Anti-American. The Founding Fathers were almost all elitists who hated the lower classes. America was built to have an elite upper class that held the power and elected to Senate. Only in the modern era are the “commoners” allowed to vote on Senators.
The Conservative history of America is a lie. Welcome to your nightmare.
@66 Sign me up too!
Is it really so rare for a union working, borderline socialist, seriously progressive, liberally minded individual to own one or more firearms in the US? Because there are clearly a few of us here, but a lot of responses have been to balk at the idea of owning guns.
PS: Goldy: Yes it is.
Right now the polls are in the protestors’ favor. That would absolutely change if they showed up armed.
There is one thing that politicians pay attention to, and that’s polls. Walker doesn’t give a shit because he’s not up in 2012, but already some Wisconsin republicans who are are showing signs of defecting. I’d hate to see something as idiotic as what you are suggesting turn the tide.
You’re kidding, right?
The Republicans got voted into power ( D E M O C R A C Y). They’re going to make a big, bigoted mess of Wisconsin. Next election cycle, (or in a vote-of-no-confidence election if they have California-type laws), the Democrats can vote the bigots out and clean up the mess.
Never pull a weapon that you are not prepared to fire.
Even if a show of force somehow worked in this situation, it would add to a civil-war mentality, and NO ONE WANTS A CIVIL WAR .
Um … what about showing up armed with something that teabaggers, cons, religious fanatics DO hate (and most likely fear, too), i.e. symbols of sexual freedom. If they’re waving guns (or just carryin’), whip out your dildoes, vibrators, blown-up condoms in multiple colours, padded restraints … anything from your personal toy chest. If you don’t already have toys, go out and buy some.
At least you won’t be putting more money into the hands of gun manufacturers or doing something that you find repugnant to your own integrity and moral standards. And you’ll have something you can actually use later on. [After properly disinfecting them from having been in the same airspace as those virulent sources of contamination!]
@69: You just fed a WiS troll.
STOP WASTING OXYGEN
Ah, come on Goldy, you know from the comments over at HA that half of us liberals are already armed.
@73, oh, Walker will be up in 2012. Next January is when he’ll be able to be recalled.
@75, yes! Whip out the dildos and let’s form a real Teabagger Party!
Obvious and very clumsy satire aside, I get that you hate the 2nd Amendment, Goldstein. Since you hate capitalism, personal economic freedom, fair taxation, any notion of personal responsibility and pretty much any other concept on which this nation was founded, this is hardly surprising.
Shy of unconstitutional abridgement of the right to bear arms, how do you think the ‘problem’ should be solved? Alter the 2nd through, I don’t know, Constitutional means? Emigrate to the UK or Canada where gun laws are more restrictive? Anything? Beuller? Beuller? I mean, other than writing snarky half literate columns about how bad the idea of a gun owning populace is, what do want to do about it? Despite the clear impediment of being a liberal, you seem capable of thought sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. Well okay, never, but you could try at least.
Cogent thought, it’s what might help liberals if they only tried it.
71
Try reading something other than idiots like Chomsky for American history. You might learn something that could actually be supported by the real world for once.
Every man who signed the Declaration of Independence forfeit his property and his life if the revolution failed. If they were simply caught by the British any one of them would have been hung immediately, whether the revolution succeeded or not. It was hardly a bet anyone would take at even odds that the revolt of a small largely rural colony against the largest navy and most successful army in the world would succeed. Accordingly, the notion that the men who were behind the Declaration, Articles of Confederation and 1789 Constitution were out for personal gain is just stupid. It is moronic. It is the kind of lie people like you who hate their own country tell themselves all the time. Oddly, you even believe it. You must have been dropped on the head as a child. Often.
You hate America. Great. Bully for you. To do so implies ignorance and stupidity, but you exceed expectations in that regard. Bravissimo.
We all have a “fundamental right to travel” and I’d say nothing impedes that fundamental right more than a bunch of folks all strapped up and in your way. Next time the righties have an open carry rally we should sue them for infringing our right to travel.
As with most most things, Johnny Cash as pretty sage advice on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMMp_llzB…
@76 lulz.
I don’t know that a surge in lefty gun ownership would help, but it might.
Naomi Klein describes how there’s a pattern of typical endgame activity when the neoliberal nation-rapers truly have a country on the ropes. First, there’s the barrage of radical austerity measures that dismantle governments capacity to regulate capital and mitigate misery. Then, as people are disoriented and reeling from the shock, the organizers, leaders, and left-intellectuals start to disappear and show up elsewhere mutilated and dead. People who think it can’t happen here are fucking dreaming. Given the current trajectory, I give it a decade or two. What we can do now, short of joining a firing range, is to recognize that these bastards love to bully and that the time for playing nice is over.
How big a gun can you carry in your Euro-man purses ladies?
” left-intellectuals start to disappear and show up elsewhere mutilated and dead.”
Paranoid much? One thing the far left and far right have in common.
In the next of your 3 times per week sessions with the psychologist, I’d ask that the dosage be increased. The current prescription clearly isn’t working. Your paranoid delusions are getting the better of you.
Nevertheless, of course tyranny could happen here. Evil thrives, as they saying goes, anywhere good men do nothing. That’s one of the primary reasons for loudly and consistently resisting the trend in Europe and the United States towards cradle to grave control over our lives by governments. Freedom can’t exist in fascism, it’s true. But it also can’t exist when men aren’t allowed to make choices and be responsible for the repercussions of those choices. Neither the radical right nor the radical left are good solutions for the majority of folks. Most of them want to keep the roads built, the cops on the street, the nation defended and so on. They’d rather the government stay out of their finances and their private lives. And they’d much rather not be held fiscally responsible for the poor choices of fellow citizens.
But as far as ‘righties’ or ‘wingnuts’ or whatever the catchphrase Huffington or MSNBC have sent out for the day is, Klein and her ilk are safe. They simply aren’t important, or indeed sane, enough to treat that seriously.
Who says lefties can’t be violent? Doesn’t anyone remember the SLA? What about the Black Panthers? Violence isn’t the sole realm of the far right.
I have to say I’m pretty disappointed in the majority of Slogger responses. Folks, America’s gonna have guns! Lots of ’em! No reason to unilaterally disarm. And certainly no reason whatsoever not to show up at a protest bearing arms. It’s our right. Fuck the teabaggers. And do go to the range and learn how to use your weapon safely.
And Seattleblues, welcome back! Were you being treated for a stroke? The first half of your post @79 was a completely unsupported ad hominem attack–well done! The second half was completely off topic and off the mark–congratulations! To argue that the Founding Fathers didn’t represent a white male elite has to be a real challenge, but since you seem to like arguing against facts, I’m glad to see you take it up. (P.S. Just because they put their property and lives at risk didn’t mean they weren’t slave-owning elites. Just FYI, you know, a bit of logic. You imply that patriots can’t be out for personal gain, then claim that our country is founded on capitalism and personal economic freedom, sorry, my head hurts a bit. There, the bourbon has made it all better.)
And where are the flag links when you need them? For @35 & @46. I don’t think calling Goldy a “Jew” really advances the conversation. And if you’re so fucking clever about the relationship between religion and guns, then why do you think Alan Gottlieb runs the Second Amendment Foundation (http://www.saf.org)? Maybe you’d like to run off your racist mouths in a room full of the Israel Defense Forces? I’d love to see that, fuckers.
Gee, remember that whole loughner thing? Ya know, where the liberals were blaming the Gifford shooting on republicans because of their gun-toting rhetoric. Oh, I guess not.
Goldy, you can’t expect me to read your anti-gun posts and then want to keep a gun in my house, like, ever. I’ll rely on the rule of law to protect me and my family, thank you.
Goldy, you need a hug and a few good nights’ sleeps this weekend. Here is a virtual *hug* with the little asterisks and everything. I hope it helps. I’m sorry your country has so many problems and bad, bad people. Get some rest and you’ll probably feel a little better in the morning.
(As for the gun thing, seriously, I think that a much more forceful and pushy but resolutely non-violent movement is the answer here, not guns. Yes, it’s probably true that if progressives–or, let’s call them “sane people”–escalated the protest battle with greater numbers and civil disobedience, some of them would get killed by your effing Teabaggers along the way. But things are bad, and at this point there’s going to be people killed no matter what. The only thing you non-extremists have is moral authority. Own it as thoroughly as possible.)
I’m not sure an actual display of force is going to do anyone any good. I think Tim Kreider is the one with the right idea. We need to go to the mattresses with these fuckers, in a rhetorical sense, in the media, in Congress, in the white house, wherever. I really think that we need to fight just as dirty as they do, because Bush’s presidency has made it pretty clear that it only takes eight years and a couple planes to knock this country back to the fifties. The typical Dem strategy of compromise simply cannot work against a political opponent whose electoral base ignores any lies or wrongdoing if their chosen horse simply votes against the gays (or whatever the demon-flavor-of-the-month is).
28
Freedom is not something you can buy, only rent.
EVERY generation has a payment due.
If we are wise and diligent (and maybe a little lucky…) the only payment required is a strong military that deters enemies.
If we are lazy and neglectful and don’t pay the price the next generation gets a whopper of a bill. (see Pearl Harbor….)
There are actually very few things that the Federal Government has any business doing (educating your kids is not one of them. neither is providing you with health care or retirement income…) but mantaining a STRONG military is one of them.
@92: “If we are lazy and neglectful and don’t pay the price the next generation gets a whopper of a bill. (see Pearl Harbor….)”
Clearly, you don’t know Jack Diddly. But if you did, maybe he could tell you a bit about World War II history.
Also, “promote the general welfare” is right next to “provide for the common defense” in the Constitution.
Liberals don’t need guns-
just continue to rely on your superior intellect and
numerous graduate degrees and
overweening moral superiority;
after all it has workeed soooo well for you
(and the country) so far…
74
Mrs Jarvie is right;
“Never pull a weapon that you are not prepared to fire”…..
Who fired the first shot at Lexington? Does it matter?
The Right sees Activist Judges who over rule the express will of the people as Tyrants on par with George III.
It would take only the tiniest spark to ignite their patriotic ferver into a raging Bonfire of Liberty.
Death to Tyrants.
Power to the People.
Go ahead, Goldy, Make Our Days.
Do you feel lucky, Punk? Well; Do ya?…..
I thought it was a pretty good post.
If the liberal left armed, the Billionaires Tunnel wouldn’t last out the week.
I’m a bit torn on this, but I do think it’s too bad that the paranoid right wing (which believes there’s a good chance sharia law and fascist communism(?!) sweep the nation with the help of liberals and muslims and Obama administration and democratic party) — that these cultish nutjobs have like 10x the ammo and guns as liberal folks are likely to have.
If a solar storm, or economic collapse due to something else were to hit the fan in the next few years, watch out, they’ll be coming after you, your friends, family, community in what they’ll consider the end times. Remember, these folks believe they’re the chosen ones, the REAL Americans, oh and by the way they believe in torture.
Unfortunately us liberals are for the most part defenseless against these psycho bullies if they go violent, and have been looked down on by them as pussies, pinkos for decades now
If we try to match the armed potential of the other side this country will be far more awash in guns and ammo than it already is, which will mean more gun deaths. On the other hand I don’t know of many better options, other than coming up with a movement that merges the right, left and center against the real enemy to this country, the super rich corporate vultures who are fucking us, our children and our future.
@94
Conservatives don’t need intelligence –
just continue to rely on your fear and
inability to think for yourself and
blind, self-righteous defense of the people who constantly play you for the idiots you are.
after all, it’s worked sooooo well for the economy
(and the whole rest of the world) so far ….
Welcome to the global economy sucka.
Degrees make you competitive – for realz!
Too bad the irrelevant ones like you arm yourselves for attention.
While your argument for demonstration would be dramatic and, yes, cause the Right to look twice, your claim is based on the assumption that the only reason protests aren’t working is because they do not fear you. Fear does not always inspire people to act in accordance to your desires, in fact, it often fuels them to do the opposite. Under your assumption, fear equals respect, but this is not the case. They are two different things. In order to argue your point of view more effectively, it would be in your best interests to stop the sarcasm and use facts based on…facts, not assumptions.