What Country Ever Existed A Century and a Half Without A Rebellion?

The title of this post is a quote from a 1787 letter written by Thomas Jefferson.  It is the same letter wherein he spoke of the necessity of watering the tree of liberty with “the blood of patriots & tyrants,” that being the tree’s “natural manure.”  The tombstone in the picture to the left marks the grave of Civil War officer Nathaniel Grigsby.

It has been 153 years since the end of our last rebellion in this country.  That rebellion began a year after Abraham Lincoln was elected and many people south of the Mason Dixon Line announced that they refused to accept the results of the ballot box.  To use a phrase common at the time, Lincoln was “not my President.”

After the civil war ended in Union victory, our federal government was careful to station federal military units in every state so that there would not be a repeat of what happened in 1861.  And there will not be.  But we are on the edge of blood in the streets of one form or another in this country.   It is as obvious today, one year on from when an insane Bernie Bro tried to kill Republican Congress-critters on a soft ball field, as it must have been around 1859, when John Brown, an abolitionist dissatisfied with pacifism, thought he could lead an armed slave revolt in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

At the time, we collectively lost over one million lives in our Civil War to bring about abolition.  Abolition is not our problem today.  Our problem today is progressivism, that uniquely Western branch of Marxism which worldwide, in the 20th century, ran up a butchers bill of somewhere between sixty and one hundred million lives lost.

This from the web by a diverse group of people, probably none of whom even remotely deemed any of this thinkable a decade ago:

Plenty of people must think the Red Guards were a really nifty idea because they’re advocating going down a road that would have an excellent chance of leading there.

For those unfamiliar with the Red Guards, please see this.

And for those who think I’m engaging in hyperbole, please read an essay appearing today entitled “This is just the beginning.” One of the many interesting things about that sort of call for action is that if the right was anywhere near as power-mad and oppressive as the author seems to think it is, he and his fellow-travelers would already be in prison or worse. But they’re not.

As Orwell said, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” . . .

Neo-Neocon, Uncivil War

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The other day, author Tom Ricks asked whether we’re heading toward a civil war. “I don’t believe we’re to Kansas of the 1850s yet. But we seem to be lurching … in that direction,” he wrote.

Ricks was commenting on “What Democratic rage would look like,” a Bloomberg opinion column that quotes political scientist Thomas Schaller as saying, “I think we’re at the beginning of a soft civil war. … I don’t know if the country gets out of it whole.”

That sounds pretty serious. The column by Francis Wilkinson presents a catalog of things Democrats are mad about — from the existence of the electoral college to Trump’s “propaganda apparatus” — and predicts that if Democrats lose the midterm elections, there will be hell to pay. (And Republicans, you know, could make a similar list of their own complaints.) . . .

Glen Reynolds, USA Today, Is America Headed Towards A Civil War

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Just in the last few days, the liberal outrages have been hard to keep up with: hounding the Secretary of Homeland Security out of a restaurant, then “demonstrating” on her lawn with chants and blaring audio of crying children; denying the White House Press Secretary and her family dinner at a Virginia restaurant; trying to get Hall of Fame basketball player Kevin McHale fired from his job as an NBA announcer because he attended a speech by the President of the United States; falsely accusing an ICE agent who is a double amputee as a result of an IED explosion in Afghanistan of being a neo-Nazi; confronting the Attorney General of Florida as she left a movie theater. And that is only a partial list, covering only the last few days.

You will note that usually, when harassment takes place in person, the victim is a woman. I suppose members of the fascist “Resistance” are afraid of getting punched. They should be. . . .

John Hinderaker, Powerline, It’s Crazies All The Way Down

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A group of chanting protesters gathered outside White House adviser Stephen Miller’s Washington D.C. apartment on Monday.

But before the chanting really picked up, the crowd circulated “Wanted” flyers expressing the contention that Miller is guilty of “crimes against humanity,” among other things.

The reward? “Defeating Fascism and the Trump regime.”

The Daily Caller, Protesters Gather Outside White House Adviser Stephen Miller’s Apartment

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The Department of Homeland Security is warning employees to stay on alert after a senior official reportedly found a burned animal carcass at his Washington residence. . . .

“This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees — although the veracity of each threat varies,” Claire M. Grady said. “In addition, over the last few days, thousands of employees have had their personally identifiable information publically [sic] released on social media.”

The memo recommended that DHS employees “always keep doors and windows locked, “be aware of unexpected changes” at their homes and “utilize maximum security setting on social media platforms.”

Washington Times

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Even celebrities are getting into the trolling of the Trump administration, with “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver requesting that his audience send obscene images to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and posting Sessions’ email account on air.

Actor Peter Fonda also was condemned for his Twitter call to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”

Fox News, Democrats Fear Call To Shame Trump Administration Officials Will Cost Votes In The Midterm

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Despite the establishment media’s claims that President Donald Trump is inciting violence against them by calling them “fake news,” journalists have only ramped up their own violent rhetoric in regards to the Trump administration.

CNN’s Jim Acosta told Variety Magazine in April that he believes Trump’s criticisms of the press could cause people who “don’t have all their faculties” to physically attack a reporter, asserting, “a journalist is gonna get hurt one of these days.” (RELATED: Acosta: Americans ‘Don’t Have All Their Faculties’) 

CNN media analyst Brian Stelter and anchor Brooke Baldwin dedicated an entire segment to Trump’s “dangerous speech” prior to the election in 2016, claiming, “If there is unrest and violence after election day, I think we now know why.” (RELATED: Trump Rally Leaves Media Fearing For Safety)

Meanwhile, their own colleagues at CNN have threatened Trump supporters live on-air and even joked about getting into fist fights with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Anti-Trump Republican Rick Wilson, who is a frequent guest on the network, threatened in January to “gut” a fellow pro-Trump panelist “like a fish” after the panelist defended Trump’s infamous “shithole” comment. (RELATED: Rick Wilson Melts Down, Threatens To ‘Gut’ Panelist ‘Like A Fish’ On CNN)  . . . 

Daily Caller, Media Rhetoric On Trump Administration Becomes Increasingly Violent

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Organized lawlessness is spreading to cities across the United States but the news is almost totally ignored and blacked out by the mainstream media.

These ominous uprisings are taking various forms but the most visible and aggressive ones involve Antifa-style “occupy” socialist and anarchist street mobs dedicated to taking down ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government policing agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security. The impetus for these actions has been the anti-President Trump Fake News psy-op meme that claims minor children of illegal immigrants arrested for crashing the U.S./Mexico border are being separated from their parents, sent to “Nazi”-like “concentration camps,” and systematically mistreated.

Far left groups whose rag tag appearance belies their sophisticated networking skills, including Direct Action Network and Democratic Socialists of America, are behind the actions. The Hill analyzed the radicals’ agendas after a group of DSA activists loudly confronted DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen while she was having dinner at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. . . .

Peter Barry Chowka, American Thinker, Insurrection is Here; How Long do We have Until Civil War 2.0 Starts?

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Federal authorities warned Antifa members Monday to stop occupying an Oregon Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building or be arrested.

“Individuals who continue to obstruct the entrance of this federal facility will be subject to arrest and prosecution in federal court,” a flyer Federal Protective Service agents distributed to Portland, Oregon, Antifa members reads. “It is unlawful under federal law to obstruct the entrances, foyers, lobbies, corridors, offices and/or parking lots of federal facilities.”

Antifa has been camping outside the ICE building since last week and effectively shutting down the building. Federal authorities went into the building around 3:30 a.m Monday to secure the building.

Antifa is known to get violent and they are labeled an official domestic terrorist organization. During an August 2017 protest at the University of California, Berkeley, they were recorded in several video clips attacking and injuring individuals they deemed “far-right” or “alt-right,” although there’s no evidence the individuals were associated with such groups and didn’t identify in such a way. . . .

Daily Caller, Federal Authorities Warn Antifa To End ICE Occupation

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The beginning of America’s bloody Civil War is generally remembered as the opening shot on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861.

And Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, fears another Fort Sumter is in our near future.

“America is heading in the direction of another Harpers Ferry,” the controversial conservative tweeted Sunday. “After that comes Ft. Sumter.” . . .

USA Today, Rep. Steve King Says America Is Heading Towards Another Civil War

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. . . Make no mistake, this is provocative rhetoric. Angry, in-your-face confrontations dramatically increase the chances of violence. Put people in close proximity, yelling and spitting, and public officials will rightly start to fear that they’re in physical danger. While millions of Americans don’t remember that a Bernie Sanders supporter last year tried to assassinate a significant portion of the GOP Congress, you can be assured that not a single Republican in Washington has forgotten. They can never be sure that the screaming person in front of them doesn’t mean them physical harm.

Argue against these dangerous confrontations, and you’ll always get the same response: This administration is uniquely evil. It was taking children from their parents. The president just tweeted that he wants to strip due-process rights from illegal immigrants. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

What is the limiting principle here? The president caved on family separation after a few days of intense, bipartisan public pressure. Now the immigration policy the protesters are targeting is similar to one the Obama administration applied until late in his presidency.

How, for that matter, does the “desperate times call for desperate measures” analysis apply to events as disparate as threatening FCC chair Ajit Pai over net neutrality or attacking Charles Murray during a speech about America’s economic and class divides? How does it apply to the hellacious ordeal of Wisconsin conservatives who dared take on public-employee unions in Wisconsin? When the radicals actually hold the reins of government power, this can happen . . .

David French, NRO, Days of Rage

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The proggies have not accepted the election results of 2016.  I imagine they will act without restraint on Nov. 7, 2018 if and when they fail to recapture the House or Senate.  I expect that if we are going to have blood in the streets, we will start seeing it between Nov. 7, 2018 and Nov. 2020.  Indeed, I am close to thinking it inevitable.