Free Republic

NO, resistance has to happen, and it has to happen now. Shooting steel targets en masse and posting that on line is just preaching to the choir. More visible and more direct in your face action is needed. I wish the VA boys well.

Agreed!

Virginia Beach, “enemy territory”, just voted to be a 2nd Amendment sanctuary... many of the attendees gave testimony while open carrying a side arm.

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/city-of-virginia-beach-sight-of-may-shooting-joins-the-states-sanctuary-movement/

The VCDL urges people not to carry long guns. I would respect their wishes.

I wouldn’t be afraid to peacefully assemble.

Nothing untoward has happened at any previous lobby day rally and I expect the capitol police will prevent trouble at this rally. Don’t be afraid to show up; I plan to be there.

Sounds like FUD. Might as well not go to any Trump rallies either.

Y’know the way some people here argue politics, one might conclude the Top40 radio broadcast the best music available.

Bahhh! Standing apart from the crowd is scary. Bahhh!

I’m a lifelong Republican. You should be reaching out to disaffected conservatives — if you have any hopes of electing Bob Dole 2.0... err, McCain.

I think anger at the GOP and the war helped Republicans lose the statehouse last term (stupid, I know).

(Google returned this thread while I was looking for an upcoming event in Keene.)

You have a free-stater to thank for stopping a $1.5 million increase in taxes in Merrimack by a single vote.

We're small but active... and most don't advertise that we're tax exiles. :) Sitting on budget committees and attending town meetings isn't the most enjoyable way to spend an evening... but it can be effective.

Free Staters are active among the ranks of the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers and the NH Liberty Alliance -- groups that are lobbying for lower taxes.

I live in New Hampshire. There are many conservatives and libertarians who are against empire and unnecessary wars.

Most everyone moving here from The Free State Project is against the war. And none of them are leftists.

Uh, no thanks. I’ll pass on McBob Dole redux.

No, Paul just doesn't participate in the mass delusion. Our dollar is worth less than the Canadian now. We are borrowing money from China to pay for counter-productive wars.

Unlike the other candidates, Paul doesn't just pay lip-service to the issues (small government, anti-tax, pro-gun, pro-family) -- he has conviction and belief.

Single-issue voters, manipulated by fear, would throw a true conservative under the bus and vote for Hillary.

Stop being afraid and vote for your values.

He is against protective tariffs.

Paul does not advocate tariffs. You made that up.

He opposes NAFTA because it creates another regulatory body that “manages” trade. That isn’t free.

You think any of Paul’s supporters will even watch this debate, considering that it turns out most of them are neo-nazis?

Cute. You must be scared to resort to such ridiculous lies.

We zip-tied half a dozen banners over over-passes. One of the banners came partially loose. Before anyone could go to fix it — someone unknown to our MeetUp fixed it for us. :)

Glad to hear you were there! I couldn’t leave work in time to get to the Durham debate. :/

Will be at the Manchester poll this weekend though.

Just watch, once Hillary has executive power the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act will suddenly become odious again... and her wars will be unpopular.

---

Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously. And stranger yet, at any moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and yesterday's proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has changed.

~George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia (1938)

---

They are supporters. I held the same banner up yesterday and with a nice girl I met through MeetUp.

A police officer questioned us. We talked a few minutes about the campaign. He left with some literature and a generally favorable disposition toward Paul.

Even Peggy Noonan has noticed:

From the libertarian Ron Paul a blunt argument against the war: We never should have gone in and we should get out. "The people who say there'll be a blood bath are the same ones who said it would be a cakewalk. . . . Why believe them?" His foreign policy: "Mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend our country, defend our borders." After Mr. Paul spoke, it seemed half the room booed, but the other applauded. When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something's going on.

--Peggy Noonan http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010568

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

--Bob Dylan

Do you recall what like was like in the 40’s and earlier?

I have read what is was like before America followed Wilson's utopian dreams of global democracy.

Perhaps you could spare a few minutes to read Russell Kirk, founding father of modern conservatism?

"Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace comes to pass in an era of Righteousness -- that is, national or ideological self-righteousness in which the public is persuaded that 'God is on our side,' and that those who disagree should be brought here before the bar as war criminals."

[I]t would be ruinous for the Republicans to convert themselves into a party of high deeds in distant lands and higher taxes on the home front. Such a New World Order, like the Pax Romana, might create a wilderness and call it peace; at best, it would reduce the chocolate ration from thirty grams to twenty. And in the fullness of time, the angry peoples of the world would pull down the American Empire, despite its military ingenuity and its protestations of kindness and gentleness -- even as the Soviet Empire is being pulled down today, thanks be to God. --Russell Kirk

http://users.etown.edu/m/mcdonaldw/Lect321.html Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century 2/27/91 Lecture #321

A war for the Scheldt? A war for a chamber-pot!" Burke exclaimed. Now one may say, "A war for Kuwait? A war for an oilcan! --ibid

"Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of the world," Kirk said in his speech. "Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a 'One World' candidate, Wendell Willkie, they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs."

President Bush, Kirk said, had embarked upon "a radical course of intervention in the region of the Persian Gulf. After carpet-bombing the Cradle of Civilization as no country ever had been bombed before, Mr. Bush sent in hundreds of thousands of soldiers to overrun the Iraqi bunkers - that were garrisoned by dead men, asphyxiated."

And why, exactly? "The Bush Administration found it difficult to answer that question clearly. In the beginning it was implied that the American national interest required low petroleum prices: therefore, if need be, smite and spare not!" --ibid.

In short, although we never talk about our empire, a tremendous American Empire has come into existence -- if, like the Roman Empire, in a kind of fit of absence of mind. No powerful counterpoise to the American hegemony seems to remain, what with the enfeebling of the U.S.S.R.

Such a universal ascendancy always has been resented by the lesser breeds without the law. Soon there sets to work a widespread impulse to pull down the imperial power. But that imperial power, strong in weapons, finds it possible for a time to repress the disobedient. In the long run -- well, as Talleyrand put it, "You can do everything with bayonets -- except sit on them." In the long run, the task of repression is too painful a burden to bear; so the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has discovered in the past few years. Napoleon discovered that hard truth earlier and King George III and the King's Friends discovered it between the years 1775 and 1781.

--Russell Kirk

http://users.etown.edu/m/mcdonaldw/Lect321.html
Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century 2/27/91
Lecture #321

True, we did not suffer a long war in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq. But we must expect to suffer during a very long period of widespread hostility toward the United States -- even, or perhaps especially, from the people of certain states that America bribed or bullied into combining against Iraq.

In Egypt, in Syria, in Pakistan, in Algeria, in Morocco, in all of the world of Islam, the masses now regard the United States as their arrogant adversary; while the Soviet Union, by virtue of its endeavors to mediate the quarrel in its later stages, may pose again as the friend of Moslem lands. Nor is this all: for now, in every continent, the United States is resented increasingly as the last and most formidable of imperial systems.
--ibid.

Japan and Germany both had experience with representative forms of government before WWII. Perhaps not our form but a form of representative government.

Can't you see? Iraq is exactly like Japan! That is why the war is so successful and our president is so popular.

We sure are a prosperous bankrupt nation.

My neighbors can live extravagantly on credit card debt too. The recent mortgage crisis has shown how shakey things are.

This war is incredibly expensive. Either you find someone else to help with the expense or you stop bleeding money at some point.

Knight Ridder reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel noted in November 2005 that "After the war, U.S. officials determined that a facility in Salman Pak was used to train Iraqi anti-terrorist commandos."[Seattle Times, 1 November 2005, p. A5]. And PBS Frontline - who originally carried many of the allegations of Iraqi defectors - similarly noted that "U.S. officials have now concluded that Salman Pak was most likely used to train Iraqi counter-terrorism units in anti-hijacking techniques."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/