Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  Once again, Biddy refused to authorize us the can of pistol ammunition and the two cans of rifle ammunition listed on the requisition in Tim's hand. Tim, relaxing into the ladies' man persona who he genuinely is, eased himself onto the corner of her desk. He shifted into his best bar-fly "hey baby" voice and tried again. As she again refused, I turned to face her. Absolutely expressionless, I popped the empty 9mm magazine out of my issued Beretta, it still within the holster on my hip.

  Kiff, who I learned later was a veteran of Panama and had been previously under fire, smiled more widely. He contained his amusement as he arose to grab a cup of coffee from the percolator across the tent, offering a cup to Biddy as well, as Tim continued to make his case. She refused both the coffee offer and the ammunition request. Upon this latest refusal Kiff happened to remember that he needed to check on an important issue, and excused himself out the rear door of the tent.

  Biddy had still not clued into the potential of the situation. That changed when I, still expressionless, pulled my sole Barney Bullet out of my left breast pocket and slowly snapped it into the magazine in my hand. This got her attention.

  "Staff Sergeant", her cracking voice called, only to be answered by silence. "I thought you didn't have any rounds", she wavered at me.

  "I have enough to get more", were the only words I ever spoke to her. Tim smiled, nodded, and patted his own left breast pocket as well.

  Now, clearly by this I had meant that I could at least pop an enemy soldier with that one round and thus take his weapon and ammunition. I realize in retrospect that unfortunately she may have misinterpreted my words and actions that day. Regardless, the requisition was signed. Later that day a beaming Kiff, with a spring in his step, personally delivered our three cans of ammunition to our surprised Gunnery Sergeant. Gunny then disbursed the ammunition among us accordingly.

  Later, after the cessation of hostilities, our unit would be disarmed completely. It was that subsequent disarmament which led me to looking around for that pipe to trade to our Saudi guard for his HK-91 assault rifle.

  Nevertheless, my original intent that day has meaning in our modern times, with the forces of the collective closing in around us at all sides. Some radicals, believing that they will one day need to shoot it out with the authorities, take comfort in collecting dozens of arms and thousands of rounds. Their misguided objective in this plan is to free the people who wish to imprison them. The collective responds to that urge by publicizing the seizure of these caches, even if obtained and accumulated perfectly legally.

  Further, the agents of the collective of the nice seek to further restrain your constitutional rights to arm yourself by hoping to outlaw or restrict ammunition itself. By such legislation, the forces of the collective will render your ammunition cache just as illegal as a bale of marijuana. There is an alternate school of thought floating about in some of the more extreme minds. I mention this school of thought here merely for completeness and not as a form of advocacy.

  Their arguments fly as follows. Rather than exhaust and expose oneself in a quest to cache weapons and ammunition, adherents of the alternate school instead arm themselves with knowledge and a more limited cache. In their ethic, even a ratty bolt-action throwback with a few rounds, or even one, is sufficient to procure more when the need arises. Provided, of course, that you have learned the principles of marksmanship beforehand, and these can be learned well enough with even a child's BB gun.

  Ironically, this lesson has been taught by the drug war. It is far easier for a pot-head to squirrel away a few joints from discovery than it is for the dealer to hide his bale. Similarly, they reason, it is far easier for a determined individual to hide a few rounds than a case of thousands.

  As the alternate school continues, if one genuinely fears oppression from the collective of the nice, arm oneself with knowledge of math and the sciences. One correct detail in their concept is that no amount of the laws of man can overturn the laws of nature. God Himself has passed these laws down to you as your birthright as a freeborn man.

  And so, they plan to use these natural laws to their benefit. In a fight, they reason, a pistol or a shotgun trumps a knife. Similarly, a well-aimed dump truck trumps all three and the hand which bears them. As does a precisely placed improvised explosive device. Or a section of trunk swinging from a concealed position overhead. Or a carefully dug and concealed firepit. Or an imbibed poison or an asphyxiating gas. Their concept is based upon the fact that in many cases guns and ammunition have a tendency to survive trauma, even fire, far better than meat and bone.

  Applied precision violence is only one tool in these individuals' arsenals. History shows that in a ravaged economy, a black-market bribe in the form of food or sex works as well. Especially when combined with escalating blackmail and extortion after receipt.

  A student of history should read that famous Army prisoner of war resistance manual. If this student was also a television fan, he would learn how Hogan really should have managed Klink and Schultz. For the faint-hearted, don't worry, the alternate school advises. After all, they reason, the collective has refined these techniques of blackmail and extortion in detail and applied them for both the drug war and the war on terror. Soon these techniques will be applied to the war on you. So, that ethical door has already been smashed from its hinges before you ever touched the knob.

  If you carefully watch footage of Gitmo, you can see these same techniques in action there. It's just that the bad guys are using them. If I were them, I wouldn't want Gitmo closed either. Not when all that investment is just about to pay off. You can use these techniques, too, this school of thought recommends. Their thesis ends in the proposal that a well-aimed round from either a pistol or a shotgun fired from concealment trumps a carried rifle. Regardless of the path that pistol or shotgun takes to a determined hand, the end result is the same, a sparkly new rifle. From there, the door opens wide.

  So, adherents of the alternate school aren't intimidated by the agents of the collective and their superior equipment as they disarm them. But instead, the adherents see these agents and their home bases as resources for your later use. Because these agents will always be sitting on a practically unlimited supply of useful stuff, the alternate concepts conclude.

  As for me, however, I am a man of peace and don't advocate violence against properly constituted lawful authority. I prefer instead to spend my energy in creation and progress, rather than destruction and violence. But, should the nation be invaded and occupied by a hostile force, these forces would not necessarily be seen as constituted lawful authority.

  In any event, arming oneself with the knowledge of God's language and art, these being math and the sciences, gives one a certain amount of flexibility in deciding the course of one's life. You never know when you might need the knowledge. It had been my intent to end this short chapter there. I had already discussed the evolution of gun control along with the drug war, and so I figured I had this topic sewn up.

  Not so. It turns out that the situation is evolving faster than I can write. Fortunately, the underlying principles remain sound. With the proper understanding of the way of the monkey and his collective, it is possible to analyze any development and remain sane. It is also possible to predict with reasonable clarity what will evolve from the monkey in the future. Current events, as I write this, reveal a fantasy which first arose in Montana, and then spread to Utah and, of all places, Texas.

  This fantasy is about intra-state commerce. That progressives, meaning the entire monkey collective, have used the inter-state commerce clause of the Constitution to regulate everything is a fact of history. You can read or hear about this all you wish elsewhere, so I won't waste your time on that fact now. Guns are one of those things which have been regulated by the national government, regulation justified by the inter-state commerce clause. You might, after all, use that gun to affect inter-state commerce. Or carry it on an interstate. A well-meaning legislator in Montana introduced legislation exempt
ing guns made in Montana, and kept in Montana, from federal gun laws. This law will go into effect on 1 October 2009.

  And it will fail. You see, the monkey collective doesn't really care about interstate commerce. This is just an excuse to create a regulation. If that clause didn't exist the monkey would find some other justification. You can't use reason to counter justifications. You can only use force.

  And unless we are willing to use force, backed by law, then stop playing games with people's lives. A similar thing was tried in the Emerald Triangle in California. The locals decided to essentially change the drug laws regarding marijuana. Just as the founding fathers intended any state or locality might about any issue important to them.

  There was even a documentary filmed about this issue as the growers happily tended their crops, running their plots like businesses. But after the documentary aired, the national agents simply moved in and arrested many of them. The state or the county did nothing. These people are still just as in jail. In the model of the monkey collective, states are only allowed to decrease your liberty, they are never allowed to increase it.

  So if a state moves to try to increase your liberty, it can only ethically do so if it is willing to move to protect your rights against anyone. Including that national agent who comes to arrest you for violating a national law. With force, if necessary. Otherwise, it is just playing games, with you as the pawn. So that law in Montana won't be good enough. It isn't even really a law. It is just a rant. Or a manifesto. Or a resolution of frowny faces.

  Because it has no teeth. There are no penalties laid out for anyone who attempts to violate your rights under this resolution. For example, they might have added:

  "Any person who shall attempt to violate the right of any Montana citizen to comport themselves in accordance with this law shall be subjected to a fine of not less than $5,000, or imprisonment for not less than one year, or both."

  Or something like that. And then when the BATF agent shows up to arrest Mr. Montana under national statutes, the state police need to be there to slap handcuffs on said agent and haul him away for trial. Along with any of his friends. And if said agents draw their weapons on the state police for doing their duty, the state police should respond to them as they would any common criminal. Including kidnappers, which is what they would be in those circumstances.

  But then that wouldn't be nice, would it? We're all on the same team, right? It's absurd to even talk about such a thing, isn't it? That same radical radio talk show host likes to call this unfolding of events the "Civilist of Wars." What absolute childish nonsense. Because when the state troopers moved to protect Mr. Montana, they would then have to deal with the national forces moving into Montana en-masse. The state legislature and the governor would then have to decide whether to treat these forces as an invading hostile force. And then respond by calling out the State Guard to meet them.

  But to a monkey politician, none of this is worth it. Their actual response is to just let Mr. Montana get arrested and let it bobble around in the courts. In the meantime, Mr. Montana is just as incarcerated. That one brave individual will be used as a pawn for nothing more than politics. His life and liberty mean nothing. Of course, you know how the courts are going to rule. And then what? Shrug your shoulders and say, "oh well, we tried."

  Yep. That's about it. Because the real issue is that we must worship the sixteenth President as a god. And we pat ourselves on the back for doing so because it makes us feel like great people, because he ended slavery. Except he didn't end slavery. The uncivilist war wasn't about slavery.

  It was about the right of Montanans to say it is OK to carry around any gun you want. Or to drive as fast as you want. It was about the right of Californians to say it is OK to grow your own pot. Or to smoke yourself into poverty with it while the rest of us advance. Or any other foolish thing which Californians tend to imagine.

  It was about the right of Oregonians to say whether they want to cut down their forests. It was about the right of Ohioans to never finish a highway project. As long as they pay for those projects themselves. It was about the right of Tennesseans to decide whether they want to dam their rivers for power.

  It was about the right of Texans to decide to be whatever idiots they choose to be to play out their little boy fantasies funded by their oil. It was about the right of Alaskans to decide whether to drill for their oil and not be idiots like Texans.

  It was about the right of Nevadans to say they want to visit a brothel. It was about the right of Utahans to have lots of wives and to be those wives. And not be subject to Texas idiots for doing so.

  It was about the right of New Hampshirites to decide whether they want to use nuclear power. It was about the right of Arizonians to decide what language they want their schools to teach. It was about the right of Illinoisans to decide who they want for their Governor or Senators, and how corrupt they want their politicians to be.

  It was about the right of Vermonters to decide whether they want gays to marry. It was about the right of Iowans to decide how they want to raise livestock. It was about the right of Floridians to establish any tax structure they think is best for their people.

  It was about the right of Georgians to make moonshine. Or to defund Jimmy Carter's visitor center after he proved himself an idiot. It was about the right of Pennsylvanians to produce whatever kind of steel however they like. It was about the right of Michigan to decide whether that steel was right for their cars.

  And it was about your right to choose to live in whatever state you liked which most closely matched your values and outlook on life. And to prosper there and thus promote your values by helping that state succeed. Slavery was dying on the vine when the progressives, first with Andrew Jackson, then with Lincoln, moved to suppress liberty and states' rights. Jackson, a Southerner himself, but collectivist foremost, struck the first blow against the South three decades before Lincoln over taxation of foreign trade.

  Internet Research

  Research the Nullification Crisis. The South began to see the national government as a corrupting influence which had even consumed one of its own. What the South failed to understand was that national government reflected the supremacy of the collective over the individual. And that Jackson, given his earlier treatment of his previous Indian allies, was no individualist. But Southerners did understand that the Constitutional protector of the individual rested in the various state legislatures. And that the national government had stopped paying attention to those states.

  Had the South been victorious against Jackson in the Nullification Crisis, free trade and the Industrial Revolution would have easily destroyed slavery, as we shall see in a moment. But this crisis precipitated an "Us versus Them" mentality, pitting individualists in the South against collectivists in the North. And so the collectivists found an agenda. By Lincoln's time, slavery was so close to death that the forces of the North had to move soon, or else the South would clue into the miracle of free trade among free men. And when that happened the long growing season of the South, combined with the wealth of natural resources there that still have yet to be tapped, would have crushed the North economically.

  And the monkey collective could not allow this at all. But slavery was already dying because mechanical automation could work better than any man. And because you can't keep that machine running at the tip of a lash. You can only keep a machine running because free men live well by keeping it running. The mind of a black man who knew how to repair that machine was worth far more than his black back in a field. You can make him work by whipping him, but you can't make him think and innovate this way.

  The North wasn't morally superior to the South. Most of the slave markets had been in the North, and many Southern slaves were owned by Northern brokers. It is just that the Industrial Revolution took greater hold there earlier because the climate favored industry over agriculture. A steel mill in a Pittsburgh January is a much nicer place to work than a steel mill in a Birmingham July. A
nd slaves aren't a great match for steel mills. Not if you want to turn a profit.

  Even Lincoln himself recognized this lack of moral superiority with his Emancipation Proclamation.

  Internet Research

  Research the Emancipation Proclamation. Read over this bit of political subterfuge and note that the wording only applies to slaves owned in the South. Lincoln had too many political backers in the North who were still making money off their brokering and slave leases to risk driving them away. Otherwise, his proclamation would have been general and nationwide.

  Mrs. Hooch taught me this. "Chill wren, the E Man Sih Pay Shun Proh Clah May Shun freed No SLAVE!" she chanted rhythmically as her head wobbled back and forth. "It wuz bout a man an hiz Pow Wah."

  Would slavery have continued for a while under the Confederacy? Perhaps. And then died on that vine just as surely as it would have in the Union. Imagine if Mississippi had kept slaves, but Alabama freed them. Before long all those free black minds would be contributing more to Alabama than those whipped Mississippi backs.

  Or the reverse would be true. Free Mississippi minds would be contributing more than whipped Alabama backs. And some of those black backs would run across the border to where they would be free to use their black minds. Along with whites who wanted to use their minds, too. Eventually the slave states would, by the miracle of free trade, be economic backwaters where no one would want to live. And then they would learn.

  This approach to states' rights allows free trade to flourish and reward the individual, as the founders intended. But the monkey collective can never allow this approach to flourish. Because it would take away their power. And to protect that power, the power of the monkey collective to enslave and suppress the individual mind, Lincoln acted. Acted to kill countless Americans and to destroy their property.