Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Sing a Song of Sedition — Dave Carter
I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces … With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there … By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops…
Thus went the Congressional testimony of one John S. Smith following the massacre of a peaceful settlement of Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in 1864. These Native Americans had flown both the American and white flags as a signal of their peaceful intent, thereby endorsing that which had been confirmed with the signatures of six Cheyenne and four Arapaho Chiefs at the Treaty of Fort Wise.
Historical accounts tell of the 700-man force of the Colorado Territory Militia, under the command of Methodist preacher Colonel John Chivington getting fairly liquored up on the evening of November 28th, 1864, and then launching the attack the following morning. The Indians, having agreed to camp near Fort Wise and fly an American flag to establish themselves as friendly to the Americans, were accordingly butchered, though two American officers refused the order to attack and had their respective companies stand down. It is those officers, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, along with the men under their command, who I mean to praise, and who should be held aloft as standards toward which others who fashion themselves public servants may strive.
Born in New England, Silas Soule moved with his family to Lawrence, Kansas, where their home became a stop on the Underground Railroad, as the family joined in the effort to emancipate those slaves who had escaped and were traveling north in search of freedom. When a local physician, Dr. John Doy, was arrested and jailed for having led a group of 13 former slaves toward Iowa, Soule helped attack the jail itself and free the doctor.
Following the Sand Creek massacre, Captain Soule described the savagery in a letter to a friend, Major Edward Wynkop:
I refused to fire, and swore that none but a coward would, for by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us, and getting on their knees for mercy. … I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees, having their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.
Captain Soule went on to testify against Colonel Chivington at a formal inquiry, resulting in the refusal of the Army’s request for thousands of additional troops for a general war against the, “Plains Indians.” For his refusal to take part in the slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children, and for his testimony against the largest assemblage of cowards, cutthroats, scoundrels this side of Congress, Captain Soule’s reward was swift. On April 23, 1865, he was assassinated in Denver, Colorado, where today, on the corner of Fifteenth and Arapaho Streets, a memorial plaque marks the spot where he died, proving yet again that no good deed goes unpunished.
Is it proper to juxtapose such events as moved Captain Soule to sedition, alongside the current headlines of a federal government as intoxicated with its own power as Colonel Chivington’s marauders were with booze and brutality? To what point has our society devolved when a rancher, whose family’s cattle have grazed on a piece of land for well over a century, and who poses no imminent threat to anyone, is met with hundreds of heavily armed federal agents and snipers acting at the apparent behest of the Senate Majority Leader, who himself is one of Judicial Watch’s top ten most corrupt politicians?
Indeed, when a government ostensibly of, by, and for the people answers civil disagreements with wildly disproportionate force, when non-military federal agencies are buying billions of rounds of ammunition, and when the Department of Homeland Security procures over 2,700 Mine-Resistant Armored Vehicles, we are perfectly entitled to ask why our government directs more firepower inward toward American citizens than outward toward those who infiltrate across our borders? Is the President simply following Jeb Bush’s relative assessment of criminality versus love?
And what are we to make of the two-legged boob, Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins, who warned that any Americans who intended to travel to Nevada to protest the heavy hand of Washington DC, “better have funeral plans”? If reprobates like this are public servants, then I’m a ballerina.
Many in the governing class, in both parties, have made their choice and that is to govern against the consent of the governed. Many American citizens, awakening to the heavy hand of a government which now dictates almost everything they purchase, produce, or sell, taxing them into oblivion, telling them which doctors and health plans they may or may not keep, regulating the content of everything they consume, touch, wear, breathe or drive, and whose agents and enforcement officials are becoming increasingly belligerent and thuggish, are making their choices as well. It is time for those who wear the badge, those who wear the uniform, and those who are increasingly ordered to act against their own countrymen to make their choice and take a stand.
H. L. Mencken said that:
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
The question, for those who are ordered to aim a sniper’s rifle at a rancher, necessarily becomes one of whom to serve? The people or the directorate? After delineating our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Founders went on in the Declaration of Independence to specify the role of government as that of securing those rights, period. To act outside of that framework is to act outside of the Constitution itself, crossing into a swampy morass of lawlessness and thuggery in which responsibility cannot be shrugged off under the pretext of merely following orders.
“Let us remember,” said Samuel Adams, “that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom, …it is a very serious consideration … that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.” It’s time for those Americans, who have learned from history and who will not go tamely into that awful night, to be joined by the modern-day equivalents of Captain Soule, who refuse those orders which violate the rights they have sworn to uphold and whose ultimate fidelity is to the Constitution, rather than a bureaucracy.
Published in General
If you continue to talk treason, Mr. Carter… Come sit next to me.
Secession looking better all the time.
Posted on my FB page and shared with a niece and her husband who are police officers in FL.
A moving history lesson, Mr. Carter.
You are always the ‘bellwether’ of this community and we are in good hands!
God bless the once and future Republic of Texas.
The BLM left the Bundy fiasco in part to avoid testing the preparedness of their own funeral plans, and in part because many BLM agents of good conscious refused orders to aim at American citizens in peaceful protest. The blunder of Maggot Reid and Maggot Obama in this matter was in presuming that federal officers would commit atrocities to protect their pensions.
The proper remedy, of course, is impeachment. Sadly, only a proper government would be interested in the proper remedy. Nothing truly ill can be said of our officials in Washington, as a class they are lower than human expression can articulate.
With less than three years left to the regime, and less than one to Democrat control of the Senate, they need to be more apprehensive about the next Administration’s Department of Justice, the one with the careerists who have the goods on the maggotry.
I beg to differ.
Bundy and crew were very vocal about putting women and children in front so the men wouldn’t get hurt. That is despicable.
Bundy’s family has been milking government handouts for more than a century, yet says blacks are taking advantage of government handouts and are better off slaves.
This is not a conflict that I will advocate sedition for.
The BLM is wrong, I’m sure, about the underlying issue, and their use of paramilitary police force, although typical nowadays, is over the top. But I won’t lift a hand to help those idiots in the Bundy family, and I certainly won’t rally my patriotism behind their cause.
Dave Carter is right that we don’t know what freedom is anymore. You rarely even hear people using that word anymore. But Bundy is not someone I’ll break the peace for. He can argue his case in court, like any other civilized man.
So the men wouldn’t get hurt? Really? The BLM was using special bullets that won’t strike a man if there’s a woman or child in view? 200 agents and nobody can find a clean shot?
Everyone in the agriculture industry has been milking government handouts since FDR, by law. At least I haven’t seen a report of Bundy trafficking in ethanol.
Yeah, Bundy has proven himself to be an ignorant bigot. Not much high society on the range. Obama does the same on a routine basis. If we are going to dole out civil rights based on an appreciation of proper etiquette, then there’s no point in pretending we have them. And, in this case, the courts are a rigged game as dingy figures in DC look to make land grabs to feed lucrative special projects. Most of Bundy’s peers saw they were up against a rigged game in court and cashed out, but that doesn’t make it the best option for them or the country. Just for dingy DC grifters.
Indeed, if the left wishes to speak of racism, why don’t they talk about the government’s failure to secure our borders? Most Americans living on the border are Hispanic, thus the majority of victims of border violence are Hispanic.
But hey, they aren’t well-heeled beltway lobbyists, so who cares?
Looks pretty goddamn racist to me.
Yes, they were saying in the video to put the women in children in front so that the BLM would have to shoot them first. That’s what the Bundy people were saying. Screw them. I want nothing to do with them.
And any cause that is primarily supported by that idiot Alex Jones automatically gets a lack of sympathy. He thinks the US government took out the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on 9/11. That’s who has been pushing this. I won’t hook my freedoms on these nut jobs’ wagon.
The Statist Creed: What is not mandated must be forbidden.
I would recommend this post which, for me at least, serves to complement Dave’s post.
Ross: May your chains set lightly upon you
The problem with secession is that it doesn’t really address the problem long term. It’s a values problem. Secession would bring the problems with, and still have them for neighbors, too. Almost every state has liberal enclaves in the cities. The most liberal states are the ones with the biggest cities: New York, California, Illinois, etc. Even Texas is a bit purplish and just plain blue around Austin.
If this be treason, make the most of it.
I think many objective observers can agree that the federal government is not going to fix itself. But rather than secession, which brings all sort of problems and historical baggage with it, I’m looking to the Constitution itself, specifically to Article V. The people, through their state governments, can bypass the Feds completely and start decentralizing power away from Washington DC, back to the local level. That doesn’t mean walking away from the federal electoral process by any means, but it acknowledges that the situation is not remedied simply by electing people with an “R” next to their name. Plus, it has the added benefit of disabsuing the establishment and consultant types of the notion that they are the only game in town.
Thank you for a great history lesson, Dave.
I intend to remember Captain Silas Soule!
If we can’t get people to vote for regular laws that limit the government, how do you expect to get the kinds of votes to amend the Constitution to fix it?
The answer is not secession or civil war. We need to change the dominant philosophy of the nation. We’ve had 70 or 80 years, maybe more, of the people shifting towards a more centralized government and renouncing their freedoms for socialist protections. We now have government in every part of our lives. We will not change anything until we change how people think about what their values are.
Good point. Also, if we can’t get politicians to respect the limits of present laws or even the Constitution itself, why expect them to obey reform laws?
How can citizens honor the rule of law in general when our laws and regulations are too numerous to count? In keeping with Dave’s quotation of Mencken, who cares about the big laws when a little technicality can land you in jail or debt whenever some faceless bureaucrat wants to stick it to you?
Somebody reads Alex Jones ? The last time I heard someone say something from Alex Jones, it was a ten year old boy. Fitting.
The old crotchety rancher is not the issue here, the issue is the BLM and their heavy handed treatment of a citizen . The issue is the sight of BLM agents dressed like soldiers, with military hardware and helicopters . The issue is the militarization of numerous Federal agencies with no obvious mission other than the repression of the citizenry.
Skyler ,you’re getting suckered as you skim the papers, you should know the details of the Bundy ranch and the US Gov. You should know what happened to the other ranchers. You should uncover the web spun by Harry Reid in this case. Then ,count to ten and post !
Yes, I should. But the only “reporting” I’ve seen is ultimately sourced from Alex Jones and crew. I’ve been very busy and unable to do independent research. It is too muddied to know.
Second, Ricochet is still horrible and I’m missing a big part of any analysis that might have been discussed here simply because the site is barely functional and poorly laid out.
Third, I won’t defend anyone who yells out for women and children to absorb BLM sniper bullets first. I consider that animalistic and unworthy of human beings.
Amen. We have a lot to be angry about and many examples of government overreach and I won’t line up for the BLM or the Bundy’s.
Careful, Dave, or you’ll scare all those moderate swing voters.
I’ve long thought nothing is changing without physical force, and that day is approaching. Burn it down and piss on the ashes.
I agree with Skyler that Bundy is not really a poster boy we should embrace, but if the government wants to collect back taxes why didn’t they just garnish the proceeds of Bundy’s cattle auctions? It’s because the BLM, Homeland Security, EPA, etc. etc. etc. have far too many Barney Fife’s sitting around polishing their bullets and waiting for something to do.
Well and timely said, Dave…Much grist for meditation and prayer!
Although Bundy’s personal qualities may not be those of the ideal complaining party (were this merely a matter of litigation, sympathetic plaintiffs would be de rigeur), his plight nonetheless does illustrate what has become the typical cutting edge of today’s U.S. subject (formerly citizen) in his dealings with the federal government: failure to bow to administrative dicta is met with overwhelming pressure. The poignancy of this case, in this setting, is that the form of force employed was military in nature, exercised by ostensibly non-military administrative agencies. It is emblematic of the escalation of the forces now arrayed to deal, not with foreign enemies (or even fifth columns which likely exist), but against ordinary subjects who do not fully comply with a bewildering and often absurd set of coercive rules. It is an unmistakable message to all of us.
We often invoke the Constitution – an abstraction. Episodes like this will make concrete just what now constitutes us as a nation. We are not what we were. Will some of our constituents – under color of (ever more arbitrary) authority – shoot to kill their fellows? That will tell us our real constitution. Laws require men. Which kind?
So who do we stand with? If not Mr. Bundy could it be with the Little Sisters of the Poor? They have refused to offer their pinch of incense to the Emperor by signing a piece of paper that states that they are not providing abortion inducing medication knowing full well that their insurer will have to provide it. Gentle souls that beg for their own food so that every dollar they raise will go to the elderly poor that have nothing. They provide food and shelter, they sit by the bedside of the indigent elderly at the moment of their deaths when no one else will so that they do not leave this world feeling abandoned and unloved. If the IRS comes to seize and padlock their homes for the elderly to satisfy a judgment concerning Obamacare will that be the time for good men to come forward and stand between them and the State? People say it can’t happen here, it can happen here Dave Carter used history to show us it did. Individual men and women have a conscience there is no such thing as a collective conscience.
The BLM did a lot of things wrong; so did Cliven Bundy. Neither of them came anywhere close to what Silas Soule witnessed. Comparing the two is the sort of over-the-top hyperbole that causes us to not be taken seriously.