Pravda on the Hudson says the Internet Threatens Democracy (Soros' Vision)

Freep | 3/2/2017 | ChatlesOconnell

[CharlesOConnell]

An engineer turned historian, Carroll Quigley, who knew a thing about how things really work, observed that the technical guarantor of early American Democratic-Republican Democracy, was the people's ability to remain sovereign in their own self defense.

Quigley postulated that the ability of backwoods colonial gunsmiths to independently craft their own smoothbore rifles, was what really kept at bay, King George and his counselors. This golden age of frontier democracy was ended with the rise of gun barrels "rifled" with a gently rotating grooves to cause the bullet to spin, greatly increasing long range accuracy. This technique was beyond the ability of small gunsmithies, thus, the democratic shooter walked into the twilight.

Presumably King George and his ministers had a different idea about what constituted good governance. They must have thought the American Revolution was harbinger of the dissolution of civilization.

The internet is just starting to lose this patina of independent self-reliance. People's tolerance of anti-democratic administration of Facebook and Twitter, because of the convenience they provide, was commented on by GK Chesterton in The Everlasting Man: "…peoples selling themselves into slavery and marching back out into freedom".

NYTimes' editorialist Thomas B. Edsall unleashes a verbal hurricane of neo-Orwellian newspeak in his article today Democracy, Disrupted. Did you know that you're a reactionary for objecting to MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski declaring that "Our Job Is To Control Exactly What People Think"?

Apparently the very term "democracy" is extremely prone to "smuggling", the tendency for common, idealistic phrases to decay, beyond the trite, to the dishonest. What the media megalopoly consider "democratic" doesn't include consideration of that term's meaning to the average person in flyover county.

It's all a matter of who controls the narrative, of who exactly is marching us into the sunset of civilization: The NYTimes or Donald Trump.

[Mr. Douglas]

What the internet threatens is the MSM.

[libstripper]

The second paragraph, FTA:

Quigley postulated that the ability of backwoods colonial gunsmiths to independently craft their own smoothbore rifles, was what really kept at bay, King George and his counselors. This golden age of frontier democracy was ended with the rise of gun barrels "rifled" with a gently rotating grooves to cause the bullet to spin, greatly increasing long range accuracy. This technique was beyond the ability of small gunsmithies, thus, the democratic shooter walked into the twilight. (My emphasis.)

Much of this is dead wrong. First of all there were no such things as "smoothbore rifles." Rifles were, and are, rifled with spiral grooves. Muskets were the smoothbore long guns.

Rifling rifles was not beyond the ability of frontier gunsmiths; rather it was one of their great talents. Hence, the large number of "Kentucky rifles" that were so important in winning the Revolution. Indeed, the scene shown in the painting is a group of men at a rifling bench rifling the barrel of a new rifle.

[DesertRhino]

I have a fine book from the 1920s called the muzzleloading rifle. It is an in depth discussion of the history, building, and use of them.

They were indeed built everywhere by individuals. This practice continued in Appalachia well into the 1900s. Rifling a barrel is child’s play for someone who can build the rest of the rifle from raw wood and barstock metal.

[DesertRhino]

And yes, the internet threatens those who would rule over us. Can’t have your subjects interacting with each other, can you?

[Little Ray]

This might be true for Repeating weapons and percussion weapons. They took a bit more work - but Afghans can build them using hand tools and forges.
But 3D printing will eventually make it possible to build almost any hand-held weapon system at home...