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RT’s response was well thought out in many ways, other than including criminal gangs as somehow being allies against tyranny. I appreciate him having taken the time to post it. It does a lot to explain some points of view that have previously been beyond my understanding.

BUT —

Chaos ITSELF attracts violence, criminals, and opportunists, in addition to those who thrive even in peacetime by terrorizing the civilian population. In any civil emergency, rapists, drug and black market dealers of all kinds exploit the civil populace which would be already under duress because of a chaotic situation. They line their pockets at the expense of the civil populace. Heck the criminal gangs do it NOW! In a Constitutional emergency are the criminal gangs going to change their modus operandi? NOT LIKELY. Instead such an emergency would be a boon for them, the already criminals. If you disagree, please submit your evidence, that criminal gangs in the present, would not be even worse criminal gangs in the chaos of a Constitutional crisis.

There is no reason to “invite” criminal gangs in or include them a-prior as “allies” in sustaining a Civil Constitutional Order.

OK put them on the strategy map. Because you will have to allocate enough MP-types and other forces to forestall their abuse of the civilian populace. As I said, they do it now. EVERY resistance movement, war, etc., has faced that problem of “rogue troops” and opportunists since the dawn of history. A civilian populace under duress, not knowing where their next meal is coming from, and then subject to black-market extortioners and theft of their property and rape, will cry out for protection.

That behavior turns the populace against the extortionists and rapists. In the case of Germany post 1945, it caused hatred of the Russians. In the case of a US resistance movement allied with the criminals? The beleagured civilians would logically turn elsewhere. To the Statists.

There were abuses by the Allies too, but the treatment of the civilian populace by the Russian troops turned the populace against the “Russian Saviors.”

Women in Berlin who had been raped by Russians (look it up please) worked on the runways of the Berlin Airlift in high heels if that is all the shoes they had left. They ran onto the airfields to repair them in between the almost continuous flights. They did it, because there were not men enough left. Even the male elders and teens, had been put through the human meat grinder of that terrible war.

Fortunately, they had an alternative to the rapist, hated “Russian Saviors”. That was the Berlin Airlift. And they had Marshall; and they had their beloved General Clay, who fought for adequate calories for the people against the prevailing logic of the US Gov’t at the time. Clay convinced the powers that be, to even bring in industrial equipment so that they could get honest employment back going in Berlin. So that people could work, and earn a living. What a Concept!

So, Fellow FReepers, do NOT ally with criminal gangs. They will take of whatever chaos that occurs, what they can get out of it. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. How many US policy disasters have resulted from that false analogy?

Just saying.

The Patriot and resistance leader is well informed, by decades of reading history back to the Greek and Roman republics, as our Founders were.

The Patriot has informed himself with knowledge, which he uses to form his own conscience, and to develop his mental discipline in the event he has to act.

Patriots, in the past, present, and future, have to be educated, disciplined, and Persons of Character.

And they can indeed judge that today’s criminals are not tomorrow’s Patriots. Whatever “manpower” they might contribute to the “cause” is far outweighed by the damage they do now, and will do in the future, to the civilian populace.

The Oath Keepers are calling for preparedness to feed people in the event of a crisis. There are civilian Preparedness Groups working to be able to feed themselves and sustain each other. THAT is the other leg of RT’s grouping. Not criminals: we don’t need them, don’t want them, and would have to divert manpower to control their deleterious effects.

RT posted his groups of those whom the State fears. Our TRUE allies are those who will protect and defend the civil populace and the Constitution! NOT those who the State itself fears. There is overlap between the two groups, but not agreement. It is a positive goal to Protect Free Civil Society. Those who would fight “the establishment” for their OWN gains, don’t qualify. It does not matter to me if the “State” fears criminal gangs. That does not make criminal gangs a part of my calculus for a Civil Constitutional Republic.

I would delete from RT’s group, the criminal gangs, and instead add the civilian preparedness groups.

I am a retired Army Officer, and I have been reading military history and biographies since my teens, even pre-teens. OK I guess that makes me unusual.

I fail to see a scenario of a valid (moral) resistance movement which recruits criminal members.

It will be indeed hard enough, were the SH*** to hit the fan, to weed out the “rogue soldiers”, opportunists, black marketers, etc., which as I said, will require the use of other forces, such as the Oath Keepers with their food stocks, to overcome the deleterious effects of the CRIMINALS who prey now, and will prey all the more easily in a crisis.

Servus, of course.

R.T. thanks for your analysis. Just in the next version, leave the criminals out as possible allies. They will, believe me, as history is testimony, do more harm than good to the cause of Freedom, which has always been earned by honest Patriot blood. Bandits . . . I have examples from Missouri in the Civil War, who TERRORIZED civilians, and created the criminal Jesse James; but this post is too long to begin with.

Great post! Though we will all be criminals. In fact, many of us would be considered criminals today for speaking of liberty and the responsibilities of a free people.

We can see the results of our nation’s aligning itself with evil and allowing evil free reign. Most Americans are not acquainted with evil in the raw. They recognize her pretty face, but avert their eyes from her blood-stained hands. This is normal behavior, but it is also very useful to those who are evil. Psychopaths and sociopaths use those assumptions to sway their victims-and they have no one but victims around.

So what part for the criminal gangs? It is not quite as black-and-white as both sides want to paint it. OMGs are criminal gangs by their own definition. That makes them a perfect target for the state and creates a groundswell of approval from a public who is not uninformed, but a public purposefully cultured with the greatest psycho-socio media barrages ever imagined—campaigns welcomed as entertainment and disguised as social interaction.

Desensitization is a crucial step in tyranny. As society crumbled and stratified, 1930s Germany was primed for a good law-and-order candidate. Jews and gypsies in Europe had a similar reputation and were the target of the states forever. While the Jews were productive members of society, they were secretive, shady businessmen who got rich off the labor of honest men and conspired to keep others poor. The Gypsies were all criminals—everyone knows that. Sure, these government troops were a little rough around the edges, but they offered order, security and pride to a nation that had been stripped of all.

Evil rarely appears in full regalia, but insidiously creeps into the shadows that fill the periphery of all civilized societies. By the time the darkness is apparent to all, it has infiltrated everywhere. We should not align ourselves with criminals, but we need to stand up for the rights of all—especially those who are the first targets of the leviathan, lest we find ourselves channeling Niemöller after our society lays in ruin at our feet.

Many replies since I walked away from the keyboard but I want to respond specifically to your post 224 as I think there are two important points to make in response.

"Criminal gangs" is not a helpful term. While I understand and appreciate your points with respect to chaos and banditry and moral character in the context of the moral underpinnings of an armed insurrection, I'm not looking specifically to motorcycle clubs or street gangs or organized crime as reservoirs of shadow state officers or officials.

It is as you put it: they have a place on the strategy map, and most importantly because of that they have a vote. Where is that vote going to go? The worst of evil men will not cease being evil simply because chaotic restructuring of the social order is commanded by men of good character and conscience.

The enemy has a vote, and plans do not survive contact with the enemy. These being true principles, it is with a clear appreciation of roles and realities that we must have the basis for reformation of the State.

As another poster put it very well (I am paraphrasing) - nothing in our Constitution specifies these rights are reserved to people we like.

That said, my sincere condolences on the loss of your son and respect to the struggle you went through for acknowledgment of wrongdoing. It is bitter sometimes to drag accountability out of human beings, and to institutionally preserve lessons learned from strayed morality.

That is part and parcel of why the nation is where it is. People forget, and ingrained laziness combine with profligate wealth to create complacent cruelty and greed.

Last... while I'm speaking with a pragmatic voice, and from a perspective of real world reality (you do need the people who are willing to shoot back) I also acknowledge the grave importance of the voice you raise for moral character of the patriot.

It is difficult to balance the dream of our free Republic with the reality of men and power.

Rome was no different.