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Darn it, we've been bloody well down this road before.

Bayonets of Freedom

Following is the text of the speech given by Robert Teesdale in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York City on July 14th, 2001.

The most dangerous thing in the world... is an American with a rifle.

He is dangerous because he is powerful. He is dangerous because he is a wild animal, in the truest sense of the word - because he is free. He is as wild and beautiful a thing as any natural predator, and is to be treated with as much respect.

His lives with his rights secured. By principle, and conduct, and by ties to his fellow men - but also by a an affirmation of absolute liberty and unparalleled human declarations, spawned from the desperation of armed rebellion against distant rulers who asserted absolute control.

That spirit is what sets the common example for the citizens of this land we call America. It is what enables us to make our own decisions, and to be bound by nothing more than what we permit to exist as our Government. And that Government, that which we grant sufficient permission to enforce justice, is us.

Yes. The American is dangerous.

Because his decisions are his, and his alone. And the might of the most powerful nation on earth backs those decisions with the resolution of nearly three hundred million hearts.

Not far from here lies the headquarters of the United Nations. An organization of noble ideals, spawned by the turbulent events of the First and Second World Wars. Those times have passed, now - and the international consortium of nations that pulled victory from the darkest hours of the world... has become an international bureacracy that presumes to abitrate sovereign principles of liberty.

China, Sudan, and their malicious host of allies are the United Nations representatives of Human Rights. The resolve of the United Nations military structure to preserve life and liberty was demonstrated in the fall of Srebrenica, in Bosnia, where horrifying numbers of human beings were abandoned to a fate of eager and rapacious butchery.

Today, the United Nations Department of Disamament Affairs is conducting a conference on the control of civil arms across the world. They declare that these 500 million arms are an impediment to human progress. That they are a danger to the people of the world, and that those who bear them are equally a threat to their control.

They are talking about us.

More than half of those civil arms are here, in America. They belong to you, and they belong to me. We own them as an inherent right of all men. That right is clear, and it is totally unequivocal.

It is the right to be free.

That right was asserted by the King of Sparta, Leonidas, before the Battle of Thermopylae. His response to the demand of 600,000 Persian troops that he and his men lay down their arms, was simple and direct.

Molon labe!

Come and take them!

In America, when they came to take them, that right was asserted with gunfire at Lexington, in Massachusetts, where anonymous farmers opened fire on the soldiers of an Empire. It was proven at Yorktown, in Virginia, where General Washington accepted the unconditional surrender of that same Empire. Today it is defended by the power of that passionate heart which Americans have demonstrated countless times, from Bunker Hill to Gettysburg, from Normandy to the Gulf. And it is held in reserve by the ninety million homes in America where lie the 260 million firearms of a proud and loving citizenry.

We have not permitted our own Government to infringe upon this right. It is an integral part of the legal contract by which authority is permitted to reside in Washington, and to enforce justice under the name of our people. It is a solemn contract, and those of our Government which dare break it suffer the justice of the People, in our courts and by that same contract.

If we acknowledge that our Government many not contradict the principles and letter of that contract, the supreme and unbending Law of our land... then how, as Americans, can we suffer that such inalienable rights of our People be tampered with by a foreign clique of enemies who despise those same rights?

Who are enemies not just of our national principles, but who array military forces against us?

I say never.

I say that the United Nations will never leave my child defenseless against tyrants.

I say that the United Nations has no authority to demand anything of my nation, my People or myself.

I say that the power of American resolve, and American arms, are not trifling matters of social culture to be smothered and eaten by an international bureaucracy.

No. They are the teeth of our liberty, and the hardest answer to the cruelest of tyrants who ever dares to look with envious and malevolent eyes upon the shores of the United States.

To the United Nations, I say that I will never register my arms.

I will never ask your permission to own them.

I will never permit you to confiscate them by force of law.

I will die before I abandon my country of America, and the rights of my beloved people, to the authority of a committee of tyrants who presume to assert the right of lethal force against our nation.

I will drive your blue helmet upon my bayonet, and I will carry it through the streets of this land!

The United States Government has withdrawn from the resolutions of the Conference on Disarmament Affairs. Not only our People, but also our partners in the rule of this land, have sent notice that our complicity in the disarmament of our free people will not be tolerated with either the name, or by the will, of the People of the United States of America.

Is that quite clear?

To each of you here today, I say this. The sovereignity of our People and our nation are ours to hold in trust. If we stand united, as has been our common custom and principle from the days of the Revolution, then we are both invincible in principle and in common. Our beloved country and our beloved freedoms are not the object of foreign spoil, nor of the stewardship of international criminals. For consider well the practices of those who oppose us in the United Nations.

In China, it is reported that cattle prods are put into the bodies of nuns, in order to convince them of their crimes against the State. In Sudan, it is reported that thousands of human beings are sold like cattle. Both of these nations are considered more expert in the distribution and monitoring of human rights than the nation which has, time and time again, selflessly spent hundreds of thousands of American lives in foreign wars to preserve the name of freedom in countless killing fields of tyranny.

And we are stronger than ever before.

Today, each of you must go from here and return to your families. To your homes, to your lives, and to the jobs that each of you have left in order to demonstrate your passionate commitment to the America that we love, and ultimately, are responsible for preserving. Perhaps you will walk by the United Nations, and see the statue of a destroyed firearm, and consider what the United Nations thinks of your rights. Maybe you'll think about what the United Nations wants to do to them, and what has happened to people who have trusted the United Nations to preserve their lives and their children.

And maybe... just maybe.... the United Nations should consider the nature of the beast they prod. It is a predator, and an unmatched one. They live within its cave, and feed upon its sustenance.

And now, they tread upon us as well.

Take note, United Nations. Take note of the words of the Continental Congress, who faced death at the end of a rope for their promotion of a high treason against the divine rights of their sovereign lord.

Hear the words they have left us.

"Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest."

Those words were true in 1775, and they remain true today.

Don't tread on us.

Thank you.