I have been following various posts lately about people's anger with the current government and their apathy toward American sentiment. Some of the threads were borderline seditional in nature and how US troops may or may not respond. That got me thinking about the importance of symbolism in the following situation:
Suppose a well organized and well equipped militia of patriots were to execute some sychronized operation against all branches of our current government and national media outlets with the intent on replacing the current system.
The patriots are operating under the US Flag prominently displayed on all clothing and equipment. All media messages strongly advocate restoring the Constitution as sole motivation behind their actions and call for each state to send pro tem representation to restore a noncorrupt federal government.
How would this be perceived by the public?
How would the military or LE react? Sedition is a serious federal offense. Would they hesitate firing on someone fighting under the American Flag? Would the patriots be labeled as terrorists or criminals even though the purpose is to restore integrity and ethics to public office? What are the chances of individual states supporting their effort?
Would something like this have to be intiated or supportive by individual states or by only one as to make it offical and not the actions of extremists?
The only way something like that would be positively received is if it was widely known that the current government was doing something pretty horrible.
Looking back over recent history:
1) Congress a few days after 9-11 gave the president the sole power to determine who was responsible for the attacks and then to do whatever he thought was appropriate.
A breath-taking scope of power given to the president and, in my opinion, an unconstitutional abdication of power by the legislative branch of government.
No public complaints.
2) Arguably in the first PATRIOT act, congress used its constitutional power (from Article 1 Section 9) to repeal the right of habeus corpus from anyone the president chose to accuse of being a terrorist. Basically, that means a person accused of being a terrorist has no right to a trial, no right to a lawyer, no right to know why he is being held, no right to be silent, in short absolutely no legal rights.
The courts upheld that interpretation of congress's intent through three trials over a number of years before one court ruled differently (in the Padilla case if I recall correctly).
In theory, a president could have ordered every congressman, senator, judge, justice, and governor in the country to be arrested as terrorists and would have been perfectly within his legal rights to do so.
Just the fact that congress could have written legislation so badly that it could be interpreted in such a manner in the first place should have been shocking.
Very little complaint.
3) The first anti-war protests were organized by A.N.S.W.E.R. Their efforts were lauded by a number of politicians. ANSWER in a number of locations around the country ran their operations out of Workers World Party (a communist political party) offices.
I looked into those claims myself and called four different phone numbers from ANSWER's website to local offices where the phones were answered by the WWP. (There was likely more but that answered the question to my satisfaction.)
After they were exposed as a communist front organization, most people who wouldn't dream of supporting communism and who would never go to a communist-sponsored rally didn't bother to inform themselves enough to know who they were associating with.
4) The pro-illegal immigration protests were bad enough in and of themselves. But on top of that, they were shot through with communist/socialists as could be easily seen by any photographer except those employed by the mass media.
You could see it on the communist party websites. You could see it on socialist websites. You could see it in person. You could see it on blogs. You could see it on right-wing websites. But not from a mass media source.
Hardly a ripple.
5) McCain/Feingold limited an ordinary citizens right of free political speech.
The reason the first amendment was written was to protect political speech from being limited by the government (rather than "to protect the right to pornography" or the right "to burn flags which you steal from other people").
Most people
cheered the new limitations on their right of free speech.
6) The current president was close friends with at least two unrepentant terrorists who used violence and wanted the government overthrown.
The current president was close friends with (and attended the church services of) an anti-semite who published the writings of terrorists in his church bulletin. That church explicitly rejects middle class american values on its website. That church was founded on the theological principles of a man who desired the overthrow of the government and who taught in his religion that people of his race were in a war against white people which would only end when capitalism was overthrown and whites were an underclass.
The current president won his election by a comfortable margin.
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I have a difficult time picturing the existing government doing anything which would be sufficient cause for the public to support its overthrow. I think the president could go on TV, gun down his political opposition, and the question on everyone's mind would be whether He used environmentally-friendly non-lead bullets and whether He could have killed them without the air pollution which comes from burning gunpowder.
