EXCLUSIVE: Guns and Roses
When one William Kostric walked into a protest outside a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at which the President of the United States was present, carrying a loaded gun—“Of course it was loaded,” he told Chris Matthews later, “what kind of fool would carry around an unloaded gun?”—he and the movement he purports to represent walked straight into a well-laid trap.
Let’s put this in context. For weeks, the mainstream media had been going on about the rising danger of “right-wing extremism,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a well-known smear outfit that specializes in trying to marginalize legitimate expressions of dissent from liberal orthodoxy, had issued a “report” on the alleged revival of the so-called militia movement. For weeks the liberal media—notably MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow—had been hammering away at the alleged threat posed to the president by an alleged upsurge in “racist” and extremist violence, pointing to the attack on the Holocaust Museum by a deranged “white nationalist,” and the killing of an abortion doctor by an equally deranged nutjob. The “radical right,” they screamed, is on the march, with the strong implication that these dangerous militants won’t be happy until Obama is six feet under.
Given these circumstances, one has to wonder about the motives for Kostric’s action. This, after all, was a town-hall meeting called to discuss healthcare, not gun control. It seems, at best, a non sequitur, and, at worst . . .
Well, then, what was his stated intent? What was he trying to accomplish? When pressed by Matthews on MSNBC, Kostric made vague statements about how a right is lost if it isn’t exercised regularly, presumably meaning the right to bear arms. He also tried to make the argument that, well, if everybody was armed, there would be a lot less crime. You know the drill. The idea that everyone is always walking around armed in a free society—like so many other notions that don’t seem particularly “libertarian” and yet are held by many self-proclaimed lovers of liberty—sounds more like a Robert Heinlein story than real life.
Yet Kostric never answered the question, which was and is: Why come armed to a political meeting, particularly one ostensibly called to discuss healthcare? The whole point of even attending such a gathering, or, indeed, any sort of rational discussion about anything, is that we leave our guns—embodying the possibility of coercion—outside the door. We forsake force, and rely solely on our persuasive powers to get our point across. Why it is necessary to point this out to self-avowed “libertarians,” whose entire political philosophy is derived from the non-aggression principle, is beyond me.
It is disingenuous, to say the very least, for Kostric to claim that he was dramatizing the importance of gun rights, because that wasn’t the subject at hand. No, his point had nothing to do with healthcare, or even defending the Second Amendment. So as to make his intent unmistakable, he carried a sign that day which proclaimed it to all and sundry: “IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!”
This was widely interpreted as a not-so-subtle threat to the President, personally. And I fail to see how it could be understood in any other way. To carry that sign in one hand, and a gun in the other, is a declaration of war. A war, I hasten to add, that Kostric and his fellow revolutionaries cannot possibly hope to win.
Kostric is a member of the Free State Project (FSP), which was founded by Professor Jason Sorens and like-minded souls, as an alternative to the Libertarian Party (LP) and the longstanding educational efforts that have characterized the mainstream of libertarian activism to date. Impatient with the frustrations and setbacks that have characterized the history of the LP, and not content with educating the non-libertarian public, the FSP’ers have decided to “live liberty,” and take over their own state, choosing New Hampshire no doubt on account of its “Live Free or Die” spirit—a motto that Mr. Kostric seems to have interpreted quite literally.
Professor Sorens, I note, has yet to actually move to this budding libertopia: Perhaps he’s not quite ready to give up his post at Yale for the cause. Then again, very few real-world people, that is, people who are gainfully employed and have extensive roots—family, friends, a history—in a specific area can just get up and go. While the luftmenschen (“people of the air”)—as Murray Rothbard, the founder of the movement, characterized all too many of his comrades—go where the winds take them, and Kostric soon found himself in Keene, New Hampshire, epicenter of the libertopian colony.
The rapid influx of outsiders—some 500-plus, according to most accounts—has caused some friction, most of it caused by the tendency of some prominent FSP-ers to engage in “civil disobedience.” They refuse to pay traffic tickets, they openly smoke marijuana, they disrobe (whilst packing heat, of course!), and some are no doubt engaged in more substantially illegal activities that I don’t even want to know or speculate about. The most popular category on the freekeene.com discussion forum is labeled "Civil Disobedience, Noncooperation, and Jailed Activists”: It is filled with news of the latest charges and court dates, pleas to show up in court in support of the defendants, and yes, even videos of their ridiculous (and sometimes ominous) antics. Kostric’s stunt was their moment in the sun.
Typically, some in the libertarian movement hailed Kostric as a hero. While we’ve had more than our our share of crackpots and scamsters in the libertarian movement, never have we had a significant organized grouping that openly advocated violence, or even flirted with it—at least, not until now.
The irony of this supposedly “radical” tendency is that they don’t take their own rhetoric all that seriously. On the one hand, we are told that the State is evil, a vicious monster capable of the most heinous crimes imaginable—and yet the lightness with which they take this threat tells a different story. They don’t really believe the State is going to retaliate, at least not in a way that will cause them harm any more serious than spending the night in jail. They really believe they can stand up to the Leviathan, that they can “go Galt,” as they put it, and withdraw from “the system.”
The utopianism and revolutionism of the FSP-ers are inextricably intertwined: Both underscore the essential naivete of a strategy that underplays the real power and evil of the State apparatus they disdain. Such a mistake could be fatal to those who make it, and surely fatal to the libertarian movement if it should ever become widespread.
Such a movement is asking to be infiltrated with agents provocateurs—a practice that the U.S. government has repeatedly engaged in over the years—and set up for state repression. It was routine, during the 1960's, when the “New Left” was all the rage, that the police would send in infiltrators, who would then egg on the more hot-headed fringe into acts of violence. And surely the Black Panthers ought to serve as a negative example: Who can forget the day they showed up at the state courthouse in Sacramento, California, carrying automatic rifles and posing on the front steps to the delectation of the media and their radical chic groupies? A few years later, they were all either dead or behind bars.
It is telling that the following Jack London quote appears on Kostric’s myspace.com page:
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
Kostric and his fellow “superb meteors” could care less that they are discrediting and marginalizing the cause of liberty, and actually endangering what remains of our Second Amendment rights. They are too mesmerized by the prospect of their own brilliant sparks falling to earth in a blaze of glory.
It his interview with Matthews, and his subsequent numerous media appearances, Kostric identified himself as a Ron Paul supporter, and the media glommed on to this immediately. Ron was interviewed on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” and was asked if it didn’t “defy common sense” for Kostric to show up armed at a venue with the President . Given this opportunity to distance himself and the wider libertarian movement from one of his wilder supporters, Paul punted:
Well, I think it raised a couple of points. One thing I think it really shows a remarkable restraint on the President and his Secret Service because they didn’t over-react. They recognized what the state law was and that this man didn’t break any laws and that he was just practicing a right that he has, so I think this is very good and Obama deserves credit for this.
But I also think what this demonstrates is that it’s the old conservative argument. It’s not the gun that’s the danger, it’s the person that’s dangerous. He’s a peaceful person, he obeyed the law. He was not a man of violence and it went quite well, so I think it was a remarkable demonstration when you compare it to what 19 individuals could do with razor blades versus one man with an armed pistol that happens to be a law-abiding citizen.
Later on, Paul says “I don’t even know the guy”—so how does he know Kostric is “a peaceful person”? In a comment posted on the Reason magazine website before his fifteen minutes of fame in Portsmouth, Kostric said that drug dealers who fire on cops are okay in his book:
If people can't wake up and see why it's immoral to trespass and destroy someone’s property, kidnap and lock them in a cage for growing a plant in their backyard then perhaps a body count is what's required for change.
However, a nice guy, and generous to a fault, kept making excuses for Kostric: “I think he was remarkable in proving his point that he was a peaceful man and he caused no trouble.”
Okay, so maybe this Kostric fellow is merely a lone nut, someone who just wants attention and is in no way associated with any organized group. I believe this is what Rep. Paul thought, but, unfortunately, Kostric does indeed represent a trend within the libertarian movement, one that shows every indication of getting out of hand. A few days later, a whole group of Kostric wannabes showed up at a town hall in Arizona where Obama appeared. What’s more, they explicitly identified themselves as Ron Paul supporters. (See the very end of this link.) With Paul appearing to endorse this sort of behavior—or, at least, not oppose it—he is encouraging more of the same. And the dangers of that are many, and ominous:
1) It sets up the libertarian movement for government surveillance and infiltration. Under the PATRIOT Act, the government has the “right” to spy on anyone suspected of planning illegal acts, and any act of civil disobedience can be construed as “terrorism.”
2) It marginalizes the libertarian movement, and gives the professional “extremist”-hunters as well as the Obama-ite left a reason to tie a seemingly violent “fringe” with individuals and groups working to preserve what remains of our economic and civil liberties.
3) It is bound to end in a violent incident: Indeed, there have already been confrontations between the “tea-baggers” and union thugs at those town-hall meetings. It is only a matter of time before a gun goes off, either by accident or by intention.
4) By allowing the “mainstream” media to tie Kostric and his supporters to Ron Paul, the Ron Paul campaign apparatus and the Congressman himself are endangering the passage of his important “Audit the Fed” bill, which has amassed so much support and—at this point—seems likely to pass in some form.
I want to emphasize the importance of the first point: During the 1960's, when the government was infiltrating leftist organizations, it was relatively easy to spot a “pig,” as police agents were then called. He (or she) was always the one calling for outrageous acts of violence and maintaining a more-radical-then-thou posture.
Of course, most of the people who are being misled into believing they can “resist the State” aren’t police agents. They are perfectly sincere idealists who simply have no strategic sense, and certainly no common sense. They are perfectly right to denounce the government as a gang of thugs interested only in looting the productive while paying off their friends and supporters, akin to the Mafia. The only problem is that they don’t follow through on this vital insight, and act accordingly. You don’t get in the Mafia’s face, and dare them to come after you—unless, of course, you want to be wearing concrete shoes lying at the bottom of the river.
While opposing their means, libertarians should certainly sympathize with the ends proclaimed by these radical protesters. Yet even as we defend them against the State, and call for their release if and when they are imprisoned, we have a responsibility to separate ourselves from their adventuristic and even self-destructive tactics, which are a danger to the entire movement, and, indeed, to everyone who loves liberty. Leaders like Ron Paul, instead of tolerating this kind of “activism,” have a responsibility to point out that individual acts of civil disobedience or even violence, no matter how heroic and heartfelt, cannot succeed in bringing down the federal State: such a course can only bring down the heat and set back the movement for liberty.
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Traditionalists are with you Libertarians on resistance to centralized governance, but your philosophy is inhumane and unconscionable. These loonies are the logical result of your philosophical underpinnings, not the exception to it.
Bravo, Justin! You express the thoughts I've had about the Kostric stunt all along. The Jefferson quote comes from a letter he wrote in response to Shays' Rebellion in 1786-87: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants." By carrying his sign and his gun, Kostric was clearly stating a suicidal and/or homicidal threat. There's no other interpretation given the context. When interviewed by Chris Matthews, he refused to own up to the truth. Such stunts discredit libertarians, conservatives, and populists in the eyes of most Americans. They are needlessly provocative. They may be legal but they draw bad publicity and do not make you a Shays or Jefferson. Instead, you will just be seen as a kook.
Personally, I don't always open carry. Sometimes I open carry, sometimes I carry concealed, often both. Either way, when I am in my home state of New Hampshire, I am most always carrying. I have met William on several occasions, and I don't think I have ever seen him when he wasn't openly carrying. Are you saying that we shouldn't be allowed to attend this sort of protest, or merely that we should voluntarily shove our second amendment rights where the sun don't shine in order to attend?
Thanks for talking about these very important issues.
William is a great guy and I'm glad he moved to New Hampshire for more freedom. Sure, open carrying usually isn't as good as concealed carrying but it's certainly better than not carrying at all. There is a reason New Hampshire is the safest state in the nation and it has nothing to do with cops, as NH has the 2nd lowest rate of cops in the nation.
Heck, I even talked to a cop in Keene, NH recently that suggested more people carry guns. He also admitted that the cops aren't around to protect me.
Live Free or Die,
Keith
This is nothing but petty anarchism and libertinism by the pious adherents to the marxism of the right. That its descended into a crass movement to extirpate all restraint towards their concupiscence of sex, money, and controlled substances, isn't shocking. This isn't the atavism of the founding of the Republic, it's a bizarre amalgam of Bakunin, Rand, and Nock(The destructive influence of Ayn Rand on libertarianism cannot be underestimated). They ignore the admonition of John Adams that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." If this is liberty, then give me death.
The mobs of the founding generation were far more into destroying and terrorizing loyalists, in service to the interests John Adams fronted for.
This is one lone, flinty eccentric, but hey, we like Carolyn Chute up this way, the most radical author to subvert the conditioners I can think of, so what do we know about turning the tides?
As an addendum to my earlier post, I write this as a Ron Paul voting, end the fed, end the drug war, open-carry supporting, constitutionalist.
Good job, Justin. The question is not whether somebody can dress up like a cowboy and go to the town meet'n, it is why any serious man in his right mind should want to. Heck, especially in Vermont and New Hampshire. He should come to Oklahoma and try that crap. They probably would not arrest him, but the local rednecks might disarm him and pistol whip him for not taking sidearms seriously and for being an audacious and pompous ass in public.!!
Yes, Mr. Raimondo has said it well. Libertarianism seems to consistently devolve into a sort of self-righteous if not self-destructive hedonism. The obliviousness of several of the comments deepens that point.
As for Dr. Paul's reaction, I think it must be tough to be that man these days and cram bigger thoughts into MSM bite-sized chunks. He is generally cautious with his statements from afar. I've heard him in other contexts distance himself from promoting civil disobedience. But he does walk a thin line.
We could all just vote for another 1 percent candidate. Or write articles and maybe if we are respectable enough the powers that be will let us be free. If any of these tactics had a chance of succeeding they would be illegal.
Sorry to see Justin is another of the "old guard" that is an obstacle. Good luck with your "Reclaiming the American Right" effort. The "law and order"/nationalist/constitutionalist crowd is about as morally bankrupt and dangerous as the socialists are.
Others might want to check out for themselves. NHFREE.com, FreeKeene.com etc.
The Free State Project is just the "bus" that gets people interested in moving to New Hampshire. The groups and individuals that engage in these efforts are going their own course.
Jason Sorens is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, not Yale. (By the way)
Mr. Raimondo is quite correct in his analysis and, as a supporter of Dr. Paul, I think the good doctor has a responsibility to do whatever he can to discourage this behavior and distance himself from it. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.
On the overall subject of carrying firearms, open or concealed, it may be a legal right, but not one which it is either necessary or prudent for the average person to exercise under most circumstances. One problem with carrying is that it creates a situation where any quarrel, no matter how trivial, has the likelihood of immediately escalating to the level of deadly force, since the person carrying is faced with the choice of either using his firearm or risking that it be taken and used against him in a tussle.
To begin with, there is nothing inherent in libertarianism as a political philosophy that determines this kind of adventuristic nuttiness. Every movement has to deal with this sort of thing: all you "traditionalist" conservatives, remember the Minutemen of the 1960s? And of course the New Left spawned a violent fringe that went loco and then flamed out in a blaze of misbegotten "glory."
Kostric's defenders miss my point: whether or not "open carrying" is common in New Hampshire, or whether Kostric personally does this routinely, the point is THE CONTEXT: a healthcare meeting at which the President of the United States is present, in the midst of a propaganda campaign portraying the "radical right" as a violent threat to the President personally.
Justin,
Don't lose your patience, you are doing fine and represent a sane version of those principles you have valiantly defend for years. "all you “traditionalist” conservatives ...." Traditionalists call this type of behavior Enthusiasm as in Ronald Knox's book, "The New Enthusiasts." Conspiracy theorists would be tempted to call him a "leftist plant." which he is not.If Tom Fleming were available he would simply say,"the poor bloke is simply representative of everything wrong with populist conservatism for the last two hundred and fifty years and illustrative of why he would rather spend thirty minutes perusing an Alexander Cockburn essay than an eternity attempting to correct idiots." ( Or words to that effect.)
Justin, the government has already declared most political activists in the US dangerous extremist. At this point, the government has claimed to can take away all freedom whenever it wants. If we don't express ourselves now, it may be too late and we may never have a chance again.
You can be conservative all you want but when the government does everything be declare war on it's people, it's too late for me to be conservative. I don't even know if it is possible to save NH, just one state, but I will stop at nothing to bring about more freedom.
As we say in NH, Live Free or Die.
Interesting point of view. In the post:
"The whole point of even attending such a gathering, or, indeed, any sort of rational discussion about anything, is that we leave our guns—embodying the possibility of coercion—outside the door."
Well, that's fine -- if all sides agree to leave their guns outside the door. Sadly, today, in America, no member of government is without their gun. Department of Forestry employees? Sure, they can carry them. Politicians? They use taxpayer money to surround themselves with people with guns. Agriculture inspectors? Yup, they carry guns, too.
I think perhaps more people should be aware, and the author of this post, especially, that one side has NO intentions of leaving their guns out of the debate. And its not the libertarians.
Stop at NOTHING? Really? How about engaging in, say, nuclear terrorism? Or, maybe, something less radioactive, but no less lethal?
Let me offer an alternative viewpoint. During the Bush administration, the Secret Service didn't allow dissenting viewpoints anywhere near the president. "Free speech zones" were set up miles away from where the President was likely to see them, and anyone peacefully holding up a sign with a dissenting viewpoint was asking to get arrested. The only people actually allowed inside meetings where the president was speaking had been thoroughly vetted to make sure he was among friends. Anyone who showed up at a Bush meeting with a sign about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants would have been thrown in jail.
The Obama administration, on the other hand, allows nuts with loaded guns to protest right outside the building where he's speaking. He actually engages people who disagree with him. If anything, he seems to actually be encouraging dissent and dialogue.
I know most people here despise Obama because of his economic and pro-abortion views, but on basic First Amendment issues the Democrats have almost always been better than the Republicans. If you care about core Bill of Rights issues, Obama's election may actually turn out to be a good thing.
I'm a libertarian so I wouldn't initiate force. However, if I have to volunteer 100 hours a week to bring about more freedom or spend the rest of my life in jail, so be it. Volunteering to bring about more freedom isn't just a fun hobby for some, it's our way of life.
As always, live free or die.
Keith,
What besides libertarianism, makes you not initiate force? Or is libertarianism the sole basis of non-aggression?
Spend the rest of your life in jail -- in order to achieve "more freedom"? You really need to rethink that ....
Jeremiah,
Murder, stealing and rape are wrong. I feel that way both politically as a libertarian and religiously as a Quaker.
I would be embarrassed to show up at any kind of public gathering with a gun on my hip. It's an unnecessary thing that draws too much attention and makes one look like a fool or a nut. Anyone who can do it without turning red in the face from embarrassment and out of shame for not having better sense must be a little off, and that's what most people would think.
When I was a kid, our family received at our home a personal visit, a normal social event, from a new auxiliary cop and his wife. The man was sporting a gun on his hip to advertise his 'status' and strutting like he was 'something'. The unnecessary gun was bad enough, but the strut was intolerable. After he left, my dad said he wanted to jerk that gun out of the holster and shove it you-know-where.
We need guns for defence, not to brandish in public, and though it may be fine to carry one openly in places where it is customary, discretion is always called for, just as it is for smoking, drinking, farting or anything else.
#12."Conspiracy theorists would be tempted to call him a “leftist plant which he is not". Perhaps not a leftist plant but certainly a useful idiot. Excellent work from Mr. Raimondo on antiwar.com., great edition to the Chronicles.
Kostric would have done better ny watering the tree of liberty with Olberman's worthless bodily fluids. I detest that vile, ignorant, trie weasel, he's not even funny after 3 beers and a joint. When the revolution comes, forget bout Dick the Butcher's advice to ice the barristers first -- go for the gossiping propagandists instead!
Kostric’s defenders miss my point: whether or not “open carrying” is common in New Hampshire, or whether Kostric personally does this routinely, the point is THE CONTEXT: a healthcare meeting at which the President of the United States is present, in the midst of a propaganda campaign portraying the “radical right” as a violent threat to the President personally.
Justin, you miss the point: the propaganda campaign is going to do those things anyway! What, you think the libertarian movement will get anywhere by trying to seek "respectability" in their eyes?
Weren't you accused of "poisong the well" when you tried to radicalize the Libertarian Party? And now that you are the one hoping to whisper into the ears of policy-makers and seek respect from the MSM, you make the same charge against radicals. Sad.
W0W..!! This is a strange window that you have opened..!!
"Kostric would have done better ny watering the tree of liberty with Olberman’s worthless bodily fluids."
Really? Not the high court judges that don't think we can be trusted to exercise the rights granted by the very constitution they swear to defend??
Not only do you not have the freedom to buy or even grow the drugs you need for yourself and your family, your doctor can be prosecuted for prescribing the drugs you want or need...
Trial by jury is a dead letter if the government decrees you hostile or subversive..
The Fourth Amendment is gone..... The court ruled that following it would handicap police in their war on drugs..
The police can tazzer citizens for ANY REASON, but it is [according to the court] assault..
I do not have a TV so I don't understand Olberman's appeal or transgression but seems to me the 'Live Free folks' would do better to work on the way the GOVERNMENT control our lives...
The reason to carry a firearm is to protect yourself and those under your care (family, etc) from violent criminals. Unless you are in uniform and therefore noticable as one of the good guys, you do not want anyone to know you are armed. If a crime is going to be committed, you do not want to be the first one taken out by the bad guy(s) as a precaution because of your openly observable weapon.
Further to "Kostric’s defenders miss my point", etc.
Not only do I second Jacob that the left and the MSM will seek to characterize anything we do as radical and as that newly coined adjective terroristic, whether our actions are as evidently correct as pointing out similarities between the White House and the rising NSDP, or as simple as suggesting that healthcare and education are not the province of the federal government; but moreover, I think you do indeed miss *my* point -- why should I be required to check my rights at the door in order to participate? Since when (Campaign Finance Reform) did it become reasonable to cancel the first amendment for anyone who wishes to involve themselves in politics? Or to go to school (religious expression)? Since when did it become reasonable to cancel the fourth amendment just because you, like most of the US population, are within 100 miles as the crow flies of a land or sea border? And since when must or should one kow-tow to the opinion of one's enemies in order to be perceived as an effective protester? All of these things have come to pass into our laws and into common occurrence, except this last.
I realize that you are not advocating that Kostric should not have the right to protest in this way, you are merely suggesting that he should not. But I beseech you to contemplate where you will ultimately draw a line, and whether you will stand fast to that line. Your line apparently does not extend to embrace open carry if the carry is a form of political speech. It's not entirely clear whether your line might embrace open carry when intended not as political speech but merely as an arguably less effective alternate to concealed carry as a form of personal protection, but it seems not to. But would your line protect those who would set images of swastikas alongside images of Obama-circles? Would your line embrace those who would fly a Gadsden flag? Wear a Culpeper t-shirt? Quote from the bible? Hold a sign with words from our constitutions? Other founding documents? Quote Jefferson? Madison? Incite and conspire with others to quote same?
As I listen to my gut, I arrive at the unpalatable conclusion that you seek to act from a position of expediency, not of principle. That you will yet allow yourself to be swayed by the media and by the left, albeit not out of love for them, but from two causes: first, your belief and desire that you can appeal to them; secondly, your conditioning by their continuing propaganda. No, sir, I am not seeking to malign your intentions. I am exhorting you to stand up and set aside your care for the liberals' opinions and the media's bias, and to act boldly to preserve and protect our country and to defend it against all evils, foreign and domestic.
That others may come to regard political speech as violence, may opine that speaking truth to power represents a threat of physical harm to our president, surely speaks either to their conniving and their ill motives, or to their mental incompetence and naivete. It is against the law to wish the president slain, or to conspire to such ends. Those of us who have some regard for the rule of law, or even for basic morals, would not wish to see such events. (To avoid any possibility of confusion, I cannot anticipate ever advocating the murder of anyone, far less my President.) But it is not yet either illegal or inappropriate for each and every one of us, at every step, to do all that we may to advocate the impeachment of this federal government, the indictment of Obama as a traitor to our nation and its constitution, and the swift and lawful arrest of his reign of power. Lily-livered searching for some middle ground, whether it is in the context of a "bipartisan healthcare bill" or a form of watered-down political protest which panders to the only-moderately-liberals, is not the way forward in this time of growing crisis.
Was this a bad idea? I'll let others debate that point. What it is and should be noted is an alarm. The more people are pressured without a safety valve, the greater the danger. The sudden rush of Progressives to bring America and individual freedom to an end has turned up the heat. All the while elected officials and the press ignore the people and marginalize efforts to gain a voice, that necessary safety valve. Consequently and predictably, when people are cornered with no way out, they must fight. Fortunately, reasonable people give fair warning, and for those with eyes to see it, this is just one of those warnings. If the Progressives persist in turning up the pressure and denying the people a safety valve, one must wonder, what is it they really desire?
If you'd done a bit more research into William's motives and what was happening that day you'd realize a few of your assumptions are wrong.
1) He had no intention of getting inside the event. Even if he wanted to, he'd need a ticket to get in and they were all allocated. So to say he was bringing a gun to the president is flat-out wrong.
2) He grabbed the sign at random from a pile nearby.
3) He never made a big deal about carrying, the leftist media did. He was there to protest the continued government takeover of medicine, not to promote the 2nd amendment. He happened to be open-carrying while he was there. Some reporter flipped out and that got the ball rolling.
4) He was given sanctuary to exercise his rights by a local pastor on church property after the police asked him to remain 1000' away from the school. Apparently someone in Portsmouth remembers the line about "endowed by their creator".
5) He was harassed by the other side, who did threaten to get violent. The situation resolved itself peacefully.
I was not completely surprised that someone did this, but I was surprised to be attacked for questioning the wisdom of this particular act on a forum that is popular with FSP.
My point, that provoking fear in an (at least purportedly) innocent crowd resembled the coercion and duress-minded tactic that the government is routinely accused of using (and rightly so), only angered a few respondents.
An invitation to violence is an apt characterization for it and anyone with 'libertarian' intentions would not be eager to embrace it.
Rich
I hope this doesn't mean I am no longer welcome here in NH
... including Ron Paul.
It is not about expediency or sticking to principle. It is also not about obeying or pandering to the media, who in this case didn't need to even touch this story with their slant.
It's about appealing to people, who might otherwise agree with every main aspect of Libertarian conservatism but who will be shocked and put off by the radical appearance.
Look at how much progress Dr. Paul has made for the principles you claim guide your gut. He has done it with patience, modesty, and a consistency of thought, word, and action. He is now on the verge of passing a bill that would severely dampen the destructive power of the Fed. Would he have come so far had he strutted out on stage at the primary debates with a gun on his hip? Did he sell out the movement either because he did not? Was he pandering to the media or trying to reach out to a bunch of hypnotized Republicans?
The Libertarians I know are good people. To summarize their position, they want to decrease the power of the federal government and basically be left alone in freedom; left alone in their own time and on their own property. The actions of Mr. Kostric and others are not those kinds that say they wish to be left alone. Those actions bother a lot of otherwise normal people.
Why is "leave our guns at the door" assumed to be the default option? We see armed people every day, but our "warning! danger!" signals don't light because they have police or security badges. Why do we treat ordinary citizens any differently? Why do ordinary citizens not have the same right of self-defense?
If gun owners hide in the closet, as Justin Raimondo suggests, we will continue to be invisible, marginalized, and denied ordinary basic human rights.
In truth, a would-be assassin could walk by with an official-looking badge, and the Justin Raimondos of the world would not look twice.
We should not permit America to be divided into two categories, the armed officials and the disarmed subjects. The martial arts were developed in societies, such as Japan, which criminalized possession of weapons by all but duly-authorized officials, who then lorded it over their lowly subjects. Shall our country follow that well-trod path?
Significantly reducing the size of government is not something that I can see as being done without risks. Yes, non-violence, or no first use of violence is important, but at some point, your words and actions must put you at odds with the state, and you become an enemy is deed as well as word.
The question is, when do we reach that point ? Kostric and his type are the leading edge, putting themselves at risk much earlier than most people would, and doing things that seem kooky to many. Does this extremism and lack of PR skills damage the movement ? Probably, but then again, it may get people thinking about the role of the state., and there is still not that much of a movement to damage. If the ideas are sound, it will hold up.
In the end, libertarianism is not just theoretical.
You seem to have a problem with what Will did. If you realize that your rights are being consumed rapidly by the state, why is your solution to not use your rights? People who claim to love liberty have been doing that for 40 years and have been... less than effective.
For those who actually want to live more free, now, in our lifetimes, not "generations" down the road, we're moving to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project.
If you get pissed off that we're actually living free as we see fit, perhaps you're less "solution" than you might think.
I'd ask Justin one question. What sane person would go into any establishment where the majority of patrons were armed and expect those very people to do as told where such is not to their liking?
It's not Mr. Kostric I find incredible, but the Tories commenting here.
JR pulled a fast one -
"In a comment posted on the Reason magazine website before his fifteen minutes of fame in Portsmouth, Kostric said that drug dealers who fire on cops are okay in his book:
If people can’t wake up and see why it’s immoral to trespass and destroy someone’s property, kidnap and lock them in a cage for growing a plant in their backyard then perhaps a body count is what’s required for change."
Does anyone else recognize what JR did here?
"Would he have come so far had he strutted out on stage at the primary debates with a gun on his hip?"
I know you're trying to come up with something which you think I will think would be absurd, and where we can rapidly reach agreement, but actually, I think that's a really good question. In my opinion, he would likely have done rather better. After all, let's look at the facts: he was marginalized by the NRA, who studiously avoided extending an invite to him to attend their presidential candidate meetings, even though they managed to find space for Tancredo, Richardson and several other marginal candidates. A great many NRA members did not perceive Ron Paul as fighting for their corner, far less the fact that he would fight for them strongly, and I would venture to suggest that if he had carried a gun on his hip the notoriety of this might have won him serious attention and ultimate support from a whole swath of NRA members, who could barely stomach voting for McCain if indeed they bothered to. Would it have detracted from the vote of the folks who actually did vote for him? Not hardly, I would say.
Mr. Higdon @ 11: "On the overall subject of carrying firearms, open or concealed, it may be a legal right, but not one which it is either necessary or prudent for the average person to exercise under most circumstances." SO. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO DECIDE FOR ME, US, OR them; under which circumstances your high & mighty OPINION decides the RIGHT may be necessary or prudent? Troll? Question: Are you trolling from the left or the right?
This is an op ed piece I wrote a few weeks ago. It IMO represents what the message was:
What message are the gun carriers trying to send when they appear at Town Hall meetings? Why are the Town Hall meetings so boisterous? Simple answer but the MSM including the Winston-Salem Journal ignores the obvious.
That the politicians need to start realizing that they work for We the People: that they need to listen and act for We the People .
On the bailout, the public was strongly opposed but the congresscritters did it anyway and Mr. Obama signed the bill rather than vetoing it.
On the Health care reform, the great majority of people want reform but NOT ObamaCare. Now the senate is playing tricks to avoid the 60% vote when they return in September.
In NC, the great majority of people were opposed to the huge tax increases but the Legislature and Governor still passed it.
The Town Hall attendees KNOW that their letters, phone calls, faxes, Tea Parties, etc are totally ignored so they shout to try to get the congresscritters to hear them. I believe I could go on and on with examples but I think I've made my point?
I know you can get rid of the Congresscritters in 2010 so the argument goes.
Fact #1, we have a huge amount of voter fraud so true Constitutional reformers whether DP or GOP may win the vote but lose when the vote is counted. It doesn't matter how many votes are cast for a candidate if the votes are counted by those who seek a Fascist style state and national government. their candidate wins. When I ran for NC Governor in 2000, ALL my radio ads and media Releases warned of serious voter fraud potential in NC. I was ignored or mocked by Attorney General Easley and the MSM in NC. Then we found out what happened in Florida.
Fact #2, even with only a 20% approval rating, 95% of Congressional incumbents were reelected in 2008. There are many reasons for this but a major one is people don't think their vote will make any difference whether a Republican or Democrat is elected: that the "fix is in."
Lastly, there is much ignorance about American History and especially our Constitution because of the dumbing down of elementary and secondary education in NC and most places throughout the USA. I know this for a FACT as I spent 30 years in higher education as a Business Professor, three years at the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University. 3 years as Dean of School of Business at Catawba College, and 15 years at UNC-Pembroke.
People in general don't know much detail concerning the days leading up the the American Revolution. Bottom line, petitions to King George III and the Parliament where being ignored and retribution was often taken on the Patriots for having the gaw to do this. Interesting is that they were called "angry mobs." History repeating itself?
Most of the Declaration of Independence was a list of unheard grievances. I recommend all reread it.
The British decided to confiscate ammunition and guns at Lexington-Concord because of the open belligerence of a growing number of Patriots The result: "the shot heard around the world." A few years later, 50+ Patriots met in Phila, PA and developed and signed the Declaration of Independence full well knowing that they would have to defend it by force of arms. In those days, every male between the ages of 16-42 was part of a State Militia to help make sure our Constitutional Republic was protected against ALL enemies foreign and DOMESTIC.
So here is the the message that the gun carriers are saying BUT ARE YOU LISTENING?
"We believe we are at or near the same place that the Patriots were in 1773-1776. We wish those in power to realize that like the Patriots of 1776 that IF they continue to NOT listen to We the People and actually declare economic warfare on us as they have already and biological warfare on us by forcing our children to take the very dangerous swine flu vaccine, that there are 10+ million gun owners ready to defend our liberties. We've had enough."
Dr. Douglas W. Schell
Retired Professor of Business
@29, you are right about my intent, and I'm sorry I failed. I don't wish to chase you down the rabbit hole of speculation, especially because I know so little about the politics of special interest groups like the NRA. I would offer to you, though, that if Dr. Paul's clear, decades-long support of the second amendment was not enough to garner the support of the NRA, then perhaps other things were at work, like money or like they couldn't support his humble foreign policy. Not that the support of the NRA is something to go for, I think the number of people turned off by an already seeming outsider packing public heat would have far outweighed the hoots of gun nuts across the country, not to mention the countering shrill of galvanized anti-gun nuts it would have created.
I would also mention, that when you claim to be driven by your principles, you might want to examine that. I have found that most sets of conservative principles are designed to restrain the appetites of man, not embolden them. So maybe something else is driving your gut and your assertion of your "rights" in unrelated public forums.
@30, no need for all caps, it's obnoxious. This isn't a town hall meeting.
Excellent and important article Justin. Kudos to Chonicles also.
As Justin has noted, guns are objects, tools. Guns are bulky and heavy to lug around. They have specific uses, including symbolic. What sane person would carry a chainsaw or shovel to a town hall meeting? So why strut around with a firearm, however legal? Pure egoism and confrontationalism.
Now, the response to this we see is, so what? We want to "scare the normals." This of course is the classic foolish/insane strategy of the "ultras" in every movement who through (mostly) personality defects or incorrect thinking, believe violent confrontation with enemies or scare tactics is somehow going to be good educational propaganda for general public.
Wrong. While there are some rare times and places where this may be worthwhile, 99.9% of the time this is counterproductive if not outright suicidal. Justin makes this point repeatedly yet the egotist libertarians in Fantasyland ignore it. Evidently they don't follow the news of Homeland Security moles trolling the Internet (and FBI, US Army al. in person and for many decades) deliberately infilitrating and provoking would be revolutionary confrontationalists into rash and foolish behavior in order to legally quash them.
This gun toting symbolism is simply Timothy McVeighism writ small. And we all know how well that worked out.
Why feed the anti libertarian fearmongering media beast with fresh meat? Why volunteer for statist repression, all while scaring normal and possibly libertarian sympathetic neighbors to death with such pointless seeming threats, however symbolic?
Can these NH/AZ lunkheads (admittedly only a handful) imagine the kind of monstrous blowback that would occur if some self professed (or merely labelled) "libertarian" actually did try to harm the president or similar? Are they really trying to get the mass roundups started at the pull of some nut's trigger?
Libertarians who believe that macho threatening behavior is the only true test of purity have zero clue. No real libertarian leaders or intellectuals have done this or advocated this. If I am wrong please correct me (and please leave the American revolutionaries out of this, as we are not in some pre revolutionary crisis situation now, no matter how much your 401(k) has dropped.)
Libertarians of sound mind must denounce the egotists and fools and provocateurs in our ranks loudly and quickly. We need not mince words for the sake of such misguided (or deliberately evil) wreckers of our important set of ideals and beliefs. Libertarian toleration does not extend to serious and important tactical and strategic error.
GENTLEMEN - the man showed up to a "town hall" meeting where the President was in attendance, armed, with a sign calling for the President's blood. That can *only* discredit whatever movement he purports to represent. I'm sorry, but that is the truth and there is no way around it. Any suggestion otherwise is useless sophistry.
I find the Second Amendment an odd issue in the US because of incidents like the one involving Mr. Kostric. I spoke with a good Swiss friend of mine about this story. He thought that Kostric was a little nuts. Now his comment is very interesting and here is why. I visited him for the first time last year in Switzerland. While we were touring through his new house, he showed me the bomb shelter in his basement, in addition to his (mandatory) state issued military assault rifle (fully automatic of course). All Swiss men are required to have them at home for civilian defense. He told me he liked the policy yet he considers himself liberal. It requires basic military and tactical training by all citizens after highschool and at least 2 weeks "refresher" every year until the age of 40. (imagine that...RESPONSIBILITY) After that you can keep the gun if you like and/or buy whatever you like. But you would never see a Swiss man open carry his assault rifle at a town hall meeting because they understand the word context. I fully support the second amendment, but between our ever expanding violent culture and people open carrying at town hall meetings about healthcare, I would say it is not to long before the 2nd amendment is dead in the water. Perhaps Kostric and co. should be pressuring their state to have their own Swiss style mandatory civilian defense training and have their state government put guns into the hands of law abiding citizens instead of open carrying at a town hall meeting to prove some point. I think this is a much better way of ensuring their second amendment rights.
#30 - I don't decide for anyone but myself and obviously if people have a right to carry arms, it is not in my power to prevent them, however imprudent their exercise of that right may be. I certainly would avoid any townhall meeting where there were armed partisans or for that matter any such meeting which consisted of angry mobs of partisans trying to shout each other down. I am a subscriber to Chronicles magazine and have posted comments in these forums on various topics for some time now. I don't know what you consider a troll.
This is a very sad topic. Thanks for taking it on, Justin. Since this report was written, a sixty-five year old gentleman, who protested a Obamacare rally sponsored by MoveOn, had his finger bitten off by those ralliers. I bet if he was openly carrying a gun, the goon who chewed on him, in my opinion, likely would not have taken advantage of this elderly fellow. Just saying!
"a sixty-five year old gentleman, who protested a Obamacare rally sponsored by MoveOn, had his finger bitten off by those ralliers. I bet if he was openly carrying a gun, the goon who chewed on him, in my opinion, likely would not have taken advantage of this elderly fellow."
There is a rumor that the old man had AIDS and the finger was his time bomb, that conservatives were fighting dirty again by even bringing this man to the meeting and the place was surrounded by ccc folks who just stood and watched as the revoltionary ate the poor man's finger. (ccc = concealed, carrying, conservatives)
#47 & 48 - Any news reference for this one? Sorry, but it sounds phoney, one of these instant urban legends. I'm always a little suspicious of these tales where there are no specific date, place or names.
These aren't town meetings anyhow, in the sense of people who live there getting together to discuss things. The "meeting" lie is just bait to get you to sit there and serve as a backdrop for the politician's propaganda show on TV. Any communication that takes place is all one way. Good for the Free Stater for hijacking the message.