Hi Jim,
Thanks for doing a great job on SurvivalBlog… very informative, easy to follow and obviously attracting some pretty bright folks.
Having spent nearly 40 years “working” for Uncle Sam in a variety of military and civilian posts (I retired as a senior IRS field agent), I have a deep-seated mistrust of the feds.
We, The People, are one episode away from martial law and the end of the United States Constitution. As retired General Tommy Franks put it… “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties. If that happens, Franks said, “… the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.” Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack. “It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution.” Coming from a former CENTCOM commander, that statement should have scared all of us to death. In reality, it raised few eyebrows, testimony to how little we Americans value our liberty. When martial law is enacted, the light of liberty will flicker and die.
Imagine this: A major terrorist attack or a major earthquake on the New Madrid Fault… President Hillary Clinton’s FEMA director (Chuck Schumer) orders the confiscation of all semi-automatic firearms in the interest of public safety. Does our spine turn to jelly and we stare at our Nike sneakers as we’re disarmed, or do we put ourselves at odds with the government and defy the order? Too many folks not surrendering their weapons? Any guess on what happens next? Should we have added backbone to our stockpile of beans and bullets? I guess that I’m a pessimist. I fear there are too few of us left who value Liberty above safety. We’re vastly outnumbered by the folks who are willing to surrender precious Liberty in exchange for the worthless promises of professional politicians.
I hope that our Grandkids can forgive us for all we’ve given away in our post 911 fear and hysteria. – “Dutch”