Donald Trump and the Militia

Please understand that I am not a “tub-thumper”, an enthusiast, or an apologist for Donald Trump. But his electrifying emergence on the scene represents a sea-change in American politics far more consequential than his own pyrotechnic personality, bold campaign-style, and receipt of popular enthusiasm suggest. He is, as it were, the surfer who—perhaps by accident, perhaps by insight, but in any event in a timely fashion—has caught the first of the really big waves rolling towards shore. The significant aspect of the present situation is not the surfer, however, but the wave: namely, the upsurge of popular disgust for the “two”-party political vessel in which this country is sailing on a collision-course into the rocks of despair. This first big wave threatens all of the ships riding at anchor in the Establishment’s harbor. So the Establishment needs to throw up a breakwater, in a manner both fast and furious.

As anyone with 20-20 political vision can see, America’s domestic enemies have taken off their velvet gloves to reveal the iron fists underneath, by employing against Trump directly, and America ultimately, the modern Bolshevistic strategy of socio-political destabilization through so-called “non-violent direct action”, “weathermen” tactics, and “color revolutions”—all in line with the old Leninist/Stalinist slogan, “there are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot storm”. Please refrain from chiding me that the contemporary Establishment is not, to one degree or another, made up largely of Bolsheviks. The opposite is obviously true. Some are retreaded Trotskyites (who call themselves “neoconservatives”). Others are watered-down Mensheviks (who call themselves “social democrats” or “moderate socialists”). Others are the equivalent of NEP-men (better known here as “corporate socialists”, because they rely on governmental intervention in the economy to guarantee profits for themselves, while offloading losses onto the backs of the general public). And all of them are doctrinaire Leninists, inasmuch as they subscribe to his notion that “[t]he scientific term ‘dictatorship’ means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force”. Vladimir I. Lenin, “A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship, A Note” [1920], in Collected Works (Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Progress Publishers, 4th English Edition, 1966), Volume 31, at 353. None of these people gives a tinker’s dam for the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution—indeed, they believe themselves to be “untrammeled by any laws”. And all of them enthusiastically promote the present-day global “war on terrorism”, under color of which a para-militarized police-state apparatus, “absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force”, is being built up within this country in order to wage a domestic “war of terrorism” against the American people. See my book By Tyranny Out of Necessity: The Bastardy of “Martial Law” for the particulars on this.

If I may base my appreciation of the present situation upon an historical parallel drawn from Germany’s dolorous experience under the Weimar government in the 1920s and 1930s (which is probably familiar to most readers of this commentary), the advent of these bare-knuckled mass assaults on this country amounts to our own home-grown Bolsheviks’ declaration of ein Kampf um die Macht auf Leben und Tod (a struggle for power to the death). They will employ their Rotfrontkämpferbund (Red Front fighters’ league) to try to derail Trump’s nomination, through die Herrschaft des Pöbels auf der Straße (mobocracy in the street). If he is nominated, they will use der Bund to try to deny him election. If he is elected notwithstanding all of their efforts before November, they will then turn der Bund loose to stifle any major reforms which he attempts to put through after his inauguration, whether with or especially without Congress, the Judiciary, and the bureaucracy behind him. And please spare me the innuendo that, by drawing upon this parallel, I am somehow suggesting that Trump is a modern American “Hitler” figure. Rather, my intuition tells me that Trump is the sort of individual, perhaps rough-hewn but basically honest, who might have saved Germany from Hitlerism, as well as from Bolshevism, had the good Germans who came forward in der Wiederstand (the resistance-movement) after 1933 been more prescient and better organized before then.

One may ask why America’s Bolsheviks have decided to come out of the closet to exhibit their true coloration by unleashing mobocracy in the street, when they can (and surely will) employ every kind of old-fashioned fraud familiar in American politics to steal the election. The answer is that they anticipate their inability to put into practice Stalin’s apperçu that who votes is less important than who counts the votes, and are prudently preparing for the worst possible eventuality—namely, that in these unsettled times even widespread electoral fraud may not deprive Trump of victory if the polling- places are inundated by a true “revolt of the masses”. Moreover, even the most effective techniques of electoral fraud will be useless after the election. No further elections of consequence will be held during the first two years in which Trump holds “the Office of President”. If he cannot be stifled during that period, perhaps “the Trump phenomenon” will prove its worth in successful Presidential actions, and then will demonstrate its longevity and strength in the next elections—with the Bolsheviks suffering defeat after defeat. Between elections, the Bolsheviks will not be able to rely exclusively upon their co-conspirators, fellow travelers, dupes, useful idiots, and assorted fools in Congress, the Judiciary, and the bureaucracy to stand up to Trump. For the righteous anger of legions of patriotic Americans lined up behind him will give all of them pause. To put iron in their cronies’ backbones, the Bolsheviks will need to provide them with muscle in the streets: namely, hordes of well-funded, well-drilled “protesters” and “dissenters” deployed to shout down, or violently shut down, every popular manifestation of support for Trump.

So, as President, Trump—and all of the patriotic Americans in his camp—will desperately need the Militia:

(i) to awaken, energize, authorize, mobilize, organize, equip, train, and deploy on his behalf those whom the Declaration of Independence styles “the good People”;

(ii) to protect Trump himself—because no part of the present governmental apparatus at any level of the federal system can be trusted to do so;
(iii) to put through fundamental reforms that can be accomplished by the President alone (“to execute the Laws of the Union”, including both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, perforce of Article I, § 8, cl. 15 and such statutes as 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f); 10 U.S.C. §§ 332 and 333; and 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242), in particular against entrenched, recalcitrant, hostile, and disloyal bureaucrats and subversive private factions and other NGOs and special-interest groups; and especially
(iv) to leave puissant governmental institutions for “the good People” to use on their own at the State and Local levels in the event of an unavoidable and utterly destabilizing national crisis, probably centered in banking and haute finance, which breaks out during his Presidency.

With respect to points (ii) and (iii) in particular, one might recall the wisdom of General William Tecumseh Sherman who, when importuned to make himself a candidate for the White House, replied that “I would account myself a fool, a madman, an ass, to embark anew, at sixty-five years of age, in a career that may, at any moment, become tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty or neglect of any of a hundred thousand subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States.” Quoted in Burke Davis, Sherman’s March (New York, New York: Vantage Books, 1988), at 298.

Inasmuch as der Rotfrontkämpferbund is now being deployed, a counterrevolutionary “white” force must be mobilized to oppose and defeat it. If loyal Americans want to avoid witnessing the rise of some extreme “right- wing” (actually, “right-socialistic”) “brown” force such as die Sturmabteilung (by default the main counterweight to the Communist street-gangs in Weimar Germany during her time of troubles)—which many desperate Americans will demand, and not a few will surely join, if they are offered no other powerful alternative—something else must be provided for them. This force must be raised from among “the good People”, there being no other source with the necessary loyalty, legal authority, self-interest, and sheer numbers requisite for the task at hand. Especially, it must be a force with explicit and unequivocal authority under the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, an establishment within the government, not a force the provenance of which can be traced only to some private political party, movement, or group.

Therefore, if Trump actually intends to be a constitutional “Commander in Chief” in the fullest sense in both law and fact—and, Heaven knows, if he does not intend as much then he should emulate General Sherman by not seeking “the Office of President” at all—he needs to promote the exercise of that high authority against America’s domestic enemies, through exhortation for and mobilization of what the Constitution itself declares to be uniquely “necessary to the security of a free State”, and to which it explicitly assigns the authority and responsibility “to execute the Laws of the Union”—and he must do this, in both words and deeds, immediately if not sooner. This is no time to play for time; for, as the old saying has it, time brings all things, bad as well as good. During his campaign, he must advocate revitalization of the Militia; and, after his election, he must take every action necessary and proper to that end. I suspect that, if he does grasp that nettle, he will be able to say of the contemporary Establishment what General Sherman said of the old Confederacy: “pierce the shell, and it’s all hollow inside”.

On the other hand, if—Heaven forfend!—Hillary Clinton should seize “the Office of President”, either by her own devices or (more likely) with the aid of anti-Trump back-stabbers in the Republican Party or some third-party “spoiler” candidate (from such as the Libertarian Party, which disastrously split the conservative vote in favor of a dyed-in-the-wool Clintonite in the last gubernatorial election in Virginia), she and the Bolsheviks behind her will not sit on their hands. Instead, emboldened by their triumph in scotching Trump, they will turn out der Rotfrontkämpferbund to advance their revolutionary agenda by deploying das Faustrecht (mob rule by the fist) against all of the “constitutionalist”, “patriotic”, “conservative”, “traditionalist”, and other politically, economically, and culturally “right-wing” groups in the country: First, to intimidate them and anyone who even tangentially supports them. Second, to turn the undecided citizenry against them when they try to defend themselves (denouncing even their verbal self-defense as “incitement to violence”). And third, to unleash para-militarized police-state oppression, some species of “martial law” jury-rigged under color of “emergency powers”, Vyshinsky-type prosecutors, and the kangaroo courts to suppress whichever Americans try to stand up for their natural and constitutional rights. This, the Bolsheviks expect, will bring about die Endlösung (the final solution) of the problems of popular sovereignty and popular self-government which so vex all totalitarians.

Be forewarned. One need not be a dabbler in the occult to foretell the future in this respect. Neither need one be much of a student of modern history to fear the accuracy in these times of the old adages that “no one learns anything from history other than that no one ever learns anything from history”, and that “we grow too soon old and too late smart”. (Personally, too, I appreciate the wisdom of the observation that “no man is ever taken for a prophet in his own country”. For I have long been struggling to educate Americans about the Militia—and, most recently, about the utter illegality of “martial law”— with about as much success as if I had been trying to sell a twelve-step program in humility and reticence to the Kardashians.)

Nonetheless, I believe that Mao Tse-tung was correct (albeit perhaps only accidentally or hypocritically so) when he wrote that “[t]he people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history”, that “[t]he masses have boundless creative power”, and that

[a]ll reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Peking, China: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), at 118, 118, and 72.

Thus, to turn the Bolsheviks’ own slogan to the purpose of America’s salvation: “There are no fortresses which ‘the good People’ cannot storm.”

In the final analysis, it is critically important that Trump should turn to “the good People”, trust “the good People”, empower “the good People”, and rely upon “the good People”. Not only for his own sake (which in the great scheme of things amounts to little), but also for their sake first and foremost (which amounts to everything). As modern Presidential campaigns illustrate, this country is steeped in its own bastard version of das Führerprinzip (the leader principle). As early as 1933, America had her “Chief” (Roosevelt), just as Germany had her Führer (Hitler), Italy her Ducé (Mussolini), and Russia her Vozhd’ (Stalin), to be followed not long afterwards by Red China with her “Great Helmsman” (Mao). Today, all too many Americans view a President as someone whose purpose is to advance the agenda of their political party or special-interest group, not someone who should act unselfishly with and through WE THE PEOPLE so that THE PEOPLE themselves can become permanently the masters of their own destiny. Such approval of, or at least acquiescence in, rule from “the top down” must in short order prove fatal to popular self-government.

In principle, it denies the precept of the Declaration that “Governments * * * instituted among Men[ ] deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed”—not from acceptance by “the governed” of “the leader’s” mere assertions of authority. In practice, it generates increasingly uncritical support for “the leader’s” program, then increasingly blind obedience to his dictates. Until society arrives at the terminal stage of suicidal political regimentation: Führer befehl, wir folgen (leader command, we follow).

Just as the strength of any pyramid resides at its base, not at its apex, so, too, with popular sovereignty—and with the Power of the Sword in WE THE PEOPLE’S hands for the purpose of “execut[ing] the Laws of the Union” through the Militia. In a constitutional republic, true authority and legitimate power never descend from “the top down”, but always arise—indeed, can be generated and exercised only—from “the bottom up”. Trump’s greatest achievement (were he capable of any truly great achievement) would be to put this truth into action. By one segment of the population he will be damned if he does; and, by another segment, damned if he does not; so he may as well be taken for a goat rather than a sheep. That goes for the rest of us, too.

©2016 Edwin Vieira, Jr. – All Rights Reserved.