The Peasants Are Revolting

If citizens can’t defend their freedom, then they are not citizens. They are subjects.

The Canadian truckers have shown us that if they don’t have the ability to defend their personal finances from government opporession, they are not citizens. They are subjects.

And against even more drastic threats?

The Peasant Revolt of 1381 – in which peasants in what would now be the eastern suburbs of London rebelled against onerous taxation and government overreach (figuratively and literally) may or may not have been an impetus for the Second Amendment – but it certainly should instruct any study of the issue of popular power versus government authority.

This video explains the event; if you ignore the presenter’s obvious left-wing bias (trying to connect Margaret Thatcher and King Richard II is the kind of thing that plays better in a faculty lounge than in reality), the lesson is fairly clear:

And for people with ears to hear, the lesson remains clear: Ukraine, responding to a Russian invasion, has “granted” their citizens a right that can not be legitimately taken away in the first place.

Preparing for the possibility of a large-scale Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government has moved to declare a 30-day state of emergency, grant citizens the right to bear arms, and conscript military reservists between the ages of 18 and 60, adding nearly 200,000 troops to the country’s defense as Russian troops continue to enter the Donbas region.

Of course, the Ukrainians are implementing under duress what the Estonians have made a part of their national culture (although not, alas, in the sense of being an inalienable right, but more a matter of duty to state and people). Defending their freedom from Russia is an actual national hobby even in whatever passes for “normal times” on the Russian border (I’ve written about the article linked above in the past; it may be even more worth reading today).

This is the lesson: today, as in 1381 and 1776 and 1939, and in Ottawa today, your freedom is only as secure as your ability to defend it; legally, in courts via the Marquis of Queensbury rules of the legal system…

…or otherwise.

59 thoughts on “The Peasants Are Revolting

  1. Does anyone understand what point Emery is trying to make? I have no idea. his mind seems to be racing. He jumped from accusing conservatives — all conservatives — of being pro-Putin to posting unsourced, out of context quotes about 9/11.
    Is it some failed attempt at snark? Has he become a neocon?
    Next thing you know he will praising GW Bush for starting the Iraq War.

  2. JPA wrote:
    In 48 hours?
    Ukranians are good at this sort of thing. Great at aerospace & making bombs, bad at self-governance. Give them some time to time to scrape the radium off of some old Boctok wrist watches, throw in a few blasting caps, an God only knows what they can come up with.

  3. ^ The “moderate” center of the Democratic party tends to be plutocratic and neoconservative.

  4. Hey remember when Trump tried to condition military aid to Ukraine on Ukraine’s president providing dirt on Trump’s political rival and then the Republican Party and its associated propaganda apparatus were virtually united in saying that was fine?

  5. ^ So, that’s bad? I think it’s rather nice that even a just few Republicans, a growing number I hope, realize that the Democrats don’t shackle themselves the way they shackle Republicans with muh principuls. How you like them apples, little guy?

  6. The maps of the invasion don’t match the rhetoric of the doomsayers.

    It looks as if Russia has taken some military bases (to protect its own troops from Ukranian reprisal, no doubt); the two break-away provinces (to protect them from being further shelled by Ukraine); Chernobyl which apparently still has functioning nuclear reactors (to safeguard the waste from the bad reactor, so it can’t be used by Ukrainians to make dirty bombs).

    Is this the “minor incursion” that Lesko Brandon authorized? If not, why not?

  7. I see that Emery is still in random comment mode.
    What is going on in Eastern Europe now has nothing to do with Trump, or the GOP.
    This disaster is owned entirely by drooler-in-chief Biden and his staff of “experts” in the state department, the democrat controlled senate, and the democrat controlled house. Biden purged every Trump appointee he could and isolated those that he couldn’t
    The first major land war in Europe in over 70 years is a 100% Democrat shit show. They own it all, from the diminished respect for NATO to the huge price in gas prices we are beginning to see at the pumps. When stagflation kicks in, they will own that as well.
    Oh, wait, stagflation is already here. I heard that reported, and the term defined this morning, on public radio of all places.
    We see you. We know what you did, Democrats.

  8. The big part of the justified praise for Zelensky is how rare it is to see a politician behave with honor in 2022. The more valiantly the Ukrainians behave, the more shameful the invasion becomes.

    /President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Prime-Minister Denys Shmyhal and other officials share video they are in Kyiv, stay with people. “We are here, defending our state, and so it will be,” Zelenskyy said./
    https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1497259536700395520?s=20&t=PSmfDosbS0v3T_aB3Caosw

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