One of the most basic reasons the Founding Fathers fought for the 2nd Amendment is because they were extremely wary of the new standing armies that could be used to oppress the people
I would say that issue is even more pressing now than when they made it law for themselves
Standing armies have always been extremely expensive. But as commerce and thus state wealth took off in the 17th and 18th centuries, they became more feasible for regents to maintain
Obviously they deployed these armies against enemies external and internal
The US may have by necessity later adopted a standing army as the world became truly international
But if the premise of the 2A was, from the beginning, to check the state army's power vs its citizens, then when the US adopted a standing army, the 2A only becomes *more* critical
When you have just the most basic understanding of history, and why these laws were codified by the guys who established the republic, the logic snaps into place immediately
Again, to undo the logic of the laws we live under, you have to erase the history that led to them
One way to understand the American Revolution is that, even as colonies separated by an ocean, the increasing financial/technological power of Nations made them more and more vulnerable to what they thought they'd escaped from, at great personal cost
They were reacting to not just "muh kings" or whatever new age of progress the Fathers embodied, but also the "progressive" historical processes that allowed kings to suddenly wield more power than they ever had across the entire feudal era
So the Revolution can be seen as a reaction *against* this centralization of power. "For as long as you can keep it."
A core part of that, since the very start, was that the ultimate body of force would lie not in the new King's army, but in the people and its underlying will
This might seem self-evident
But with just a bit of added history of the then very-modern standing army, that none of us are taught in school, all attempts to undo the underlying historical logic of *why* our Founders needed the 2A are seen in a very different light
One that, applied to the conditions we now live within—under the largest standing army in the world, under the largest bureaucracy in the world, under the world's imperial power—
It becomes far, far easier to understand why the people who've since stolen control over all those conditions to insist the 2nd Amendment now has to be dismantled
Since it remains the only real American right, alongside the 1st
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Nevertheless, the outer-productive regions were still able to sort of maintain themselves as industrial zones and city-feeders until the Regime stripped their means of life, industrialization, from them
Now they have neither the ideology to replace themselves nor the economic means to support themselves to provide for the cities that robbed from them (and, to be fair, enriched us all) for centuries
The old system broke down. All that remains, for the system, is mass migration
We are out of Afghanistan because of Trump, and we are *in* Ukraine because pols like the Clintons + Bidens turned it into their personal colony/paypig
Trump's foreign policy was his greatest achievement for Americans. We need not just one Trump, but fifty Trumps
Americans buy into lies like Iraq and now Ukraine because our eternal political class has convinced them to believe in lies, against our own interests as citizens
It is not a "fringe concern." Our guy literally ran our policies. And they absolutely ruled for the American people
This is apparent from the first day that Trump won election. When our domestic ruling class declared that "Russian interference" was the only reason he won
And went on to impeach him over it. Look, that's fucking weird, no Americans cared about Russia then
The Cathedral is at least a century old, but I think it's just now gone through a phase transition, as it exhausted a lot of its liberal premises of equality
While at the same time discovering it has captured enough of the people and the elite to *abandon* equality
Which means it has the power to enforce its next phase, "equity," i.e. equality through use of force
While it shares things with previous forms of illiberal leftism, this is a uniquely American evolution of it, and also one that draws on modern forms of "force"
Regular reminder that this was already diagnosed in The Elementary Particles 25 years ago. Reason and its infinite promises of liberation from any guiding strictures doesn't lead to better lives
It leads to a form of frozenness, an inability to judge and take action
The book's parallel narrative preemptively demolishes the MedGold-level response to this, "just increase the fuck rate," "just talk to her dude" The 20th century's two totems were pure reason and free sex. Both are shown as dead ends, incapable of giving humans what they need
The two horns of the ideology turn out to be twins in what they promise: liberation from the bounds of our basic being
Which is why both broke when they were put into practice. The outcome of both characters in The Elementary Particles is disgust with themselves.
Unusually insightful article by a Zoomer about Zoomers, that gets at my main idea about the current age: the post-war order is a paralyzing agent, an ideology that strips us of all spirit + will to act
Most visibly as he describes it in youth + children
This to me is the key passage. Combined with being stripped of all meaningful values—turns out "diversity" doesn't provide personal, human meaning—
This draining of spirit leaves people angry, but unaware of what they're angry at. And unable to act against it even if they knew
In short (and this isn't a uniquely Zoomer problem, it's just most concentrated there) there is an immense sense of betrayal, with no actual understanding of what that betrayal *is*, and no spirit to change it