LaVoy Finicum Died For Nothing

You can find a video of LaVoy Finicum's death here:

http://www.infowars.com/shock-cell-phone-video-shows-lavoy-finicum-shooting-from-inside-the-vehicle/

Dear LaVoy: Sorry to hear of your death, but is shouting "you're gonna have to shoot me" the best way to end a standoff with the police/sheriff/FBI?

A recent article in Salon magazine suggested that no one in America really cared about what happened in the Oregon standoff:

The standoff between government officials and right-wing extremists at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has come to an end with a whimper and not the bang the militiamen, who used their time occupying this Oregon federal park bragging to whatever camera they could find about what tough guys they are, clearly hoped for. As a bonus, the FBI even bagged Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher whose unwillingness to pay the taxpayers for letting him graze his cattle on federal lands started this whole thing. He made a big stink about how he was going to Oregon to help the occupiers, which gave the FBI a chance to catch him unarmed coming off an airplane.

As I’ve noted before, the strategy of waiting them out has not only helped minimize bloodshed, but has likely prevented some future events like this. The more the occupiers talked, the more obvious it became that they were not fierce warriors ready to die for a noble cause, but a bunch of fantasists who, bitter because white Christian conservatives don’t get the social deference they believe they deserve, have turned to conspiracy theories and other right wing argle-bargle in order to justify their sense that not being catered to is the same thing as being oppressed.

You can read the rest of the article @
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/12/dear_oregon_militia_men_heres_why_no_one_feels_sorry_for_you_and_rejects_your_mission_built_on_conservative_christian_rage/

Sadly, it appears the Salon perspective is accurate. LaVoy is dead, the cops have been cleared of all wrongdoing, and the anti-gun crowd has scored another victory. What does this mean for us in the long haul?

As you may be aware, Thomas Jefferson once wrote the following:

What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

But the US of today is a far cry from the US of Jefferson's day. I made the following pertinent observation in my book No More Patriots (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Patriots-Howard-Uhal-ebook/dp/B00X2SU5Q6/):

In a globalized society in which there would be no more patriots, and in which the only remaining tyrant would be the unassailable global government itself, new springs of blood would be needed to refresh the Tree of Liberty, new sources for its natural manure. And the United States of America and her God-hating children would willingly provide those new sources of manure by drawing upon many of the following:
• the institution of slavery,
• the imposition of economic sanctions,
• a woman’s right to choose,
• the right to keep and bear arms,
• following proper police procedure,
• military necessity,
• national security,
• the doctrine of discovery,
• the moral imperative of free trade,
• the war on terror,
• the gospel of globalization, and
• the threat of religious totalitarianism.

Our children do not believe what you and Jefferson believed, LaVoy, and they will never, ever go back to believing it.

You died for nothing.