Will our soldiers defend a tyrannical government?

What I am more worried about is another incident like this one;

In 1924, a grateful Congress voted to give a bonus to World War I veterans - $1.25 for each day served overseas, $1.00 for each day served in the States. The catch was that payment would not be made until 1945.

Newcomers were required to register and prove they were bonafide veterans who had been honorably discharged. Their leader, Walter Waters, stated, "We're here for the duration and we're not going to starve. We're going to keep ourselves a simon-pure veteran's organization. If the Bonus is paid it will relieve to a large extent the deplorable economic condition."

A month later, on July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans.

Infantry
Troops prepare to evacuate the
Bonus Army
July 28, 1932
and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry.

By 4:45 P.M. the troops were massed on Pennsylvania Ave. below the Capitol. Thousands of Civil Service employees spilled out of work and lined the streets to watch. The veterans, assuming the military display was in their honor, cheered. Suddenly Patton's troopers turned and charged. "Shame, Shame" the spectators cried. Soldiers with fixed bayonets followed, hurling tear gas into the crowd.

By nightfall the BEF had retreated across the Anacostia River where Hoover ordered MacArthur to stop. Ignoring the command, the general led his infantry to the main camp. By early morning the 10,000 inhabitants were routed and the camp in flames. Two babies died and nearby hospitals overwhelmed with casualties. Eisenhower later wrote, "the whole scene was pitiful. The veterans were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity."

Bonus Expeditionary Force

I am not worried about troops firing on civilians, I am worried about troops firing on troops...ie the 300,000 soon to be unemployed Veterans, who have yet to deal with an incompetent VA webbed with red tape. Which will only further delay and hinder our due compensations and benefits.

Originally posted by ItsAConspiracy
(Talking about U.S here)

I've been hearing a lot about the 2nd amendment recently and the arguments since that Sandy Hook incident for about 3 months now. It's always the same deal, that we need guns to protect ourselves against a "tyrannical government" and such.

One thing that has been bothering me is this, don't you need soldiers for a tyrannical government to work? I find it hard to believe that U.S soldiers, most of them raised by the concept of freedom and democracy and will admit proudly that they defend those rights, will all the suddenly go against all of that and suddenly defend a tyrannical government just because their generals told them too.

Like, I can't see the 2nd amendment being repealed and the government ordering soldiers to barge into any random house to make sure people don't have hidden weapons in their possession, without some backlash from the soldiers themselves. I mean, soldiers aren't robots. They have some sort of morality, atleast for the people from their own country.

Or am I wrong? Will soldiers just blindly accept orders and that they're just mindless killing drones?

I believe you are wrong and history proves you wrong.

Case in point: Hurricane Katrina.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard, local Law Enforcement, and even Military confiscated firearms in places that were not flooded. They confiscated firearms from people who had evacuated and were returning to see what they had left.

Fact is, there are some military who would resist but I believe the majority would go along and follow orders. The majority will do as they are told without even realizing what they are doing. Especially under the right circumstances. A lot of our Military is made up of younger people. The boots on the ground are not usually 40 year old men, they are 18-24 year olds who are more concerned with other things and not history, politics, or the Constitution. Many of them do not have the critical thinking skills to understand the repercussions of the orders they will be given that they will ultimately follow. Many of our soldiers who are joining the military today are not joining for love of Country and to defend us. They are joining hoping to receive training, get the opportunity to go to College, and make a future for themselves. If I was younger, I would probably join today just so I can get paid to go to school after I get out because it's tough out here, and it's a lot tougher today than it was 12 years ago before we went to war.

Speaking of history, since you mentioned it.

This is for every one who asks, "but we don't have enough influence or people", BS!

or

What can I do, ...blah blah blah

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

reply to post by DeReK DaRkLy


It would appear that this "soldier" failed to hear the words of the oath he took. The oath includes the word LAWFUL orders. He is not required to blindly follow what his superiors say.

Yes I'm British and live in the UK which if SHTF there in the US will spread to the UK too but I think that they will tell the soldiers that the targets are armed and dangerous and they need to be disarmed. New young recruits will obey any leader and they wont even be told the full truth anyway. We are all in this together brothers and sisters. Keep alert and god bless.

Love & Light xx

Dont they already?

Will our soldiers? Probably not if the government was openly causing the death of civilians. Will the mercenaries our government would employ similar to blackwater though? Yup, you bet.

Not all of the soldiers, or even all of the states, will support a tyrannical government, in my opinion.

World history shows a very spotty record for pretty much everyone when it comes to unreasonable obedience and violence in pursuit of that end. And even we Americans have contributed some disturbing examples, starting early with 13,000 militia following George Washington to Pennsylvania to kill people who refused to pay a new taxes (to cover debts that other states had defaulted on no less; I guess there really is nothing new under the sun). As luck would have it the rebels ran away when they found out the army was coming, and Washington settled for 20 arrests and the tax money.

But this problem is central to American history and political attitudes- though we are not fundamentally different from anyone else, the struggle against authority and violence is all over our history, including several historic triumphs. The same human psychological processes are operating, but the variables are not all against us- because freedom is so real in our perception, and so widely valued, there is a better chance for any given individual to resist.

And as several people correctly pointed out early on in this thread, both sides of that coin must be taken into account by anyone with the will to become a tyrant.

An American tyrant would never dare to order the army to go door to door and confiscate guns, because American patriots are too smart and too organized for that, and a certain percentage of them will simply never serve or cooperate with a government that has a disarmament program under any circumstance, no matter how legal and benign it were made to seem. So the tyrant not only has to tip toe around so as not to wake up those who are asleep, but he's got to deal with the ones who are awake without making a lot of noise.

What he would have to do is slowly take guns away from groups of people, not by declaration, but by circumstance. Using laws that on their surface make sense, he could set traps and let people disqualify themselves from gun ownership, then just be "tough on crime".

Anybody who ever gets a diagnosis of depression, or who makes violently anti-social statements on the internet, or who gets in 3 fights during his 4 years of highschool, or who says the president should be shot- bam, no gun until you're cleared by a shrink at your own expense... if other such "prove you're OK" programs already in action for drunks and jerks who upset the court are any baseline, that will cost about 10 grand.

So it wouldn't happen to everyone at once, it would happen to a few hundred people every day. And there would be a buy-out that made it seem like just another hold-up- whatta-ya-gonna-do, right? And if they really wanted to tip-toe they could send you a letter in the mail saying, "we are aware you have a weapon and haven't gone through the 10,000 dollar program to check you out, please turn your weapon in to the police to be returned when you are cleared", and then issue a bench warrant if you ignored it. But some day you'd forget to signal a turn, and they'd run your plate, and see your warrant, and you'd either have to shoot at a cop during a stop or go to jail. If you blow away an ATF agent in your own home because he broke in to disarm you, you could become a folk hero. If you blow away a cop who is just doing his job by taking you in because you have a bench warrant, your second amendment rights won't even register with anybody. The cop wasn't trying to take your gun, he just wanted you to go to court... where the judge was gonna take your gun or else throw you in jail. People would accept that kind of slow entrapment, and they'd even scorn those who fell victim to it. If you fought back you'd be James Dorner.

You can prove this for yourself if you've got some spare time and a neighborhood full of nosey people that you don't like. Here's what you do. First, you dig a big hole, and you surround it with caution tape, and put up a big sign that says, "danger, stay away from the hole", with a red line 6 feet from the edge of the hole. And anytime somebody steps just one foot over that red line, you shove them into the hole. And everyone will laugh at their stupid butt for stepping over the red line.

Originally posted by ItsAConspiracy
(Talking about U.S here)



Or am I wrong? Will soldiers just blindly accept orders and that they're just mindless killing drones?

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can nolonger resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."

-Cicero

The real question is will they know that it's tyrannical at all? Will enough people recognize? You have to think that if it truly was, all the news stations would deny it, anyone fighting it would be a domestic terrorist. Will people recognize or will they buying the news lines? It will be hard to decide if the news is wrong.. no one would want to join a domestic terrorist cause. It would be a concern. It depends on how well the media does their job.

reply to post by The Vagabond


An example?
Making it illegal to pass assault weapons on, or semi-auto's, or whatever, from one person to the next generation after death. If a father owns an assault weapon and the law says you can't own one, and only the grandfathered ones still have rightful owners it would be nothing for the police to come in on notification of death and take it. They are already doing this with prescription medicines. There was a recent case where a woman with cancer died and while the husband, an old man, was still at her bedside grieving, the police barged in and made him take them to the prescription pain killers and hand them over. Of course he wasn't going to sell them or abuse them, he was just grieving, but that is why they did it. They had kept tabs and moved in. I think it's very plausible that they could do the same thing with certain weapon owners. Slow, but steady, it might take 50 or 100 years, but eventually the people are disarmed.

Greetings, ItsAConspiracy

Dictator hussein soetoro saebarkah (alias obama) doesn't need the US armed forces to do this. His enforcement assets include,

-- The Americorp National Police Force aka, " civilian national security force," to enforce his domination over the masses.
Quote from the "esteemed" dictator, hussein soetoro himself,

We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.“

-- [url=http://soldierforliberty.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/1-4billion-to-americorps-in-proposed-budget/]>>> Link

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


Naturally there would be a filtering process to get "undesirables" first, and whatever the official explanation is, it's very likely that a lot of that filtering will be done in DoHS fusion centers advising on such such common matters as traffic stops, what kind of charges are filed, awarding of warrants, maybe even awarding of restraining orders perhaps- even orders granted in protection of corporate "persons" (thus requiring you to turn in all weapons).

But to anyone who didn't have the clearance to get close to those intelligence networks it might be made to appear that only criminals were being disarmed- you could have done nothing wrong except say that you and your friends would stand up to tyranny and never surrender your weapons, but eventually they will get you for talking on a cellphone while you're driving and the computer tells them to bring you in if possible, so they call it reckless driving, say you seemed "off" and take you in to give you a drug test and an ink-blot test, and they write a bunch of baseless reports against you. After that it might not matter how innocent you are, you'll be in the system as a reckless and unstable person with a minor criminal record. A Marine named Brandon Raub was arrested for postings on facebook and 5150'd. The court later denied a petition to hold him because the petition submitted by the police "contained no facts". But hey, courts aren't for everybody in America today. You might not get your day there like Mr Raub fortunately did.

reply to post by seabag

I don't think most military members would do the bidding for TPTB.

They already do.... do you think US activity in the Middle East is REALLY about defeating terrorism and spreading "democracy"? There's no such thing as democracy in this world, only greed and control.

reply to post by CT_Flyboy

It would appear that this "soldier" failed to hear the words of the oath he took. The oath includes the word LAWFUL orders.

And that's where things get blurry... everyone has their own sense of what "Lawful" is or should be.

Originally posted by DeReK DaRkLy
reply to post by ItsAConspiracy

 

One thing that has been bothering me is this, don't you need soldiers for a tyrannical government to work?

Yes, as well as agencies like the DEA and ATF to handle more subtle domestic issues.
For example, if you choose not to pay your unconstitutional (unapportioned) income tax, the IRS will eventually have armed men at your door.

Will soldiers just blindly accept orders and that they're just mindless killing drones?

That's the only kind of soldier that any government wants.

edit on 25-2-2013 by DeReK DaRkLy because: ...

Ah yes, the old "I was just following orders" bit. That one never gets old.

reply to post by DeReK DaRkLy

And that's where things get blurry... everyone has their own sense of what "Lawful" is or should be.

That's an easy one. If one carries a copy of the Constitution in his or her pocket, they have a direct reference to the highest law in the land!

I'm still wondering what kind of police officer puts on riot gear until they look like Stormtroopers from Star Wars just to go out into the streets with peaceful protestors?

And how long before the peaceful protestors realize peaceful protest is a lost cause and up the ante?

reply to post by ItsAConspiracy


YOU wouldn't know a tyrannical government if they kicked you in the NADS!!

Looks like to be tyrants now all you have to do is threaten to take someones toys that they don't actually need away.