Militiamen in Nevada.....Patriots or Domestic terrorist actions against BLM? Just want to see where people stand on this.

SPC Kevin Ford - You are correct. But just because the SCOTUS *interprets* the Constitution in favor of the federal government does not make it ethically or morally *Just.* When The System is rigged against The People, laws can be made that oppress and enslave The People. Again, my argument is that one has to understand the INTENT of the Framers of the Constitution. They were afraid of an overreaching tyrannical federal government, and wrote laws (restraints) into the Constitution in order to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical, as the American Revolution was an armed insurrection against tyranny of an overreaching and unresponsive government. The Framers attempted to write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in as plain of language as possible, so as to make their intents clear and prevent future interpretation, like what has happened with the Second Amendment. You cannot argue that the federal government claiming land, or real property from The People, even when backed by Judicial Interpretation, was within the Framers' original intent.

What everyone is struggling to avoid saying is that our country has strayed far from the original intents of the Constitution, and has, as of late, made a full 180° shift towards empowering the federal government to do whatever it pleases through Executive Orders, Presidential Memoranda, and rule by fiat. This is NOT America, as envisioned by those who fought, bled, and died for the cause of Liberty.

TSgt (Join to see) - I'm not avoiding saying that we have strayed from the original intents of the Constitution because I just plain don't agree with you because there are no single understood set of intents. What you refer to is a debate that goes all the way back to the founding. In today's world it appears that the many of the ideas of the Federalists and Alexander Hamilton prevailed in the long run. This is not something that the founding fathers all agreed on and changed later, there was no unified view on this (or on many other issues) from the founding fathers which is why our Constitution is a document of compromises and why we can see these controversies playing out within the time of our first constitutional president.

We can also see this play out further in the early republic and come to a head in the Civil War. The primary disagreement of the Civil War was about slavery but the justification that the South used to reject the federal government was pretty much your argument. Once that war played out many of the ideas of the Federalists gained supremacy in popular thought and propelled us to where we are at today.

Now you can claim that the country has strayed from where the Constitution dictated but I wouldn't ignore the many people, myself included, who agree with some of the current prevailing legal opinions. No matter how you structure a democracy you are going to end up with some ideas that gain primacy that you don't agree with and yeah, then it feels like a cr@p fest. Some ideas have gained legal status I don't agree with either. But that's what it means to live in a democracy.

We have a Constitutional way to resolve these controversies, it just didn't land where you want. That's fine, but if you act on that you are no longer a patriot acting in support of the Constitution, you are supporting some other form of government that is laid out and interpreted more to your liking.

The main focus of the CSA was the issue of States Rights, NOT slavery. Abraham Lincoln was ambivalent about slavery as well, as his intent was to preserve the Union.

And just so we're clear, we have a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Democracy. Democracy is Mob Rule, or two wolves and a chicken deciding what to have for dinner.

TSgt (Join to see) - You may want to check out the contemporary documents the states released when they broke from the Union. They were very clear and explicit on which states rights issue most were concerned with, the issue of slavery. If you have not done so, I highly recommend you read the original state declarations that lay out exactly why they left. It's not like they are lost to time or anything, we still have them and you can read them. Here is the document from Georgia as an example:

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/georgia_declaration.asp

Also this gets into one of the funny things with the English language in that a single word can have several meanings. In this case the term democracy. One use is for a direct democracy, and you are correct that we are not a direct democracy. What we are is a representative democracy. This is a type of democracy and is used in a different and more broad usage of the word to refer to countries that either directly or indirectly govern through the will of the people.

Time to get the V-100 out of the yard and bring it to the standoff

What would the people had done if he was trespassing on someones private land without permission

Actually my Great Grandfather William Dawes rode with Paul Revere on that special night. He was a Scottsman and we are known for being stingy and not taking kindly to people stealing from us. This Bundy character is stealing from the American People Plain and Simple.

How so, the BLM is property owned by the government and still requires permission to access, just as people who want on to federal military installation, both are owned by the federal government

In 1775 we were complaining about a lack or representation in government. That is not the situation we have today. Now we have representation in government and what the "patriots" at the Bundy ranch seem to be complaining about is their fellow citizens lawfully voted in representatives that created laws they don't agree with.

A democracy doesn't work when you only decide to follow the laws you agree with and ignore the results of elections you don't like.

The government is like a biological organism. It exists, it seeks to grow, to devour resources and reproduce. As it does, it squeezes out other organisms as the fight for sustenance intensifies. Just because conflict arises in the US does not mean federal agencies are automatically in the right. Some provocations are planned just as in other countries (should we review the records of Wounded Knee?). I do not trust the official government or media accounts of what has transpired in all circumstances. Am I a militia zealot? No. I am, however an American that does not believe my elected officials when they put bull crap on my plate and tell me it's roast beef. The Social Security Administration can be added to the list of those buying weapons and ammunition. It would be interesting to see where those armories are located in relation to immigrant populations........

SPC Kevin Ford - Do you REALLY think We The People are being effectively represented in Congress? Congress has been bought and sold to the professional lobbyists of the Special Interest groups for decades (closer to a century). Our votes haven't REALLY mattered for a LONG time when it comes to legislation. You and I have one vote each every 2 years. The lobbysits have hundreds of thousands of dollars that they offer "representatives" EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. We The People cannot compete with that. When was the last time your elected official actually cared about YOU **OUTSIDE OF Election years** ? Still think We The People are adequately and effectively represented in Congress?

TSgt (Join to see) - You are doing a good job of explaining why Citizen's United was an awful ruling by the SCOTUS and is leading to an acceleration in the amount of corruption in the government. Like you, I find it very concerning that the only viable option each election is Coke or Pepsi. To some extent the representative system was made to cause this to occur, but at the time communities were small and information travelled at a slower pace so it wasn't as much of an issue.

It's a tough problem to deal with and still remain a democratic republic. Did we bring a profit motive into news media? Yes, and that causes a problem. Can we trust alternate news sources like what is on the internet? No, that turns out to be a cesspool of conspiracy theories, political hacks of all stripes and plain old made up BS. About the only people who seem to be able to propel themselves on the the national stage are those who have fame and financial resources outside of the political system. This time around we propelled a guy who is unlikely to get too many minority or female votes (for good reason) and that's not a winning strategy either.

Another part of the problem is that we have also gerrymandered districts to much that many representatives are safe. They can do what they want and have little fear they will run into any election problems outside of the primary process itself. It is a tough problem to solve, but that's our system.