Takeover Assumptions

"How could it come to this? An army of rable...peasants. Everything will change. Everything HAS changed."
--Cornwallis (The Patriot)

There seems to be a view among statists in America that if they could just wrestle federal government control away from those with high preference for liberty, then they would permanently turn the country into a socialist authoritarian state. This grand vision of takeover is grounded in several questionable assumptions.

One is that liberty lovers would obediently bow to the strong arm of the state and surrender their freedom. This seems doubtful, given the history that surrounds the founding of this country. Research suggests that, at the time of the revolution, perhaps 1/3 of the colonists were willing to fight against the British. That minority fraction was still a large enough to spark a world-changing revolution. There will be resistance--armed if necessary. Authoritarians would have to put this resistance down.

Which brings us to another questionable assumption. Statists must believe that they can project enough government force to quell pushback to their policies. Will they be able to marshal enough strong armed agents, i.e., police, military, et al., to do so? Some agents of force will surely side with them, but others won't. Not only will some police and military refuse to enforce authoritarian policy, but many will cross over to fight for the cause of freedom.

Authoritarians also face the small problem of approximately 300 million guns currently in the hands of the citizenry. It should be no wonder why gun control (i.e., confiscation) is a perpetual priority of statists.

These takeover assumptions seem so questionable that it is difficult to imagine that statists haven't already come to realize the risk of being, as Jefferson famously wrote, 'thrown off.'

Perhaps they have. Which leads me to believe that they have an ace in the hole: outside help.