How Stands The Union?

In the course of some forum debates on the nature of things, and what our choices are:

What do I think about government?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Wait, no, that was George Washington, after the Revolution.
That government governs best which governs least.
Oh, sorry, that was Thomas Jefferson.
Power always thinks that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Oh, sorry again, that was John Adams.

So I share the sentiments of the first three presidents on what government is, and I would love to live under a constitutional republic. Someday, I hope to.
Its absence and lack since long before I was born has been keenly felt in this country, and want of it is killing us. And by no means only metaphorically.
The time to start slitting throats is being forced upon us, but we're not there yet.

I inherently and immediately suspect anybody that argues for going there until all other options have been exhausted.
So until that day, the order of the day should be to so harry, harass, hinder, delay, and obstruct the machinations of the current metastasized abortion that they wonder what hornet's nest they've kicked over every waking moment of their lives, and those who would subject us to the very slavery our forefathers shrugged off at perilous cost drop the reins of government as though it were a red hot iron in their hands, repent of the vines and weeds they've sown around the nation's liberty as we hack them down and uproot them, and that they would flee with all haste to some more agreeable climate, physically if necessary.

To paraphrase another president, this nation cannot long endure a situation where half the country wants to be let alone, and the other half wants to direct every last detail of our daily lives, down to the minutes and seconds, and would decree that they have a rightful claim on every penny in our pockets, every drop of sweat on our brow, and every drop of blood in our veins to the very last one.
Our side's terminal handicap as those who wish to be let alone is that we are perpetually loathe to engage in any struggle if we can go about our business.
We just want to be left cheerfully to exercise our liberty. But the vanishing corner of moth-eaten liberties we are being left to is grown so excrutiatingly small and so increasingly intolerable, that we must either resolve to do everything in our power short of war to overturn and reverse it, or we shall reach the inevitable point that the only option at all is an open and all-out war to the death for one side or the other.

Some seem to be under the impression that we have an abbreviated continuum between a constitutional republic and anarchy.
In fact, we are on a ponderably large continuum, and can scarcely see constitutional republic off in the misty distance we've travelled since the over 200 years ago when we achieved it from where we sit, it is so far away and so long gone from any living memory. And we have descended so deeply into slavery, that even anarchy may seem a pleasant respite and a short step.

This isn't, for me, a left-right thing. It's more like travelling the seas.
Anarchy is sitting alone in a raft amidst a hurricane: as Hobbes noted, such a life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
A constitutional republic is sailing on a luxury liner as masters of our own destiny.
And our current situation: Let's just agree that for fuck's sake, it's long past time to be arguing about the relative comfort of the different brands of chains they've put around our ankles, or trying to come to agreement on whether some smaller and lighter version is somehow more acceptable.
We've been measured and fitted to them for several generations, and had them placed on for longer and longer periods, to the point that now life without them is hard to recall, like horses broken to saddle, bridle, or collar.

I propose instead that we stop pulling on the oars until the chains come off and we're free to walk about or leave the ship if we chose, have a full say in whither it proceeds, and that the fellows with the whips are to be hung from the yardarms in haste.
While reserving the right to resolve to rise up and strangle the guy at the stern beating the drum with all possible dispatch the minute the opportunity presents itself if the response is more whip.

Do everything legally and humanly possible to starve the beast to the size of the Chihuahua our founders intended.
Dial it back from its current 12 on the dial, to a 1.
Hack, slash, burn, and starve it back to a size where we needn't live in daily fear of its predations.
And let's please, once and for all time, stop being "reasonable" about it.
When a man with a machete proposes to cut off my legs, the reasonable response is not to compromise, and agree to sacrifice only one leg, and say "It was the best deal I could get".

We should instead be the most frothingly unreasonable sons of bitches at the slightest predation on the public purse or our personal liberty that you'd expect from Genghis Khan's hordes hung-over, saddle-sore, and with blood dripping from their swords.
Getting anything from us, past us, or over us, should be as pleasant as trying to take a bone from a hungry Bengal tiger, or meeting a grizzly bear with a toothache.
On our best and most sweetly-disposed mothereffing day.

The other side should present the slightest suggestion of same with rivers of fecal material running down their legs, as their knees knock together, after having signed a will and settled their affairs, and should expect that the only thing that would be returned of such a delegation should arrive in separate small baskets.

Hint: This is not a job for the likes of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.



{Update: Greetings to anyone from WRSA etc. who landed here from their link or similar, and my thanks to C.A. for the referral, and the subsequent rocket launch of views.}