Since law enforcement and the military tend to be more conservative, is there any real risk that they wouldn’t help put down an armed insurrection? As the tea party and die hard conservatives lose more and more influence in electoral politics and watch helplessly as the country becomes more brown and liberal (if demographic trends continue it should), I could see them wanting to use violence to get their way (the same way the KKK comes back to life every time social changes starts happening like in the 1860s, 1920s, 1960s, etc). It was a shame when the administration backed off a report a few years ago showing domestic right wing terrorism is becoming a major threat. That has been obvious for years.
With groups like the KKK (right wing terror organizations) there was a lot of trouble with local law enforcement being allied with the insurgents. However I don’t think that was an issue with federal authorities being in cahoots.
At the Cliven Bundy rally it was an ex-sheriff who talked about using women as human shields for propaganda purposes. On another note, how is it illegal to speed on the interstate or use drugs, but openly talking about using civilians as human shields on national TV is legal?
Or is law enforcement much more transparent than it was 60 years ago, so things like the fact that law enforcement was involved in the killing of 3 civil rights workers in MS back in the 60s wouldn’t happen now?
The Military and law enforcement in whatever jurisdictions tend to be law and authority abiding. Therefore in my opinion I think the military and law enforcement people can just as easily be used by the left side of the political equation to enforce their views, as the right.
After all the left side of the aisle tends to get to the point in electoral politics where they can almost and sometimes pass laws as they like, but never quite get their entire agenda through.
Personally, I have the fear the left has a greater tendency to use the military and law enforcement to enforce their agenda than the right.
You could probably concoct some fanciful scenario where a southern unit goes rogue and follows their crazy cult leader commander and does weird stuff but…yeah, pretty much zero percent. The military is too bureaucratized. And a lot of the grunts are poor people and minorities.
If nothing else, revolution isn’t good for business. Generally speaking. The tea party / super right wing types are way outside the power structure.
Keep in mind that sheriffs are elected politicians first and law enforcement second and they’re more comparable to other politicians than to professional law enforcement officers.
Forgot to add that if the 101st Airborne didn’t side with the Arkanasas politicians in Little Rock in the 1950s in a vastly, vastly more racist time period I don’t see things turning out differently today.
Nor I, really. I’ve been hit with this argument in the past, that guns are needed to defend against tyranny but not really because the military won’t side with the government. It makes no sense to me. While there might be some sympathizers in the service - there would be, I feel certain - the vast majority would answer to orders and take out any insurrection that broke out.
Yeah, cops are especially attached to their medical insurance, time and a half overtime, personal days, paid vacations, and 20 years until full retirement. The chances of them overturning the applecart and putting all that at risk is about as unlikely an event as you can imagine, at least on a large scale.
Could a couple of nuts go off the beam and make a fuss? Sure, but they’d be about as threatening as a girl scout troup.
The key point is most conservatives are not radicals. Only a small radical fringe want to change the current system back to some real or imagined past system. What the majority of conservatives want is to maintain the status quo - and people like this are not the makings of a revolution.
There’s nothing illegal about putting women in front of a group so that if others started shooting at the group, more outrage would be generated, nor about speaking about it.
They won’t for the simple reason that if the military felt that way and acted, it would them siding with the military not the other way around. It would be the military pulling off a coup or revolution while the insurrectionists at most acted as cheerleaders, and later as paramilitary death squads to kill off suspected liberals, homosexuals, and non-Christians. The military is what actually matters, not idiots with small arms.
It’s been a long, long time since that described American conservatives. People like that would be considered moderates or liberals, not conservatives.
My assumption is that there can be cops and soldiers who identify with the movement, but on the federal level people are not going to side with the movement. I am not so much worried that the entire military will side with the violent wing of the tea party (which probably makes up 5% of the country at best), as much as local and unaccountable individuals not upholding the law when required. This isn’t an invalid fear, it was an issue during the civil rights movement to the point where federal authorities had to get involved to uphold the law.
The Cliven Bundy people–and most other “anti-government” types–do not genuinely want to overthrow the government. It’s just a convenient rhetorical conceit to talk like that, and it flatters romantic notions they like to hold of themselves. They’re really just kids playing cowboys and Indians* in their make-believe fort, and the fact that they use real firearms doesn’t change that what they really want is the excitement that they see in movies, etc. At the end of the day, they still leave their make-believe fort and go back to the comfort of their home.
*Having a non-white in the White House makes this especially convenient.
I believe that it all depends on the context. I don’t think police or the military would ever join an anti-government organization, nor do I think they would fail to put down an armed insurrection.
However, I do believe that they would be very reluctant to fire on fellow citizens who weren’t firing at them. A blue state President sending a bunch of southern and western boys to go shoot a bunch of other southern and western boys who have not yet engaged in any violent acts would be a very combustible and unpredictable situation.
Remember that the southern & western boys in the service aren’t all white. And all our “rebellious” yahoos are definitely white racists. Also, the service members aren’t all boys…
Obviously I’m generalizing here, but southern and western white males are overrepresented in the combat MOSs.
While I’ll agree that your rebellious yahoos as you describe them are probably white racists, they aren’t the only type of insurrection troops could be called on to put down. Just the most dangerous, should such a thing ever happen, which is unlikely, because I don’t think the federal government is stupid enough to provoke such an insurrection. Unlike left-wing morons, who riot at the slightest provocation and actually seem to enjoy the inevitable beat down that follows, those yahoos are a bit smarter. They are disciplined, often ex-military themselves, and much like the government, know how far they can go before provoking a deadly confrontation. In fact, the few incidents that have involved deadly confrontations, it’s the government that made poor judgement calls.
In this photo you see Sgt. Myron Pryor aiming his sidearm. He was the first to fire and less than half his men followed suit. Even if there had been a sniper, and that is an unanswered question, the correct reaction is not indiscriminate firing vaguely toward a mass of mostly-unarmed civilians–two killed weren’t even protesting, just walking to class! Sgt. Pryor clearly panicked and his men followed his lead. The National Guard has changed its methods of crowd control because of the event.
Every political agenda needs some kind of enforcement – ultimately – by some kind of LEOs. That’s not the question the OP asked. The question is whether they would side with a RW insurgency. I’m (almost*) sure they would never side with a LW insurgency.
*But see Russia 1917. Most officers did not side with the revolution, but many troops did, and shot their officers. All soldiers in all armies are in a position to shoot their officers at any time, of course, but it takes a really extreme situation to get them to do it.
