Unless you’re suicidal, an armed march on D.C. is a very bad idea

By David McElroy · May 29, 2013

If you’re going to Washington, D.C., for the Fourth of July, I strongly suggest that you don’t take a gun. And I suggest even more strongly that you don’t follow Adam Kokesh on a “peaceful” armed march on the city.

We can agree about the outcomes we want, but still strongly disagree about how to get there. We can even disagree about whether there’s anything reasonable to be done which would bring about the desired outcome at the moment.

Kokesh calls himself a libertarian, but I’m not familiar with what all he believes. I just know of him as a flamboyant and loud activist. If that’s your thing, it’s your business. It’s just not my way, so I’m not especially interested in that sort of activism. And I definitely don’t have a death wish — or a desire to lead a bunch of people into being arrested in order to play the role of martyr or victim.

Kokesh had already been promoting the Fourth of July armed march, but he upped the stakes last week. After a recent arrest in Philadelphia — which appeared unjustified based on my cursory viewing of the video — Kokesh called for an “American Revolutionary Army to March on 50 State Capitols.” Here’s his full announcement, if you’d like to make sure I’m not taking him out of context.

If you’re following someone who suddenly calls on an “army” to march on every state capitol in the country and forcibly demand the immediate dissolution of the national government, you should seriously wonder about the person you’re following. Even if we agree on desired ends — and I suspect that I would generally agree with what Kokesh wants for society — you have to wonder about the judgement and mental stability of someone making that sort of plea and hoping for people to obey.

I think this is a dangerous move that plays into the worst of libertarian stereotypes. It’s likely to help isolate libertarians even more and cause the vast majority to say, “If that’s what a libertarian is, I’m staying away from those nutcases.”

What’s more, it’s likely to attract adventure-seeking crazies who are simply itching to fight The Man. (Kokesh calls his radio show “Adam vs. the Man,” so it’s clear that he sees himself that way.) I don’t think most of the people who are eager for trouble are libertarians or even understand much about political philosophy. Most of the sort of people who are ready to pick up weapons and start fighting are unstable or not very bright.

Those among Kokesh’s follower who are bright and sane are the ones who are most likely to be hurt. They face a high likelihood of being arrested and there’s even some chance that violence will actually break out. And for what?

The government holds all the cards. The vast majority of people in this country are not even vaguely close to supporting libertarian views, much less armed insurrection. So when people start being arrested, it’s simply going to make those people say, “Good. Those nuts sound dangerous.”

What’s just as bad is the effect it will have on many people who are in the middle on the issue of weapons. They might be generally sympathetic to the rights of individuals to own guns, but they’re not going to support armed people marching on Washington or on the various state capitol buildings around the country. As a result, it’s likely to erode support for allowing individuals to keep their guns.

There’s absolutely nothing good that can come out of this. Kokesh is going to gain some notoriety and a few supporters. There’s a good chance some people will go to jail. There will be a lot of sound a fury if that happens. But I see no positive outcome possible. I see nothing it gains for individual freedom.

You win battles largely by choosing which ones to fight. Choosing the wrong battle to fight — or the wrong time to fight it — is a sure way to lose the war.

As I’ve said before, I see this country heading toward economic and social collapse. I’m far more concerned about figuring out how to deal with that than I am in picking a fight with The Man.

Note: If you’d like to investigate Kokesh and his views for yourself, here’s his website.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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