“Don’t retreat, instead — Reload!”

"Gunpoint is the point where our ignorant armies trade Matthew Arnold for Benedict Arnold. We do not and we will not live in a country where the armed can ignore the law and bully the unarmed with threats of violence. You cannot say to us, you may have the votes and the Constitution, but we have the guns. When Sarah Palin chants “Don’t retreat, instead — Reload!” she’s already way over the line. If anyone on the Left talked this way, they’d be called terrorists, not patriots, and fall afoul of Homeland Security. We’ve heard enough. Bill Clinton judiciously chose the 15th anniversary of the mass murders committed by Timothy McVeigh, a kind of spiritual ancestor of the Tea Party, to speak out forcefully against the armies of the night. “We do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way,” he wrote in a Times op ed piece. “Our founders constructed a system of government so that reason could prevail over fear. Oklahoma City proved once again that without the law there is no freedom.”

Progressive Populist