Reply #120: careful with that word "allowed"

[Two Americas]

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as voluminous other writings by those who signed those documents - risking their lives to do so - are all predicated on the notion that it is the people who allow governments to do things, under strict limitations, it is not the authorities who allow the people anything.

Many, many years ago I made an elderly friend when I was in Europe, a professor from Switzerland, and he shared an insight with me that I never forgot. "So my young American friend. Can you tell me the primary fundamental difference between the government you have in the United States and all of the other governments in the world?"

His answer? "Here, (we were in Greece at the time) everything is considered to be illegal until and unless the government specifically allows you the privilege to do or have anything. In the United States, at least in theory, everything is considered legal until and unless the people grant the government the power to outlaw it. The day that Americans stop appreciating that is the day that it will begin to die, not just there but around the world."

For centuries in Europe, the peasants were not allowed to hunt nor to farm their own land. Those privileges were reserved for the hereditary nobility. Most people could not feed themselves and their families, nor defend themselves and their families. They were little better than slaves as a result and they lived or died at the whim of the aristocracy. Modern city people, 3 or 4 generations removed from the farm and village, insulated from reality to a large extent, and ignorant of human history as a result on a very profound level, fail to understand that for people to "be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" and to have the "right to keep and bear arms" that "shall not be infringed" are the two most important rights, and the foundation of our freedom.

No arms, no secure home, and we are all at the mercy of the aristocracy once again. It doesn't matter if we personally own guns or not. It is not about guns. It is about the midnight knock on the door by the authorities, about having no lass ditch options for defending and feeding your family, about giving the government a green light to controlling every aspect of your life. So long as we can feed and protect ourselves, the government can only push us so far. Not because we would "shoot back" at government agents, as many anti-gun people foolishly presume, but rather so we can fend for ourselves rather than rely on the authorities.

Nevertheless, the idea that it is useless to fight back against a tyrannical government, should it ever come to that, was not one that the courageous resistors in the Warsaw ghetto subscribed to. They lived in sewers and fought the German army with handguns and homemade bombs. They were up against overwhelming force. They had no chance of winning. But they made the choice, and I believe that all human beings have the right to this choice, to die standing up rather than to be herded like sheep to the slaughter, meek and passive and terrorized. And who knows what that one episode of phenomenal bravery actually cost the Germans, and how many lives were saved as a result?

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Many Jews in ghettos across eastern Europe tried to organize resistance against the Germans and to arm themselves with smuggled and homemade weapons. Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements formed in about 100 Jewish groups. The most famous attempt by Jews to resist the Germans in armed fighting occurred in the Warsaw ghetto.

In the summer of 1942, about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When reports of mass murder in the killing center leaked back to the Warsaw ghetto, a surviving group of mostly young people formed an organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name, Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, which means Jewish Fighting Organization). The Z.O.B., led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, issued a proclamation calling for the Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars. In January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as they tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation. Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to killing centers or concentration camps.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/wgupris.htm

When the Germans came in to clean out the ghetto, much to their surprise, they were met with resistance. There were over a thousand fighters, including children. They used pistols and Molotov cocktails against the Nazi weaponry, and they successfully repulsed the Germans.

It was a short-lived victory. The Germans returned a short while later. This time they brought major fire power. They started to destroy buildings, bit by bit by bit, knocking everything down. After about a day, they broke into the hospital, shot everyone in their beds, and torched the place. Gradually, they destroyed the entire ghetto.

...

Although the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was not really very successful, it was the first time in all of German-occupied Europe that there was any organized uprising against the Nazis. Word got out, and it set a climate. And afterwards, there was Jewish resistance in many other places, including some of the camps.

http://www.aish.com/holocaust/overview/he05n27.htm

The resistance fighters, with a handful of pistols, grenades and captured weapons, had broken the fatalistic mood that nothing could be done. Fighting in dark, narrow apartment passages, escaping over rooftops and through alleyways, they grew in confidence.

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"Our fear", wrote a survivor, "was that we might arouse the notion that a man could save his life even if he did not fight... We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one, as an underground that was not part of the overall war of undergrounds the world over and would have to stand, cut off and alone; as a pioneer force not only from the Jewish standpoint but also from the standpoint of the entire embattled world – the first to fight. For our hour had come without any hope of rescue".

In the early hours of 19 April, troops massed outside the ghetto walls. While residents rushed to the bunkers, the fighters took their positions and waited. At 6am hundreds of SS troops poured in, along with tanks, armoured cars and artillery. A column marching up the road singing loudly was suddenly attacked with bombs and hand grenades, retreating in disorder. A second column was ambushed with grenades. Two tanks were set on fire. At the end of the first day, all Nazi forces withdrew, having lost 200 killed or wounded.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/75/warsaw43.html