The Hypocrisy of Soldiers Supporting the 2nd Amendment

If you're into prepping, firearms, survival, or bushcraft, sooner or later you'll have likely stumbled on one (or many) of the YouTube channels run by vets that talk about these things. Also, inevitably, sooner or later these channels will put out a video claiming to support the 2nd Amendment. One such channel I occasionally watch, and he has some good content, is John Lovell's Warrior Poet Society. At the time of this writing, he has almost 600,000 subscribers.

I've watched videos where he talks, with pride, about how he spent full 8-hour days kicking down doors during the invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about it in the context of how to best hold a rifle. You see, John Lovell willingly signed up to join the U.S. military and fight in an illegitimate war of aggression that was waged under false pretenses. Iraq didn't have WMDs, and Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11, that was Saudi Arabia, a despotic dictatorship that the U.S. government has propped up for decades.

There was no conscription at the time he joined the U.S. military, which hasn't conscripted (read: kidnapped and enslaved) Americans to fight in its wars since Vietnam. That means that when he was an obedient order-follower and did his door-kicking for a paycheck, he did it with full moral responsibility for his actions. There are no excuses, no "but they forced me to and threatened to imprison me" outs for John, or any of the other soldiers who have helped execute the illegitimate wars the U.S. government has thought over the past half century.

And yet, in other videos, he talks about how neither he nor most of the soldiers and police officers he hangs out with would ever enforce door-to-door confiscations of firearms from Americans. He says this with a straight face, and to the great satisfaction of his audience, who shower such videos with likes and comments of support.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, has called people like that out on their hypocrisy in the comments sections. Not that I've seen anyway.

Remember, the 2nd Amendment is merely a written down confirmation of a basic human right that every human being already has by virtue of simply being alive: the right to self-defense. This is a god-given right, or, if you don't believe in god, a natural right. You have this right whether you live in the United States, Australia, or Iraq. You have this right whether the government where you live formally recognizes it or not. It is inalienable.

The Iraqis have no less of a right to be secure in their possessions, papers, and effects, and no less of a right to self-defense than Americans do. To believe otherwise is to believe that they are not as human as us, which, ultimately, is what I think most soldiers really do believe. You can't violate others rights wholesale like John Lovell has without having a pretty strong double standard for your enemy. Dehumanizing the enemy is a crucial part of waging any war.

And by the way, their paycheck comes out of your taxes. You're paying for these people to violate others' rights, and they know this. They know where their paycheck comes from. The founding fathers didn't even want a standing army. They considered it one of the greatest threats to liberty (that and central banks).

Some veterans have come out in opposition to these wars, taken responsibility, and apologized for their participation. People like Adam Kokesh come to mind. But while you talk of violating others' rights with pride as a door-kicker, and then claim to oppose door-to-door gun confiscations, your hypocrisy knows no equal.

Make no mistake, these soldiers will come after your guns when they're told to. They won't stand up for your rights, any more than they've stood up for the rights of Iraqis. And if you think the fact that you share a nation will change anything, think again. By the time they're given the order to come into your house and kidnap you and steal your possessions, they will have already been heavily propagandized and told you're a terrorist, a racist, a Nazi, or whatever term the media decides to use at the time to try and dehumanize you. By the time they break through your door, they won't see you as a human being, any more than they saw those Iraqis as human beings.

The regular people out there, the civilians who aren't violating people's rights on a daily basis for a paycheck, swallow up this propaganda hook, line, and sinker. The U.S. government has succeeded in creating a cult of worship around its soldiers. Slogans of "Support the Troops!", the popularity veterans enjoy on YouTube, and the fact that Navy Seals and other Special Forces vets are seen as super-cool half-gods rather than the trained murderers that they are is evidence of this cult in action.

So long as the enforcers of the American Empire are thanked for their "service", given undue respect, and are worshiped and idolized, the American people will be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that these people are somehow going to be on their side. They're not. They've already demonstrated a willingness to trample on people's rights for a minimum wage paycheck. These are the same people who would say "I'm just doing my job" when confronted over some immoral behavior.

Stop idolizing these people. If you need help picturing what these people really do, strip them of their uniforms. Imagine these were just regular people, wearing regular clothes, running around with guns, breaking into people's homes, murdering innocent people, and stealing their property. Imagine they did what they do without all the propaganda. What are they now?

Criminals.