Megalextoria

Imagine Tea Party extremists seizing control of a South Carolina town and the Army being sent in to crush the rebellion. This farcical vision is now part of the discussion in professional military circles.

At issue is an article in the respected Small Wars Journal titled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future.” It was written by retired Army Col. Kevin Benson of the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Jennifer Weber, a Civil War expert at the University of Kansas. It posits an “extremist militia motivated by the goals of the ‘tea party’ movement” seizing control of Darlington, S.C., in 2016, “occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council and placing the mayor under house arrest.” The rebels set up checkpoints on Interstate 95 and Interstate 20 looking for illegal aliens. It’s a cartoonish and needlessly provocative scenario.

The article is a choppy patchwork of doctrinal jargon and liberal nightmare. The authors make a quasi-legal case for military action and then apply the Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 to the situation. They write bloodlessly that “once it is put into play, Americans will expect the military to execute without pause and as professionally as if it were acting overseas.” They claim that “the Army cannot disappoint the American people, especially in such a moment,” not pausing to consider that using such efficient, deadly force against U.S. citizens would create a monumental political backlash and severely erode government legitimacy.

The vision is hard to take seriously. As retired Army Brig. Gen. Russell D. Howard, a former professor at West Point, observed earlier in his career, “I am a colonel, colonels write a lot of crazy stuff, but no one listens to colonels, so I don’t see the problem.” Twenty years ago, then-Air Force Lt. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. created a stir with an article in Parameters titled “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” It carried a disclaimer that the coup scenario was “purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction.”

The scenario presented in Small Wars Journal isn’t a literary device but an operational lay-down intended to present the rationale and mechanisms for Americans to fight Americans. Col. Benson and Ms. Weber contend, “Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil.” This is a dark, pessimistic and wrongheaded view of what military leaders should spend their time studying.

Full article: http://m.washingtont … e-civil-war-of-2016/

That is why Generation Y is decidedly less liberal than four years ago. But don’t expect them to rally behind Mitt Romney. As the Students for Liberty President Alexander McCobin says, “This is the most libertarian generation that’s ever existed.”

Libertarian student groups are thriving on college campuses like never before. The Fifth Annual International Students for Liberty Conference attracted more than 1,000 students to Washington from around the world last February. There are currently more than 325 Young Americans for Liberty chapters nationwide dedicated to individual liberty, free markets, and peace. And Ron Paul knows how to fill an auditorium to maximum capacity at a college campus.

College-aged people are now experiencing the failures of Keynesian economics championed by liberal professors. Excessive taxation and regulations kill jobs, and increased government spending always hurts economic growth.

It shouldn’t take a college degree to figure out that every dime the government spends must first be taken from someone else. And politicians can’t spend your money better than you can. That should be Common Sense 101.

More and more young people realize that Social Security is a rip off. With Social Security facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities, young people are right to be pessimistic about the future of the entitlement program. Despite being forced to pay into the mandatory Ponzi scheme, three-fourths of young workers do not expect to see a dime out of Social Security once they retire. More young adults in their 20’s believe they are more likely to see a UFO in their lifetime than a Social Security check.

Why should young workers who are just beginning their careers —well, those lucky enough to find a job—be forced to pay for the Social Security benefits of elderly millionaires and billionaires?

Young people don’t love being forced into terrible mismanaged government programs. More young people want the freedom to invest in their retirement as they see fit. Perhaps this is why auditoriums full of college students loudly cheer when Ron Paul proposes that young people be allowed to opt out of Social Security.

Through no fault of their own, our nation’s youth will inherit the nearly $16 trillion national debt—closer to $100 trillion with unfunded liabilities factored in. No wonder so many young people are fed up with big spending Republicans and Democrats.

But let’s not panic yet. The kids are alright, after all. It looks like the increasingly libertarian millennial generation might finally be able to get this nation back on track.

Full article: http://townhall.com/ … bamas_statism/page/2