Instigator / Pro
billbatard's avatar
8
billbatard
1294
rating
75
debates
18.0%
won
Topic
#1411

the us government would easily put down a right wing militia

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

oromagi
Tags
Society
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
oromagi's avatar
14
oromagi
1922
rating
117
debates
97.44%
won
Description

Benson and Weber cite Abraham Lincoln's executive actions during the Civil War and Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 intervention in Little Rock, Arkansas as precedents for the executive use of force in crushing a rebellion. The President would be able to mobilize the military and Department of Homeland Security to recapture a secessionist city and restore the elected government.https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-is-how-the-us-military-would-put-down-an-armed-rebellion

Round 1
billbatard's avatar
billbatard
Pro
#1
Despite what the gun nuts say it is unlawful to attempt to over throw a democratically elected government The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a United States federal law (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255)[1] (until 2016, found at 10 US Code, Chapter 15, §§ 331–335, renumbered to 10 USC, Chapter 13, §§ 251–255) that governs the ability of the President of the United States to deploy military troops within the United States to put down lawlessness, insurrection, and rebellion. The general purpose is to limit presidential power, relying on state and local governments for initial response in the event of insurrection. Coupled with the Posse Comitatus Act, presidential powers for domestic law enforcement are limited and delayed.   The entire text of the Posse Comitatus Act, as amended in 1956, is as follows:
18 U.S.C. § 1385 – Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Accordingly, actions taken under the Insurrection Act, as an "Act of Congress", have always been exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act.[2
The military is prepared for any scenario right or left urban or rural and is ready for them, armed citizens no matter how angry or well armed do not stand any chance against the military

oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#2
thanks, billbatard, for instigating this debate.

RESOLVED: The United States Federal Government would easily put down a right-wing militia


DEFINITONS:

The United States Federal Government (USFG) is "the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America, composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories and several island possessions." [1]

Easily [adverb] is "comfortably, without discomfort or anxiety." [2]

Put down [verb] is "to halt, eliminate, stop, or squelch, often by force." [3]

Right Wing is "political thinking holds that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, or tradition.  Hierarchy and inequality may be viewed as natural results of traditional social differences or the competition in market economies.  The term right-wing can generally refer to 'the conservative or reactionary section of a political party or system'." [4]

Milita "organizations in the United States are private organizations that include paramilitary or similar elements. These groups may refer to themselves as militia, unorganized militia, and constitutional militia." [5]

BURDEN of PROOF

Wikipedia suggests:

"When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.  This is also stated in Hitchens's razor.". [6]

In this case, PRO as instigator and claimant bears the entire responsibility of proof.

CON interprets the resolution to mean that PRO intends to prove that the present USFG or any near future USFG could eliminate any internal right-wing paramilitary force under any circumstances without any discomfort or anxiety.  CON will concede  that under most contemporary circumstances, a violent conflict between some unnamed Right-wing militia and the US Military should end in victory for the USFG but even a small degree of violence would produce some discomfort and anxiety, causing PRO's condition of "easy" to fail  There are also exceptional circumstances and scenarios that might cause the USFG tremendous difficulty or under some unlikely conditions cause the USFG to fall.

I.  "Easily" is relative

  • Easily is the wrong adverb to employ when discussing the suppression of any insurrection, whatever the scale.  We are defining easily as "without discomfort or anxiety" and any usurpation is likely to provoke violence. CON offers that any degree of violence results in discomfort and/or anxiety for both those injured and those doing the injury.  If we look at a recent incident of insurgency that posed little threat to the USFG and offered minimal resistance,
    • the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, for example, we see that even though there was only one death an one mild injury a considerable amount of discomfort and anxiety was experienced all around
      • 40 people under siege for 40 days in winter without much food or heat,
      • Hundreds of Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials called upon the maintain that siege in winter, at considerable taxpayer expense,
      • the desecration of sacred Native American artifacts and sites
      • destruction of bird habitat in one of the US's premiere bird sanctuaries.  [7]
    • PRO and CON would probably agree that the Malheur occupation was about as easy to suppress as anti-government armed uprisings get.  Nevertheless, considerable pain, discomfort, and anxiety was visited on hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals.
II.  PRO can't predict future events

  • PRO is guaranteeing the results of future US conflicts which is always dangerous.  Circumstances change.  Loyalties shift.  Technology unbalances even the most careful preparations. Historically speaking, high levels of confidence in the established defenses often predicates spectacular failure.
    • The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest,
    • The blitzkreig Sichelschnitt overrun of the Maginot line, and
    • The 9/11 terrorist attacks are all examples of unexpected strategies overcoming overwhelmingly superior forces.
  • In order to win this debate, PRO must establish that PRO retains the capacity, supernatural or otherwise, to accurately predict the future outcome of any and all right wing insurgencies.
III.  Hypotheticals

  • What if a right-wing majority government refused to suppress, perhaps even endorsed a right-wing uprising?
    • Our present right-wing majority government is currently, unexpectedly facing a potential loss of executive power in the near term.  It is certainly not outside the range of possible short range scenarios that both the sitting President and vice-President are impeached in the next few months, installing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as president, who's legitimacy was questioned by Trump just yesterday:
"The whole party is taken over by the Left," Trump said. "They've been taken over by a radical group of people, and Nancy Pelosi, as far as I'm concerned, unfortunately, she’s no longer the speaker of the House." [8]
    • Even the likelihood of a non-electoral transfer of executive power to the Democrats could provoke insurrection in the right-wing.  So what if armed groups acted to defend Trump's tenure?  Can we be certain that Trump would oppose such a force?  Can we be certain that the US military would oppose such a force without a clear chain-of-command or obvious Commander-in-Chief?
    • If the US Govt was paralyzed by politics or even actively pro-militia, how much more unpredictable might the effectiveness of any right-wing uprising prove?
  • What if the Commander-in-Chief was removed by coup or assassination or health emergency or accident?  If the chain of command can't be quickly established, would military response be delayed, perhaps even to a disastrous degree?
  • What if large portions of the military were sufficiently sympathetic with a right-wing insurgency that the military either refused to fight or even joined the rightist cause?
    • The US Military has always leaned Right- and has been increasingly right-leaning ever since the end of the draft.
In a 2009 survey of 4,000 Army officers ...found that between 1976 and 1996, the share of senior military officers identifying itself as Republican jumped from one-third to two-thirds, while those claiming to be moderates fell from 46% to 22%. [9]

 A 2009 Department of Homeland Security (HLS) report further warned that the combination of the election of the first African American president, a downturn in the economy, and an influx of unemployed vets returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were potential flashpoints and that military personnel and veterans were being targeted by far-right extremist groups. [10]
  • The US's deadliest and most enduring right wing organization, the Ku Klux Klan, was founded by Confederate Veterans immediately following the Civil War.
  • The US's deadliest single of domestic terrorism, the 1995 Murrah Federal Bldg. bombing was carried out by a Gulf War veteran.
  • What if a right-wing military insurgency received substantial backing from foreign enemies?
    • A US Senate report issued just this morning found that the National Rifleman's Association, an ostensibly apolitical, non-profit organization:

"...engaged in a years-long effort to facilitate the U.S.-based activities of Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin. The U.S. Justice Department determined the activity of those Russian nationals—one now convicted of a felony charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent and the other designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for the Russian Federation’s global malign activity, including attempting to subvert Western democracies and malicious cyber activities—amounted to an illegal conspiracy to gain access to American organizations through the NRA." [11]
  • What if a right-wing militia adopted terrorist tactics on an uprecedented scale?  Simultaneously bombing public institutions (like McVeigh or the '96 Summer Olympics) or major points of infrastructure or large population centers?
  • What if right-wing snipers simultaneously assassinated large numbers of left-wing leaders?
  • What if a right-wing paramilitary group gained access to one or more weapons of mass destruction?
    • USAF jets carrying nuclear weapons have gone missing for as long as 47 years. [12]
    • USAF pilots have gone rogue on multiple occasions. [13]
Let's agree that under most familiar and precedented circumstances, the powerful forces of the US military have a fairly high likelihood of military success against the small numbers and inferior tech of any known US right-wing militia.  PRO makes one mistake by assuming that any such military success could be had without any degree of discomfort or loss.  PRO's larger mistake is a failure to imagine the multitude of scenarios and circumstances by which a right-wing milita might surprise the USA.

Round 2
billbatard's avatar
billbatard
Pro
#3
Red dawn was a fantasy the rule of law would require the us military to obey the insurrection act The Republic of Texas, 1997
In 1997, a six-man faction of the Republic of Texas that declared the Lone Star State had been illegally annexed, abducted a couple, holed itself up in a remote trailer in Fort Davis, and set off a multi-day standoff with the federal government. After officials traded them a jailed militant for the two hostages, they eventually arrested the group—but not before two armed members of the militia snuck out of the cordon and attempted to flee into the wilderness. One of them was shot dead days later.
(Republic of Texas members, from left to right, Robert Otto, Gregg Paulson, and Richard McLaren after their arraignment in 1997.)

Edward and Elaine Brown, 2007
What started off as a routine standoff in 2007 between a New Hampshire couple accused of tax evasion and the feds attempting to take them into custody quickly turned sideways after the Browns drew a number of supporters to their home, several of them armed, some of whom shared their belief that the Bible prevented the government from collecting on their $625,000 of unpaid taxes. (Naturally, their arguments reportedly included conspiracies about the Illuminati, as well as the teachings of a mysterious bearded man named “Sonny.”)
After several months—with, thankfully, no deaths—the two were finally arrested when federal agents posing as supporters managed to infiltrate the property. Elaine and Edward Brown, who became involved in the "patriot" movement in the 1990s, were sentenced to at least 30 years in prison, leaving behind a piece of property so booby-trapped that potential buyers weren’t allowed to tour the land when the government put it up for auction. (Unsurprisingly, no one bought it and, as of 2015, the property remains unsold.)
(Ed Brown standing outside of his barricaded home in Plainfield, New Hampshire in 2007.)The Montana Freemen, 1996
Three years after Waco, the Montana Freemen, a group of separatists who refused to recognize any form of government, faced off against the federal government for 81 days when a local bank attempted to foreclose on their leader’s 940-acre ranch. (Several threats against local officials, including a call to hang the county sheriff, probably didn’t help their argument.)
While the Freemen eventually surrendered and no lives were lost, they were still convicted on several dozen charges, including the attempt to cash $18 billion worth of fake checks.
(A still from a videotape from an unidentified Freemen released to the media from their compound in Jordan, Montana.)Waco, Texas (1993)
One of the deadliest standoffs in recent memory, the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian cult in 1993 left 86 dead—the vast majority of them members of the church—after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives attempted to raid their Waco, Texas, temple, suspecting that they’d been stockpiling illegal weapons. (They also suspected that the group’s founder, David Koresh, had been practicing polygamy and statutory rape, having sex with girls as young as 12.)https://www.vanityfair.com/news/photos/2016/01/history-standoff-militia-government yes often the army refuses to use it full force for pr reasons
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told the conspiracy website InfoWars that he envisions the program bolstering his ranks for the express purpose of going head-to-head with antifa and other left-wing protestors, essentially promising repeats of the fatal clashes at last August’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rhodes anticipates Spartans engaging with protesters as his Oath Keepers did during the 2015 anti-police brutality protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which “was probably where we were closest to using lethal force.” He foresees his trainees acting at the direction of sheriffs, governors, or the president. Or, he added, they could go to protests on their own, to look for disruptions to put down.But experts on the militant far-right stress that state and local authorities do have options — options that are actually strengthened by the militias’ stated intention of battling political enemies.

But experts on the militant far-right stress that state and local authorities do have options — options that are actually strengthened by the militias’ stated intention of battling political enemies.

But experts on the militant far-right stress that state and local authorities do have options — options that are actually strengthened by the militias’ stated intention of battling political enemies.

Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago, has studied some of the same arcane – but newly relevant – laws. “A lot of places have laws against parading in public with firearms, and anti-Klan laws against going in disguise on the public highway,” she said. “In Texas, they have a law prohibiting parading in public or creating an army that is not under the government’s direct control.”         Radical left-wing protest groups have been favorite targets of far-right extremists for decades. Belew pointed to a 1979 incident in North Carolina, when neo-Nazis and Klan members armed with assault weapons attacked a Communist demonstration in the city of Greensboro, killing five leftists and injuring more than a dozen.  “Many things that seem new are not new,” Belew said. “The idea of paramilitary training and confronting a violent left appear throughout the earlier white power movement.”
Belew observed that criminal prosecutions of paramilitary groups like those that attacked the Greensboro Communists often fail. Indeed, the attackers in that case were acquitted in both state and federal court by arguing they acted in self-defense, and were motivated out of political animus rather than racial hatred. By contrast, civil anti-paramilitary statues have a proven track record of disrupting extremist organizations, and are constitutional to boot.
https://www.thetrace.org/2018/09/armed-militias-right-wing-extremism-state-laws/   Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the ...
18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection | U.S. Code ...

https://www.law.cornell.edu › uscode › text  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States a list of historical outcomes to insurrection









oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#4
thanks, billbatard, for instigating this timely topic

RESOLVED: The United States Federal Government would easily put down a right-wing militia

  • In the absence of contradiction, PRO has accepted CON's proffered DEFINITIONS and BURDEN of PROOF.
  • PRO has not objected or corrected CON's interpretation of the resolution to mean that PRO intends to prove that the present USFG or any near future USFG could eliminate any internal right-wing paramilitary force under any circumstances without any discomfort or anxiety.  CON will concede  that under most contemporary circumstances, a violent conflict between some unnamed Right-wing militia and the US Military should end in victory for the USFG but even a small degree of violence would produce some discomfort and anxiety, causing PRO's condition of "easy" to fail  There are also exceptional circumstances and scenarios that might cause the USFG tremendous difficulty or under some unlikely conditions cause the USFG to fall.
OBJECTION:  Most of PRO's R2 is just cut & paste and not original content or argument composed for this debate.

I.  "Easily" is relative

  • We have agreed to define "easily" as "without discomfort or anxiety."  To win this debate, PRO must prove that the USFG can always squelch any right wing militia of any size or capacity without discomfort or anxiety.  VOTERS will note that none of the examples offered by PRO qualify as "easily put down militias" as defined in this debate.
    • One Republic of Texas seccessionist killed in 1997
    • Ed & Elaine Brown's car and property destroyed, dog impounded.
    • 4 ATF agents and 82 Branch Davidians killed in Waco.
    • [The Oathkeepers example seems to describe lawful conduct, so no USFG intervention was required]
    • The USFG failed to intervene to prevent the Greensboro massacre or suppress the murdering Klansmen colluding with local officials, so not put down at all.
  • VOTERS should find that none of PRO's examples qualify as "easily put down" and should find that PRO failed to make this case.
II.  PRO can't predict future events

  • PRO dropped CON's argument and offered no evidence that PRO is able to accurately predict or guarantee the results of future right-wing insurrections.
III.  Hypotheticals

  • PRO ignored all of CON's hypothetical situations that might upset the balance of power or otherwise influence the outcome of future right-wing insurrections.
IV.  VOTER recommendations

  • Since PRO failed to prove "easily" and failed to guarantee the future, VOTERS should award ARGUMENT points to CON.
  • Since PRO substituted cut & pastes for arguments (including some broken  or expired links), VOTERS should award SOURCES points to CON>
Thanks to billbatard for the original topic.

Thanks to VOTERS for their kind consideration.

Please VOTE CON!