Daily Verse | Ruth 4:13
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife.

Happy Thursday, my friends. I think the roots of PTSD are found in Mother Goose rhymes.

Since it’s looking like the only way out of our current dilemma in the U.S. may be a civil war or a domestic uprising of some kind, I find myself contemplating what such an internal national conflict would look like. Having never served in the armed forces, I don’t have the strategic or tactical training that would provide a helpful background for such thinking.

It’s obvious, however, that one of the challenges is leadership. I don’t know that there’s a George-Washington-in-waiting ready to lead a group of armed civilians in an uprising against our current government. Who would such an army follow? Who would provide the strategy?

Another challenge is how armed resistance would gather enough velocity to have a fighting chance (so to speak). Seems to me that any large-scale development of an independent fighting force would have to be hidden until it was ready to go. Is that possible?

Still another is the logistical challenge of supporting and feeding a large civilian force, not to mention providing ammunition for the variety of guns that each person would bring to the fight.

Another is how such an army would take and hold territory.

I’ve seen arguments on both sides of civil war debate, with the naysayers underscoring the fact that conditions today aren’t the same as the mid-1800s. It’s not a “North/South” thing, they say. Progressives are mixed in with conservatives and libertarians and moderate Democrats all over the country. There isn’t any longer the natural loyalty to the state of one’s birth, which would typically draw, say, Virginians or Tennesseans together.

Despite the challenges, however, others believe that such a fight is possible.

“It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength.”

— Col. Jeff Cooper

That’s how the linked article at Ammo.com opens. The central idea of the essay is Fourth Generation Warfare or “4GW.” 4GW is “any war between a state actor and a non-state actor. This is also known as asymmetrical warfare, but it’s not the only difference between 4GW and other, earlier forms of conflict.”

At its most basic level, 4GW is guerilla warfare; an insurgency in the style of the Afghan Mujahideen or the Viet Cong in Vietnam. When we talk about a new American civil war, the 4GW model is most likely to be followed. The author goes on to say,

Here we have tens of thousands of Americans armed to the teeth with combat experience, deep family ties to both the police and the military, extensive knowledge of the local geography, and, in many cases, survivalist training. Even where they are not trained, militant and active, they enjoy broad support among those who own a lot of guns and grow a lot of food.

On the other side, you have the unwieldy Baby Huey of the rump U.S. government’s military, with some snarky BuzzFeed editorials serving as propaganda.

This is the first essay I’ve read that suggests a guerilla insurgency—think a modern form of Lexington and Concord—could effectively combat the federal government. It’s a rare opinion.

But it does two things. First, it shows that we’re not the only ones thinking about where the deranged Left is taking us. Others are looking at the trajectory and reading the tea leaves. Second, it opens up the possibility that there might be a fighting chance for those whose lives are being brought ever more tightly under authoritarian rule.

Instead of a General Washington leading a large army, the civilian forces would be decentralized. Leadership would be provided locally, as would logistical support. Perhaps there would be some coordination between units, but it would have to be short engagements.

No one wants such a scenario—I know I don’t—but we’re forced to consider it because the trend lines are pointing to it. Of course we must pursue all options available to us politically and legally to slow the march to Armageddon. But in the event that we can’t, we need to be thinking (now) about other options that are granted to us in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

I pray it doesn’t come to that.