+ Patient Declaration (This Side Of The Form Must Be: Fill & Download for Free

Oh, by God, yes they do:"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny.”—Rev. Nicholas Collin, Fayetteville Gazette (N.C.), October 12, 1789 Episcopal pastor, friend of Benjamin Franklin“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”—Founder and President Thomas Jefferson“Tyranny cannot be safe without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”—Founder and President James Madison, writing in his autobiography“Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”—Noah Webster (1758-1843), American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, the first dictionary of American English usage. Defined the militia similarly as “the effective part of the people at large.” Source: An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787“Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”—Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, speaking in the U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789 during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at page 750“The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties of the republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”—Joseph Story (1779-1845), Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1811-1845. His father was one of the Sons of Liberty who took part in the Boston Tea Party and fought at Lexington & Concord in 1775. The above quote was from 1833“It’s the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what’s their own. If those in government are heedless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it.”—John Trenchard (1662-1723) Source: John Trenchard and Walter Moyle (1672-1721), “An Argument, shewing; that a standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy”, (London, 1697)“For we may not think ever to keep that people in subjection which hath always lived in liberty, if they be not disarmed.”—Jean Bodin (1530-1596) French Jurist and Political Philosopher, in Six Books of a Commonweale, 1606 AD (R. Knolles translation, pg. 615, 1606)“Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don’t have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.”—Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author commenting on the lack of protest with which Japanese tolerated governmental corruption, Los Angeles Times, October 15th, 1992“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA – ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State.”—Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), Adolph Hitler’s head of the SS in Nazi Germany“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”—Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Know Your Lawmakers, writing in Guns magazine, Feb. 1960, p. 4“…By calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fear of governmental tyranny, which gave rise to the Second Amendment, will ever be an important danger to our Nation, the Amendment remains an important declaration of our basic military-civilian relationship, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”—President John F. KennedyGood God, the ignorance of you people so easily exposed.

Hmm… Let’s see…Putin declares himself Czar and:His popularity plummets as most of the nation does not think a monarchy is a legitimate form of government. People flock to opposition.The small opposition that hated Putin in the first place now has an excellent banner and rallying cause - a genuine fight agains autocracy.80% of the population now consider him a nutjob because of the obvious absurdity of the move.The elites that live off the power-sharing consensus suddenly feel extremely threatened as the current socioeconomical power structure (based on management of state assets) is broken in favour of hereditary power transfer. Putin loses the cooperation of most of the financially influential clans that he paid so much to secure.Any coup against the new Czar is now legally and morally justifiable. There is no doubt that forces willing to play the role of saviours of the young Russian democracy will soon emerge (with a bit of financial help from the West).Quiet retirement in comfort and safety is no longer an option. There’s only one way out of a Czardom for an uzurper - into an early grave.For all this trouble he receives:Hmm… eehhh… There must be SOMETHING, right? A fancy crown maybe? Uh… A new silly costume?The opportunity (however negligible) to pass the throne to his DAUGHTER. Maybe, but probably not.Comparing the two sides of the equation even without considering the inherent difficulty in implementing such a ridiculous change into the Constitutional order of Russian Federation (without becoming a mental asylum patient that is) I’d say that if I for one was the current president of Russian Federation, I would not try to instate a monarchy and in any case (if the worse comes to worst) not to become the monarch at all costs.You know, the Romanovs already had this very idea back in 1917. I don’t think Putin is more stupid than Grand Duke Michail.P.S. OK, I agree, the costume is awesome, not silly if you do it right.

Yes, it was a coup. That was part of the plan. Remember, Palpatine is Sith. To him, the Jedi are not only the bad guys but hypocrites to boot, and he can’t stand that.All who gain power are afraid to use it. Even the Jedi.The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way … including their quest for greater power.“The Sith rely on their osssion for their strength. They think inwards, only about themselves.”And the Jedi don’t?As the kids say, where’s the lie? [1]To the extent that Palpatine has a discernible motivation in the prequels beyond twirling his mustache, this is it: to expose the Jedi as the hypocrites he sees them as. Maneuvering them into attempting a coup is the capstone of that.And it really is a coup. As the novelization makes clear, the Republic doesn’t have laws against being a Sith.“You're a Sith Lord!""Am I? Even if true, that's hardly a crime. My philosophical outlook is a personal matter. In fact—the last time I read the Constitution, anyway—we have very strict laws against this type of persecution. So I ask you again: what is my alleged crime?"And it would be frankly rather surprising if they did. Yes, thousands of years ago, the Republic was at war with an empire whose state religion was Sith. But the Republic is an analogue for George Lucas’ vision of what a liberal democracy ought to be (and, even more importantly, what it can devolve into). It hardly fits liberal democratic ideals to outlaw the state religion of your once-upon-a-time enemy. That would be like Germany outlawing Islam just because it had once been at war with the Ottoman Empire.Now, certainly the Jedi believed they had good reason for doing what they did. They felt like the war was the product of Sith machinations on both the Republic and the Separatist sides. They were also quite sure that, some 1,000 years after the last Sith had been sighted, the religion still kept to the ancient Rule of Two. So it followed, in their minds, that if Palpatine was a Sith Lord, and Dooku was a Sith Lord, then Palpatine must be either Dooku’s master or apprentice, and therefore was in league with him, and therefore had been orchestrating the Clone Wars with him, and therefore had committed treason against the Republic, and therefore needed to be arrested.The funny thing is, all of that happens to be true … but it’s based on really bad deductive reasoning.The Jedi believe that a Sith Lord is behind the Republic side of the Clone Wars because (i) their Force intuition said so and (ii) they were told so by the enemy head of state. Neither is exactly the sort of thing you could present in court.The Jedi are making a huge leap in assuming that the Rule of Two is still in effect, and an even bigger leap in assuming that Palpatine is actually part of Dooku’s line rather than competing with it. As the audience knows perfectly well, even after the Rule of Two was implemented, the Sith were not as unified as their promotional literature would have us believe. It would not be hard for Palpatine to say, “What? Oh, yes, the Rule of Two. Well, certainly that was Sith doctrine a thousand fucking years ago, but I assure you, the Sith have moved on. At any rate, the sect I belong to doesn’t hold with such ancient claptrap. I assure you, Senators, I am not working with Count Dooku, least of all on the basis of millennium-old religious dogma. Frankly, the fear that the Jedi would jump to this very conclusion is the reason that I have so far kept my private religious convictions private.”The result of this is that the Jedi’s motivation for removing Palpatine from office boils down to him being a Sith. That’s all they’ve got. He’s a Sith, therefore he must be evil. He’s a Sith, therefore he must be manipulating the entire Republic into a destructive war on false pretenses. The logic doesn’t hold up, and Palpatine knows it.And that’s the real point, I think. For all his grand, patient scheming, there is a core of almost Satanic pettiness to Palpatine that is a really important part of the character (fitting, as Lucas has compared Palpatine to the devil). Yes, yes, the coup attempt also provides evidence to justify Order 66 and the Declaration of a New Order. But even more important than that, Palpatine got to look Mace Windu in the eye and hear him say it.[1] The difference, of course - the thing that Palpatine doesn’t see - is in how the Jedi and Sith relate to the evil they do. Yes, the Jedi monger power; yes, the Jedi care more about themselves than the galaxy; yes, the Jedi too little value life. The Clone Wars and other “EU 3.0” materials discuss the evil that the Jedi do extensively. But the difference is that the Sith try to do evil. The Jedi do evil too, but when they realize it, they try to correct. They’re not perfect, and sometimes their corrections are too little, too late, but they do try. Palpatine sees that both the Jedi and Sith are stained with mud and thinks they’re all the same. What he doesn’t see is that Sith wallow in the muck while Jedi try to get out of it.