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A Platoon of Spetznaz
by A.X. Perez
perez180ehs@hotmail.com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

It was August of 1991. Misha Gorbachev was being held captive by Communist Party apparatchiki who wanted to end perestroika.Boris Yeltsin led the resistance to these Conservative Communists, who included much of the KGB and GRU. A platoon of Spetnaz was tasked with killing Yeltsin and ending the resistance to a return to good old fashion Soviet style Communist Party rule. They refused to carry out the order. Yeltsin remained in power as president of the Russian Federation and Gorbechev was rescued. Four months later the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

All because a bunch of Spetznazniki refused to continue to support what they saw as a dying world order. You can make all sorts of correct psychological, economic and sociological arguments as to why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was doomed to be swept into the dustbin of history (and yes, I love turning this phrase on them ). But the USSR received its death blow the day Spetnazniki refused to commit a political murder to keep it alive.

These brave young men, and one of these days someone should interview them to see why they changed the world, were a critical failure point. If they had obeyed a bunch of crazy old men and their sycophants and other hangers on would have retained power a few more years, perhaps starting Ragnarok on their way out. When they disobeyed the course of history was determined.

Every government is based on force, every political system is based on force. Ultimately the American Dollar ( fiat, representational or honest gold and silver coin) has value in the US because if you don't accept it soldiers will come and shoot you dead. Theoretically it is the responsibility of every law enforcement agency in this country to detain, arrest, and bring to trial any of their own members and members of other agencies operating in their jurisdiction who violate people's rights under the Constitution.

As Washington observed and Heinlein repeated, government is force. The US Bill of Rights was an attempt to put limits and a conscience on that force. All constitutions are meant to harness and direct that force, but that force would still be there without the constitutions. Those who view constitutions as mere pieces of paper and boilerplate to be dumped when the going gets tough are advocating the application of force without any limitation of conscience, i.e., tyranny.

Many who write for and read TLE are concerned that the USA is headed for a crisis similar to the one which ended the USSR. The question must be faced if we are to avoid being reduced to a punk dictatorship or torn about by breakdowns of Federal authority (not power, authority, the moral right to use power) and secessions by states. It must be faced if failing to avoid secession the Union become a group of free states instead of a Balkanized morass of nasty, vicious tyrannies, some fascist, others socialist. and as each phase of the crisis is met failure points will arise where all lies in the hands of soldiers who must decide whether America remains free and or unified or not.

I don't think any soldier or group of soldiers can ultimately stop the growth of freedom, correct choices on their parts can make that growth somewhat less bloody and faster. Contrariwise, they can hasten the failure of tyranny, which lacking any moral claim to the people's obedience, relies totally on force.

May our Spetznazniki and other young people in uniform choose as wisely as those Russians did back that fateful August of 1991.

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