Quote of the day—William Knox

The Militia Laws should be repealed and none suffered to be re-enacted, the Arms of all the People should be taken away, & every piece of Ordnance removed into the King’s Stores, nor should any Foundry or manufactory of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without License: they will have but little need of such things for the future, as the King’s Troops, Ships & Forts will be sufficient to protect them from any danger.

William Knox
Under Secretary of State in the British Colonial Office
1777
What is Fit to be Done with America?
From The Arms Of All The People Should Be Taken Away
[The government will protect you! We hear that now and it would seem people have heard that for as long as there have been governments. Upon the first hearing of claims such as these one should take appropriate and vigorous action to remove the people making the claims from power.

See also my post on this over five years ago.—Joe]

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5 thoughts on “Quote of the day—William Knox

  1. I think that was just released as a model bill for state legislatures by Bloomberg and his groupies. Soon to be introduced in California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington….

  2. Half the people reading that quote will agree with it. The idea of self reliance, and self protection, terrifies some people while the idea of relying on charity enrages them. They’ll happily relinquish those responsibilities to anyone who exhibits the right smile and the warm promise of a perpetual childhood, with an all-powerful government replacing the father.

    Men are pigs anyway, right? And now they’re altogether useless in this, the Great Society. We are all altogether useless, because any problem that crops up, real or imagined, past, present or future, can be solved through the coercive, redistributive power of government.

    That beautiful, warm, sweet lie is too alluring, and so we will fall for it every time. We only realize our mistake when it becomes clear that we’ve sold ourselves into slavery once again. Since every new generation, apparently, has to learn that hard lesson by direct experience, it means blood. Wars, over and over and over, either to maintain the thieving, lying, coercive power of the state, or to overthrow it, supplant it, and start the cycle over again.

  3. I always find it surprising how many people are surprised at the direct correlation between grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence and the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. It’s like the latter spring from the virgin ground and deep thought, not the hard realities of bitter experience.

    • What was that Michelle O. said about our history and our traditions? Yeah that.

      Erase the past, and then you can more easily do it all over again.

    • I keep an Oleg Volk poster around the office that mentions an attempt to disarm the people and how it sparked a successful revolution. That refers to the events around the Lexington “shot heard around the world”, primarily. What’s curious about the proclamation cited here is that it came in 1777, after the Declaration of Independence; it reads like the writing of someone detached from reality. (Hm, somewhat like a modern liberal, come to think of it.)

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