Protecting Against Tyranny

In a more general article about what weapons "a well regulated militia" member should have, Bob Owens at PJ Media notes the following incident where the 2nd Amendment was used to overthrow tyranny:

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the last line of defense against tyranny and, far from being a colonial relic, was most recently used in 1946 in several areas as returning GIs took on tyrannical local government machines. The most significant of these, the “McMinn County War,” saw young veterans home from World War II depose a corrupt and tyrannical government using military arms.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote at the time of this morally required insurrection:

We in the U.S.A., who have long boasted that, in our political life, freedom in the use of the secret ballot made it possible for us to register the will of the people without the use of force, have had a rude awakening as we read of conditions in McMinn County, Tennessee, which brought about the use of force in the recent primary. If a political machine does not allow the people free expression, then freedom-loving people lose their faith in the machinery under which their government functions.

In this particular case, a group of young veterans organized to oust the local machine and elect their own slate in the primary. We may deplore the use of force but we must also recognize the lesson which this incident points for us all. When the majority of the people know what they want, they will obtain it.

Any local, state or national government, or any political machine, in order to live, must give the people assurance that they can express their will freely and that their votes will be counted. The most powerful machine cannot exist without the support of the people. Political bosses and political machinery can be good, but the minute they cease to express the will of the people, their days are numbered.

This is a lesson which wise political leaders learn young, and you can be pretty sure that, when a boss stays in power, he gives the majority of the people what they think they want. If he is bad and indulges in practices which are dishonest, or if he acts for his own interests alone, the people are unwilling to condone these practices.

When the people decide that conditions in their town, county, state or country must change, they will change them. If the leadership has been wise, they will be able to do it peacefully through a secret ballot which is honestly counted, but if the leader has become inflated and too sure of his own importance, he may bring about the kind of action which was taken in Tennessee.

A former first lady of the United States condoned insurrection to restore constitutional law, and against corrupt local representatives of her own Democratic Party. She knew a history uncorrupted by modern-day revisionism.