Larken Rose
Larken Rose has struggled against the government for a decade or more. His resistance initially focused on the IRS and caused him to be imprisoned for several years.
Since his release, his determination to resist government oppression is not only undeterred, it’s enhanced.
Here’s a video by Larken that may make you squirm. The video’s title (“When Should You Shoot A Cop”) is beyond any concept of political correctness. The title is shocking and poses a question that most Americans are afraid to ask let alone consider.
I suspect that Laken’s question may inspire fear in most Americans. I also suspect that if our reluctance to confront the question is inspired by our fear of the police and “official oppression,” then our reluctance is evidence of how important it is that the question be openly asked, considered and answered.
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer, dissident and activist. He helped to raise global awareness of the former Soviet Union’s gulag and forced labor camp system. He was imprisoned under the Stalin regime from A.D.1945 to A.D. 1953. He subsequently wrote and published several books including The Gulag Archepelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . His writings were often suppressed in Russia, but in A.D. 1970, he received the Nobel Prize in literature ”For the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.”
Receiving the Nobel Prize for his “ethical force” was somewhat disingenuous and even degrading. They ostensibly awarded Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize for writing. They should’ve given him the Nobel Prize for Courage because courage, far more than a mere talent in writing, was the essence of Solzhenitsyn’s literature. It didn’t take a pen to write Solzhenitsyn’s books. It took balls.
In The Gulag Archepelego, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
When Larken Rose asks “When Should You Shoot A Cop?,” he’s simply rephrasing the questions posed by Solzhenitsyn as to when the Russian people should’ve resisted Stalin’s tyranny.
• The title of Larken’s video (“When Should You Shoot A Cop”) is so shocking that I expected his video to rely on shock value rather than reason. I was wrong. Larken has produced an excellent, well-reasoned and persuasive video. The authorities will despise Larken’s video, but they won’t be able to argue against it. I’m impressed.
But I’m not impressed by the quality of the video as much as I am by Larken’s courage. It takes real nerve to risk producing and publishing this video. By doing so, Larken invites government attention that could be painful or even lethal. He may also invite consideration as a candidate of Congress in four years or so.
I’m impressed. It takes courage to consider painful questions.
video
00:11:36